Community Treatment Project

Description of the Project

California's Community Treatment Project (Phases 1 and 2) was a study funded by the National Institute of Mental Health that ran from 1961 to mid-1969. It examined the feasibility and effectiveness of substituting an intensive parole program for the standard state training program. Its subjects were 802 males and 212 females, mostly aged 13 through 18 at intake, who were undergoing their first commitment to the California Youth Authority (CYA). The CYA, a large state agency, is the placement of last resort for serious and/or repeat offenders.

[Page 70]The study took place in Sacramento and Stockton (which together form a region the study calls the Valley) from 1961 to 1969, and in San Francisco from 1965 to 1969. Sixty-five percent of the males and 83 percent of the females who were committed to the CYA from those areas were included in the study; they were the “eligible” cases. The rest, mainly seriously assaultive cases, were excluded. Chronic or severe neuroses, occasional psychotic episodes, apparent suicidal tendencies, marked drug involvement, homosexuality, and other conditions were not grounds for exclusion. On average, the eligible cases had six official contacts with the law by the time they were sent to the CYA. In the Valley, their race or ethnicity was 57 percent Caucasian, 18 percent black, 20 percent Hispanic, and 4 percent “other”; in San Francisco, the breakdown was 25 percent, 65 percent, 4 percent, and 6 percent, respectively.

The study's intensive program was called the Community Treatment Project (CTP), although the entire study is popularly referred to by the same name. Each CTP youth was assigned directly to a small-sized caseload, 11 or 12 youths per parole agent, located in the youth's community. The youth was not sent to an institution first. Before assignment, the youth was classified (“typed”) in terms of a system known as I-Level (for integration, or maturity, level), and the caseload to which each male was assigned contained mainly those “types” of youth, usually about two, with whom the parole agent seemed best suited to work (“matched”). Each CTP parole unit—that is, the intensive programs in the Valley and San Francisco—contained one female and six male caseloads. In contrast to CTP, the study's standard program usually began with the youth's approximately nine months' stay in a large, secure CYA institution. This was followed by his or her assignment to standard, nonintensive parole within the youth's community. Caseloads for the standard program averaged about 70 youths per parole agent, assignments were not based on I-Level type, and, agent/youth matches occurred only by chance. CTP and standard parole were both part of the CYA, they were located in different parts of each given city, and each often lasted two or more years.

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