Stuck in the System: Which Youths Are Most Likely to Be Rearrested as Adults?

As law enforcement policies have come under scrutiny in the past few years, the media has paid more attention to crime and incarceration in the US. Last month, President Obama visited a federal prison, continuing the conversation about the effectiveness of the nation’s criminal justice system. Other conversations have centered around the ethics of using predictive characteristics to preemptively measure likelihood of recidivism.

Many of these debates focus on the adult system, but a current study seeks to connect this analysis to the juvenile justice system by exploring predictive factors behind the rearrest of juvenile offenders later in life. Washington State University researcher Kimberly Rhoades and her colleagues look at variables that may predict which juveniles are more likely to enter the adult system and whether these characteristics differ by gender.

Researchers conducted a randomized control trial with youths who each had at least one juvenile justice system referral and who had been mandated to receive out-of-home care. Judges helped to recruit and refer participants who were then randomly assigned to either Multidimensional Treatment Foster Care (MTFC), which are placements with foster parents who have been trained in evidence-based parenting, or standard, state-run group care.

The final sample comprised 61 boys and 81 girls from the state of Oregon. Within this sample, boys were more likely to come from homes with annual household incomes below $10,000, relative to girls. This may be one source of imbalance between the two groups, but there were no other statistically significant differences between boys and girls within the sample. The researchers calculated the length of time between each participant’s eighteenth birthday and his or her first felony arrest. In Oregon, a felony arrest is a crime that typically entails at least one year in prison.

The eight risk variables that researchers examined most closely were juvenile felony, physical abuse, sexual abuse, family violence, parental record of crime conviction, parental divorce, serious alcohol and drug use, and out-of-home placement. The researchers considered the effects of these variables both individually and collectively.

Researchers found that 95 percent of men and 67 percent of women in the study had at least one adult arrest. They also found that men were twice as likely as women to be arrested for a felony as an adult. The median time between participants’ eighteenth birthdays and their first arrests was 171 days for men and 1,365 days for women.

For men in the study, each additional juvenile referral corresponded to an increase in the likelihood of adult arrest by about nine percent, and the likelihood of an adult felony arrest by eight percent. The number of juvenile referrals was the only statistically significant predictor of adult arrest for male offenders.

For women, parental divorce, family violence, and cumulative risk were all significant predictors of juveniles being rearrested as adults. Girls in the juvenile system who had experienced parental divorce were 2.8 times likelier to be rearrested as adults, and those who had experienced family violence were about 2.5 times likelier to be rearrested as adults. For the women, each additional childhood risk factor increased the likelihood of adult arrest by 21 percent.

Timing is a significant limitation of the analysis of these results. Data for the two genders were drawn from different time periods: boys were recruited from 1991 to 1995, and girls from 1997 to 2006. Though the separate gender samples were found to share background characteristics, there may have been time factors that were not fully considered. Even if this means that the prevalence of risk factors was different between the groups, this limitation does not hinder the outcome in which researchers were primarily interested: the predictive ability of particular risk factors. One other limitation is the fact that the study took place entirely in Oregon. As a result, generalizability of these results may be difficult.

The results of this study reveal gender differences in the impact juvenile arrests may have on adult arrests. For girls in the criminal justice system, this research highlights the impact that trauma resulting from family relationships can have. Addressing family violence in rehabilitation programs, or court-mandated therapeutic programs, may be particularly important for young women. Recognizing the high risk that these childhood experiences carry should also inform youth counseling services.

For both girls and boys arrested at young ages, being able to better understand risk factors could help make interventions more effective.

Article Source: Predicting the transition from juvenile delinquency to adult criminality: Gender-specific influences in two high-risk samples. Rhoades, K. A., Leve, L. D., Eddy, J. M., and Chamberlain, P., Criminal Behavior and Mental Health, 2015.

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