After decades of rigorous study in the United States and across the Western world, a great deal is known about the early risk factors for offending. High impulsiveness, low attainment, criminal ...parents, parental conflict, and growing up in a deprived, high-crime neighborhood are among the most important factors. There is also a growing body of high quality scientific evidence on the effectiveness of early prevention programs designed to prevent children from embarking on a life of crime. Drawing on the latest evidence, this is the first book to assess the early causes of offending and what works best to prevent it. Preschool intellectual enrichment, child skills training, parent management training, and home visiting programs are among the most effective early prevention programs. The authors of this book, who are both criminologists, outline a policy strategy—early prevention—that uses this current research knowledge and brings into sharper focus what America's national crime fighting priority ought to be. At a time when unacceptable crime levels in America, rising criminal justice costs, and a punitive crime policy have spurred a growing interest in the early prevention of delinquency, the book lays the groundwork for change with a comprehensive national prevention strategy to save children from a life of crime.
In the past two decades, many prevention and suppression programs have been initiated on a national and local level to combat street gangs—but what do we really know about them? Why do youths join ...them? Why do they proliferate? This book is a crucial update and critical examination of our understanding of gangs and major gang-control programs across the nation. Often perceived solely as an urban issue, street gangs are also a suburban and rural dilemma. The chapters focus on gang proliferation, migration, and crime patterns, and highlight known risk factors that lead youths to form and join gangs within communities. Dispelling the long-standing assumptions that the public, the media, and law enforcement have about street gangs, they present a comprehensive overview of how gangs are organized and structured. They assess the major gang programs across the nation and argue that existing prevention, intervention, and suppression methods targeting individuals, groups, and communities, have been largely ineffective. They then close by offering valuable policy guidelines for practitioners on how to intervene and control gangs more successfully. The book fills an important gap in the literature on street gangs and social control.
Too many juvenile delinquents persist in their offending into adulthood. They constitute a major burden for individual victims, for businesses and the justice system, all contributing to the total ...cost of crime for society. Focusing on the transition between juvenile offending and adult crime, this book examines research based on Dutch, European and North-American studies on the persistence and discontinuity of offending between late adolescence and early adulthood. Presenting empirical studies showing why persistence or discontinuity take place, the book provides up-to-date information on preventive and remedial interventions to promote discontinuity of offending amongst young adults. From the same team who produced 'Tomorrow's Criminals', this book will be a valuable resource for criminologists, criminal justice professionals, psychologists, sociologists, and psychiatrists interested in juvenile and young adult offenders, as well as those interested in what makes career criminals and youth who reform.
Psychiatric disorder prevalence has been shown demonstrably higher among justice-involved adolescents than youth in the general population. Yet, among arrested juveniles, little is known regarding ...racial/ethnic differences in disorder prevalence, the role of trauma exposure in the diagnosis of behavioral disorders, or subsequent psychiatric treatment provided to adolescents with such diagnoses. The current study examines racial/ethnic disparity in psychiatric diagnoses and treatment of behavioral disorders associated with delinquency, controlling for traumatic experiences, behavioral indicators, and prior offending among serious juvenile offenders. Logistic regression is employed to explore the racial/ethnic disproportionality in behavioral disorder diagnoses and psychiatric treatment provision among 8763 males (57.7 % Black, 11.8 % Hispanic) and 1,347 females (53.7 % Black, 7.6 % Hispanic) admitted to long-term juvenile justice residential placements in Florida. The results indicate Black males are 40 % more likely, and Black females 54 % more likely to be diagnosed with conduct disorder than Whites, even upon considerations of trauma, behavioral indicators, and criminal offending. Black and Hispanic males are approximately 40 % less likely to be diagnosed with ADHD than White males, with no racial/ethnic differences for females. Importantly, Black males are 32 % less likely to receive psychiatric treatment than White males, with no differences between White and Hispanic males, or any female subgroups. Traumatic exposures increased the odds of oppositional defiant disorder and ADHD, but not conduct disorder for males, though adverse childhood experiences were unrelated to behavioral disorder diagnoses among females.
Iatrogenic effect of juvenile justice Gatti, Uberto; Tremblay, Richard E.; Vitaro, Frank
Journal of child psychology and psychiatry,
August 2009, Volume:
50, Issue:
8
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Background: The present study uses data from a community sample of 779 low‐SES boys to investigate whether intervention by the juvenile justice system is determined, at least in part, by particular ...individual, familial and social conditions, and whether intervention by the juvenile courts during adolescence increases involvement in adult crime.
Method: The study considers self‐reported crime in childhood and adolescence, and introduces individual, familial and social variables into its analysis.
Results: The results show that youths who are poor, impulsive, poorly supervised by their parents, and exposed to deviant friends are more likely, for the same degree of antisocial behavior, to undergo intervention by the Juvenile Court, and that this intervention greatly increases the likelihood of involvement with the penal system in adulthood. The results also show that the various measures recommended by the Juvenile Court exert a differential criminogenic effect; those that involve placement have the most negative impact.
Growing suspension rates predict major negative life outcomes, including adult incarceration and unemployment. Experiment 1 tested whether teachers (n = 39) could be encouraged to adopt an empathic ...rather than punitive mindset about discipline—to value students’ perspectives and sustain positive relationships while encouraging better behavior. Experiment 2 tested whether an empathic response to misbehavior would sustain students’ (n = 302) respect for teachers and motivation to behave well in class. These hypotheses were confirmed. Finally, a randomized field experiment tested a brief, online intervention to encourage teachers to adopt an empathic mindset about discipline. Evaluated at five middle schools in three districts (N
teachers = 31; N
students = 1,682), this intervention halved year-long student suspension rates from 9.6% to 4.8%. It also bolstered respect the most at-risk students, previously suspended students, perceived from teachers. Teachers’ mindsets about discipline directly affect the quality of teacher–student relationships and student suspensions and, moreover, can be changed through scalable intervention.
Although research has oft-documented a maltreatment–delinquency link, the effect of involvement in—and timing of—child welfare system involvement on offending has received less attention. We examine ...whether the timing of child welfare involvement has differential effects on recidivism of deep-end juvenile offenders (youth who have been adjudicated delinquent by the court and placed in juvenile justice residential programs). The current study uses a large, diverse sample of 12,955 youth completing juvenile justice residential programs between 1 January 2010 and 30 June 2013 in Florida (13 % female, 55 % Black, 11 % Hispanic). Additionally, we explore the direct effects of childhood traumatic events on delinquency, as well as their indirect effects through child welfare involvement using structural equation modeling. The findings indicate that adverse childhood experiences fail to exert a direct effect on recidivism, but do exhibit a significant indirect effect on recidivism through child welfare involvement, which is itself associated with recidivism. This means that while having exposures to more types of childhood traumatic events does not, in and of itself, increase the likelihood of re-offending, effects of such experiences operate through child welfare placement. Differences in the effects of maltreatment timing and of adverse childhood experiences are observed across sex and race/ethnicity subgroups. Across all racial subgroups, exposures to adverse childhood experiences have a significant effect on the likelihood of child welfare placement, yet child welfare placement exerts a significant effect on recidivism for White and Hispanic youth, but not for Black youth. Only Hispanic female and White male youth with overlapping child welfare and juvenile justice cases (open cases in both systems at the same time during the study period) were more likely to recidivate than their delinquent-only counterpart youth. Crossover status (child welfare and juvenile justice involvement, whether prior or open cases) was essentially irrelevant with respect to the re-offending of Black youth completing juvenile justice residential programs. The findings indicate the effects of exposure to adverse childhood experiences, and child welfare system and juvenile justice system involvement on re-offending are not uniform across subgroups of youth but that earlier child welfare involvement is more detrimental than concurrent child welfare system involvement when it does matter.
Psychiatric disorders and comorbidity are prevalent among incarcerated juveniles. To date, no large-scale study has examined the comorbidity and continuity of psychiatric disorders after youth leave ...detention.
To determine the comorbidity and continuity of psychiatric disorders among youth 5 years after detention.
Prospective longitudinal study of a stratified random sample of 1829 youth (1172 male and 657 female; 1005 African American, 296 non-Hispanic white, 524 Hispanic, and 4 other race/ethnicity) recruited from the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center, Chicago, Illinois, between November 20, 1995, and June 14, 1998, and who received their time 2 follow-up interview between May 22, 2000, and April 3, 2004.
At baseline, the Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Children Version 2.3. At follow-ups, the Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Children Version IV (child and young adult versions) and the Diagnostic Interview Schedule Version IV (substance use disorders and antisocial personality disorder).
Five years after detention, when participants were 14 to 24 years old, almost 27% of males and 14% of females had comorbid psychiatric disorders. Although females had significantly higher rates of comorbidity when in detention (odds ratio, 1.3; 95% CI, 1.0-1.7), males had significantly higher rates than females at follow-up (odds ratio, 2.3; 95% CI, 1.6-3.3). Substance use plus behavioral disorders was the most common comorbid profile among males, affecting 1 in 6. Participants with more disorders at baseline were more likely to have a disorder approximately 5 years after detention, even after adjusting for demographic characteristics. We found substantial continuity of disorder. However, some baseline disorders predicted alcohol and drug use disorders at follow-up.
Although prevalence rates of comorbidity decreased in youth after detention, rates remained substantial and were higher than rates in the most comparable studies of the general population. Youth with multiple disorders at baseline are at highest risk for disorder 5 years later. Because many psychiatric disorders first appear in childhood and adolescence, primary and secondary prevention of psychiatric disorders offers the greatest opportunity to reduce costs to individuals, families, and society. Only a concerted effort to address the many needs of delinquent youth will help them thrive in adulthood.
Mental Illness and Juvenile Offenders Underwood, Lee A; Washington, Aryssa
International journal of environmental research and public health,
02/2016, Volume:
13, Issue:
2
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Within the past decade, reliance on the juvenile justice system to meet the needs of juvenile offenders with mental health concerns has increased. Due to this tendency, research has been conducted on ...the effectiveness of various intervention and treatment programs/approaches with varied success. Recent literature suggests that because of interrelated problems involved for youth in the juvenile justice system with mental health issues, a dynamic system of care that extends beyond mere treatment within the juvenile justice system is the most promising. The authors provide a brief overview of the extent to which delinquency and mental illness co-occur; why treatment for these individuals requires a system of care; intervention models; and the juvenile justice systems role in providing mental health services to delinquent youth. Current and future advancements and implications for practitioners are provided.
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