Mentoring Programs for Youth: A Promising Intervention for Delinquency Prevention

 

Mentoring programs are a prominent strategy in the United States for preventing negative outcomes and promoting resilience among at-risk youth. Today’s mentoring programs serve a wide range of age groups — from young children to older adolescents — and populations with diverse needs and risk factors — from poverty and neighborhood disadvantage to specific vulnerabilities such as disability, mental health challenges, or experiences of commercial sexual exploitation.  The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) is the largest federal funder of mentoring programs and awarded nearly $1 billion in grants to mentoring organizations from fiscal year (FY) 2008 to FY 2019.  Our NIJ Journal article takes stock of the current state of mentoring research on program effectiveness and population-level impact including research to note, key challenges and remaining questions, and promising directions for addressing limitations in the current evidence base.   READ THE ARTICLE