Sociology professor Judy Van Wyk has been helping troubled teenagers get on the right path for years. Her conclusion: Some teens do better in a residential facility.

She explores that finding and more in a new book, Turning the Tide of Male Juvenile Delinquency: The Ocean Tides Approach, co-written with Lawrence Grebstein, professor emeritus of psychology at URI.

The book is an exhaustive study of Ocean Tides, a residential facility for boys in Narragansett, R.I. The professors collected information from teens who lived at the school from its opening in 1975 through 2006. Most of the teens are on probation or have been at the Rhode Island Training School, a state prison for juveniles.

Why is a place like Ocean Tides important?

Ocean Tides provides a systems approach to care and rehabilitation—targeting the boy’s needs and the family’s needs, while keeping society safe through that transition. Prison or in-home care cannot do all that.

What is our responsibility to help these young people?

This is a good question because rehabilitating juvenile offenders is not just about the boys. It’s about creating a safer, more stable and productive society. It’s also not just about the costs that untreated juvenile offenders transmit to society as they age through the criminal justice and mental health systems. These boys are not useless; they have good things to contribute to society.

What leads to violent behavior among teens?

Violence is one way to relieve strain. Most of us don’t act violently because we have the social skills and resources to relieve strain in other, more legitimate ways. For some people, violence is a more viable option.

How important is family life in raising a healthy adult?

Family is the most important influence on a young child’s life. Once they hit adolescence, they are more strongly influenced by peers, but a boy who suffers from a weak family life is only going to have friends who have also suffered from the same problem. It’s a snowball.

Is R.I. doing enough to help troubled teens?

The state is following national trends. For decades, the prevailing philosophy in juvenile justice was to lock them all up. That didn’t work. Now the federal government wants to keep them at home and provide mental health care and counseling to families instead. That’s not a bad plan, since we know that prison actually increases criminality. The problem is that for about half of the boys in the criminal justice system, their families are a worse influence on their behavior than prison is.

Is it expensive to send youths to the Training School?

It is about one third the price to send a boy to a program like Ocean Tides for a year than it is to incarcerate him in a youth prison.

Tell us about your upcoming research.

The first project produced a database of information on the boys who entered the Ocean Tides program from 1975 through 2006. That year, R.I. implemented massive changes in the allocation of funding that affected residential programs. Ocean Tides had to close all but one of its extension houses, and boys no longer spend a full year, only three months. Under a new federal grant, I will collect data on the boys who have entered the program since 2006 (541 new cases added to the existing database of 1,585 cases) to track changes in outcome under the new policy.