Truancy intervention and violent offending: Evidence from a randomized controlled trial

Violent offending and violent offenders occupy a key policy issue and policy group for prevention and intervention efforts. Research has examined an array of risk factors implicated in predicting violent offending, but interventions aimed at reducing these risk factors and their effect on violence have been less investigated, especially those within a randomized trial. We use data from a truancy reduction experiment in Australia to examine whether participants in the program, relative to a control group, enjoyed ancillary benefits related to the relationship between risk factors and violence. Results provide partial support in that the program weakened the effects of some of the risk factors on violence over time, but not all of the risk factors. Findings also show that the probability of violence was higher in the control group relative to the experimental group when looking at the cumulative social risk factors. Implications and directions for future research are highlighted.