Aggression Replacement Training® (ART® )

Aggression Replacement Training® (ART®) is a multimodal psychoeducational intervention designed to alter the behavior of chronically aggressive adolescents and young children. The program incorporates three specific interventions: skill-streaming, anger-control training, and training in moral reasoning. Skill-streaming uses modeling, role-playing, performance feedback, and transfer training to teach prosocial skills. In anger-control training, participating youths must bring to each session one or more descriptions of recent anger-arousing experiences (hassles), and over the duration of the program they are trained in how to respond to their hassles. Training in moral reasoning is designed to enhance youths' sense of fairness and justice regarding the needs and rights of others and to train youths to imagine the perspectives of others when they confront various moral problem situations. ART® has been implemented in school, delinquency, and mental health settings.

The goal of ART® is to improve social skill competence, anger control, and moral reasoning.

The ART® program has been evaluated in numerous studies. The findings from the first two studies reveal ART® to be an effective intervention for incarcerated juvenile delinquents. It enhanced prosocial skill competency and overt prosocial behavior, reduced the level of rated impulsiveness, and--in one of the two samples studied--decreased (where possible) the frequency and intensity of acting-out behaviors and enhanced the participants' levels of moral reasoning.

The first study revealed that, compared with both control groups, youths who participated in the ART® program significantly acquired and transferred 4 of the 10 skill-streaming skills: expressing a complaint, preparing for a stressful conversation, responding to anger, and dealing with group pressure. Similarly significant ART®-versus-control-group comparisons emerged for the number and intensity of in-facility acting out and for staff-rated impulsiveness. During the 1-year follow-up, 54 youths were released from the facility. Of those released, 17 had received ART® and 37 had not. In four of the six areas rated--namely, home and family, peer, legal, and overall, but not school and work-ART®-- youths were rated significantly superior at in-community functioning than were youths who had not received ART®. Similar findings were reported in the second study.

In the third evaluation (the postrelease community-based study), results indicated that, though they did not differ significantly from one another, the two ART® groups each increased significantly in their overall interpersonal skill competence compared with the control youths. Perhaps more important, however, rearrest rates were tracked during the 3 months in which youths in the two intervention groups received the ART® program and during the 3 subsequent no-ART® months. Meaningful differences in favor of the two intervention groups were found. Youths in both of the ART® groups were rearrested less often than youths not receiving ART®. And the ART® youths-plus-family-members group did better than the ART® youths-only group.

The Washington State study found that when ART is delivered competently, the program reduces felony recidivism and is cost effective. For the five courts rated as not competent, the adjusted 18-month felony recidivism rate is 27 percent compared with 25 percent for the control group. This difference is not statistically significant. However, for the 21 courts rated as either competent or highly competent, the 18-month felony recidivism rate is 19 percent. This is a 24 percent reduction in felony recidivism compared with the control group, which is statistically significant. Moreover, the cost-benefit analysis demonstrates that when ART is delivered by competent courts, it generates $11.66 in benefits (avoided crime costs) for each $1.00 spent on the program. When not competently delivered, ART costs the taxpayer $3.10. Averaging these results for all youths receiving ART, regardless of court competence, results in a net savings of $6.71 per $1.00 of costs.