Re. the TC-based programs
Positive Peer Culture and its predecessor,
Guided Group Interaction... Here's some more material, colored emphasis mine:
From "Chapter 11: Social Support Networks in Delinquency Prevention and Treatment" by J. David Hawkins and Mark W. Fraser, in:
Social Support Networks: Informal Helping in the Human Services edited by James K. Whittaker, James Garbarino.
Published by Aldine Transaction, 1983
ISBN 0202360326, 9780202360324
479 pages
pp. 345-347
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CREATING PEER SUPPORT GROUPS IN INSTITUTIONS: GUIDED GROUP INTERACTIONA more structured approach to changing attitudes, values, and behaviors of delinquent youths through the peer group is the Guided Group Interaction approach. Guided Group Interaction was one of the first intervention approaches to specifically and explicitly focus on peer supports in delinquency control. First implemented by Bixby and McCorkle with institutionalized delinquents in New Jersey shortly after World War II (Weis
et al., 1981), the approach has been used in both residential (McCorkle, 1952; McCorkle, Elias, & Bixby, 1958; Weeks, 1958) and nonresidential settings (Empey & Rabow, 1961; Empey & Erickson, 1972) across the country. Typically, Guided Group Interaction brings together a group of approximately 10 delinquents for daily meetings with an adult facilitator. The goal of the meetings is to create a new and compelling set of peer influences away from delinquency among the members of the group. In contrast to the efforts of detached gang workers, Guided Group Interaction uses a relatively structured approach.
Members begin participation by "telling their story" of delinquent involvements and behaviors. These stories then become the basis for arriving at subsequent group decisions about the individual who will be the focus of each meeting. At each meeting, after a consensus is reached on the focus, the targeted individual is confronted by group members who question and discuss his behavior. They seek to eliminate any rationalizations for delinquency and to encourage him to adopt the group's interpretation of delinquent behavior and its causes. The hope is that, over time, groups will move from loosely structured aggregations whose members are reticent participants to cohesive bodies whose members share a common bond, a sense of responsibility for themselves and their peers, and a set of internalized anticriminal norms (see Weis
et al., 1981).
Evaluations of Guided Group Interaction programs have produced mixed results (see McCorkle, Elias, & Bixby, 1958; Weeks, 1958; Scarpitti and Stephenson, 1966; Empey and Lubeck, 1971; Stephenson and Scarpitti, 1974). Youths who completed Guided Group Interaction in institutions had lower recidivism rates than delinquent youths released from more traditional reformatories, but youths in Guided Group Interaction programs fared no better than similar youths placed on probation.
Although a number of explanations for these results are possible, perhaps the most telling from the perspective of peer support is the finding that Guided Group Interaction does not seem to change participants' self-concepts, attitudes towards conventional activities, or feelings of responsibility in the predicted directions (Weeks, 1958). The artificially created groups of delinquent youths do not appear to be successful at developing and promoting nondelinquent norms and attitudes that can be internalized and maintained by their members. Two possible reasons for this failure are the compositions of the groups (delinquent youths and a facilitator) and the lack of community follow-up to ensure integration of group members into conventional support systems that could reinforce nondelinquent behavior. These possible weaknesses have been addressed, at least partially, by Positive Peer Culture, a school-based approach to preventing delinquency which has borrowed heavily from the methods of guided group interaction.
POSITIVE PEER CULTUREPositive Peer Culture (Malcolm & Young, 1978) and similar school-based, peer-oriented prevention programs such as peer dynamics (Sheda & Winger, 1978) and peer culture development (Boehm & Larson, 1978) seek to create heterogeneous groups of "natural leaders" who represent a number of cliques or groups in a school. Rather than recruiting only delinquent youths for group membership as in Guided Group Interaction, these approaches strive for a balance between youths who exhibit behavioral problems and academically successful, prosocial youths.
The goal is to harness "the natural power of the peer group . . . to provide an impetus for behavioral and attitudinal change" (Weis et al., 1981, p. 31). Youths identified as influential leaders (whether positive or negative) by teachers and students are recruited to participate in voluntary "leadership groups." Group meetings follow a series of steps: (1) members report on problems and issues not previously discussed; (2) a focal problem or individual is selected by group consensus; (3) the group discusses the problem and the individual, confronting rationalizations and denials of responsibility and offering suggestions for resolution; (4) an adult facilitator summarizes the meeting. It is hoped that through repetition of this process, members will develop an influential network of peers who support "appropriate" behaviors and who do not reinforce undesired behaviors. It is also hoped that by involving student leaders from various groups, nondelinquent attitudes and behaviors will be transmitted throughout the peer networks of the school.
Evaluations of this school-based approach to creating peer supports have reported improvements in participants' attitudes toward school (Malcolm & Young, 1978), increases in participants' feelings of individual responsibility (Peterson, Meriwether, & Buell, 1976), reductions in school absences and disciplinary referrals (Boehm & Larson, 1978), and decreases in participants' official and self-reported delinquency (Boehm & Larson, 1978). Unfortunately, the research designs used in these studies do not allow the elimination of alternative explanations for the findings. It cannot be asserted confidently that participation in these peer support programs caused the observed change in participants.
Recent Research on the Positive Peer Culture program in Omaha, Nebraska, by Weis
et al. (1981) has revealed apparent decreases in self-reported delinquent behavior among participants when compared with a nonequivalent group of students from the general school population. Moreover, these improvements are most obvious in the behavior of "high-risk" students, suggesting the promise of this peer support strategy. It should be noted, however, that the approach has not been shown to have school-wide influence on peer norms and student behaviors. In additions, some programs seem to have had difficulty in recruiting balanced groups of leaders of both positive and negative cliques in schools. When offered on a voluntary basis, positive peer culture programs are generally more successful in recruiting academically successful and conventional youths than youths with behavior problems (Weis
et al., 1981).