Introduction

There is a dearth of theoretical and empirical knowledge of the skills youth justice practitioners in England and Wales employ during the one-to-one supervision of young people undertaking court orders, and in their interactions with young people involved in the youth justice system in other capacities. Consequently, although efforts have been made to assess and improve the quality of one-one to supervision skills in adult criminal justice settings (see, for example, Rex and Hosking, 2013; Sorsby et al, 2013), not much is known about the quality of front-line youth justice practice. This chapter presents the findings of process evaluations which sought inter alia to explore the under-researched subject-matter of supervision skills or the skills practitioners employ during one-to-one supervision in youth justice contexts. Three Statutory Orders Teams (SOTs) in Wales were evaluated, and the evaluation tool employed was the CPAI-2010, which is an empirically validated tool for assessing criminal justice services to ascertain whether the services employ evidence-based skills and practices (Gendreau et al, 2010). CPAI-2010 domains and items derive from studies of effective practices (Latessa et al, 2002). Interventions that have attained high scores on earlier versions of the CPAI have been found to produce reductions in rates of recidivism (Lowenkamp and Latessa, 2004; Lowenkamp et al, 2006; Latessa et al, 2013).

In the current chapter, we focus on sections G and H of the CPAI-2010. Both domains comprise measures of research-based supervision skills known as core correctional practices (CCPs). The domains assess how well services implement the broad range of evidence-based CCPs. By focusing on these domains, the current evaluations follow the model set by other studies that have explored the use of CCPs in other jurisdictions (see, for example, Dowden and Andrews, 2004; Bonta et al, 2008; Robinson et al, 2012; Raynor et al, 2014; Ugwudike et al, 2014; Chadwick et al, 2015) and youth justice settings (Trotter, 2013; Trotter et al, 2015). These studies have observed supervision sessions and some have interviewed practitioners to assess the use of the CCPs. The studies have found that the CCPs are associated with reductions in rates of reoffending and levels of assessed risk.