From criminology, psychology, pedagogy, to sociology (Andrés-Pueyo & Redondo, 2007; Akers, 2009; Akers & Sellers, 2013; Farral, 2002; Garrido, 2005; Mulvey, 2011; Redondo, Pueyo & Catena, 2011), there is a complete and detailed approach to theories and models that have tried to explain the characteristics of the youth offending phenomenon, its etiology and the best guidelines for intervention.

Among them, the Andrews and Bonta model (2010) is one of the most effective models for evaluation, design and implementation of interventions in young offenders. This risk-necessity-responsiveness model is built upon three principles: 1) Principle of Risk, in which stationary aspects (such as crime earliness, impulsivity, and antisocial inclination) have a lower level of modifiability than the dynamic aspects (beliefs, antisocial habits, and peer influenced drug consumption); 2) principle of Necessity, in which all the dynamic aspects are used as targets in the intervention programs; and 3) principle of Responsiveness, that involves the adjustment of interventions to the personal, motivational and situational characteristics of the youth (Graña, Andreu & González., 2017). Thus, it is a model that tries to explain the individual differences due to the cultural, social, communal, and family context.

In general, young offenders are characterized by the lack of opportunities for school education or a high grade of scholar absenteeism and academic deficiency, which have led to academic failure (Graña & Rodríguez, 2010). However, in spite of these and other risk factors to which young offenders are exposed, some of them are able to stop the delinquent behavior and regain a positive space in society. This situation brings up the concept of withdrawal (Blasco, 2012). The fact that young adults in social conflict abandon their criminal background is a reality that hasn’t been thoroughly studied (Cauffman and Steinberg, 2000), and even less, the way that the school and academic area has an influence on the withdrawal.  

This is precisely the interest of the Agency for the Reeducation and Reinsertion of the Young Offender of the Community of Madrid, as the body responsible for the fulfillment of every planned action in the legal system, in order to regulate the social reactions intended for juveniles between 14 and 17 years old.

This investigation is carried out with young offenders serving judicial sentences in detention centers in the Community of Madrid. The conceptual framework is based on the Andrews and Bonta model (2010), as the basis for the evaluation and rehabilitation of those juveniles, and, also, as the instrument to measure the delinquent risk level in order to alter the path (PREVI-A).  

Therefore, the purpose of this investigation is to analyze the initial level of delinquent risk – when

the juvenile starts to serve the sentence - and the final risk level - when the sentence ends – in the evaluation-intervention of the school/training area. The conclusions obtained will allow to advise professionals who work for the reeducation and reinsertion of young offenders.

The hypotheses for the investigation are:

H1. There are significant differences between the initial and final risk level, in favor of a decrease in the risk level of every indicator in the school/training area.

H2. There are significant differences between the initial and final risk level according to the number of monitoring tracks, in favor of a decrease in the risk level of every indicator in the school/training area.

This is a descriptive investigation of mean differences (Campbell & Stanley, 1963; Teo, 2013), oriented to determine the level of delinquent risk before and after the intervention in the school/training area, and the influence that the number of monitoring tracks has had in that risk level. PREVI-A (Intervention Prediction and Assessment – ARRMI) is the instrument that has made possible the analysis and monitoring of the young offender throughout his/her evaluation-intervention. It has been developed by the Agency for the Reeducation and Reinsertion of the Young Offender of the Community of Madrid (ARRMI) by an agreement with the Complutense University of Madrid, and directed by Graña et al. (2017). This instrument offers information about the delinquent behavior, how it happens and develops in time, to help adjust the programs of educational intervention that contribute to the reinsertion of the juvenile. It has 64 items distributed in six areas: legality, context and intervention, school/training, personal development, family integration, and social/interpersonal integration. Specifically, the school/training area includes seven indicators: interaction with teachers/superiors, self-interest for school/training activity, parent’s interest for juvenile’s school/training activity, perception of personal benefit from the school/training activity, school/training performance, school/training attendance, work habits and other skills development needed for appropriate competence in the school/training area. PREVI-A’s internal consistency has a Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of .97 The final score of all the areas indicates the delinquent risk of the youth: low risk (between 0 and 3), medium risk (between 40 and 79), and high risk (same as or higher than 80). Each item in the area is rated on a 0 – 3 scale (where 0 = no risk and 3 = high risk). Throughout the compliance of the judicial sentence, the professionals monitor the youth every three months, and the number of tracks varies depending on the judicial measure. The program used for the inferential statistical analysis is the SPSS, specifically the t-student test for two samples related to normality cases, the non-paramedic Wilcoxon test to evaluate the changes between the initial and final score, and the square chi test to evaluate the existing relationship between the monitoring tracks and the initial and final scores.

The final sample for investigation is 207 young offenders who have been evaluated with PREVI-A. They come from six Detention Centers for Executing Judicial Measures located in the Community of Madrid, which are managed by the Agency for the Reeducation and Reinsertion of Young Offenders. Out of the sample, 86.41% are men and 13.59% women, aged between 14 and 21 years old. The prevailing monitoring is at 6 months (26.57%), 9 months (21.74%), and, finally, 18 months (2.90%). The differential analysis shows the following results: H1. There are significant differences between the initial and final risk level in most indicators of the school/training area (p<0.001), in favor of a decrease in the risk level in school/training attendance (73.9%), school/training performance (66.2%), interaction with teachers/superiors (54.6%), self-interest for school/training activity (50.7%), school/training work habits (46.4%), and perception of personal benefit from the school/training activity (42%). In the parent’s interest for youth’s school/training activity, the indicator does not change (49%). H2. There are significant differences between the initial and final risk level according to the number of monitoring tracks, in most indicators of the school/training area, except for the interaction with teachers/superiors (p=0.518), school/training performance (p=0.168), and school/training attendance (p=0.27). These differences indicate that, as higher number of monitoring tracks, the risk level maintains or decreases, but it never increases. It may be concluded that the knowledge of the indicators in the school/training area that most promote withdrawal of delinquent behavior, allows adjustment of the intervention programs that are currently being conducted by the Agency for the Reeducation and Reinsertion of the Young Offender of the Community of Madrid (ARRMI).

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