Tracing prospective profiles of juvenile delinquency and non-delinquency: An optimal classification tree analysis (original) (raw)

Do adolescent drug users fare the worst? Onset type, juvenile delinquency, and criminal careers

International journal of offender therapy and comparative criminology, 2015

Although substance abuse often accompanies delinquency and other forms of antisocial behavior, there is less scholarly agreement about the timing of substance use vis-à-vis an individual's antisocial trajectory. Similarly, although there is extraordinary evidence that onset is inversely related to the severity of the criminal career, there is surprisingly little research on the offense type of onset or the type of antisocial behavior that was displayed when an individual initiated his or her offending career. Drawing on data from a sample of serious adult criminal offenders (N = 500), the current study examined 12 forms of juvenile delinquency (murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny, auto theft, arson, weapons, sexual offense, drug sales, and drug use) in addition to age at arrest onset, age, sex, race to explore their association with chronicity (total arrests), extreme chronicity (1 SD above the mean which was equivalent to 90 career arrests), and lambda (offending per year). The only onset offense type that was significantly associated with all criminal career outcomes was juvenile drug use. Additional research on the offense type of delinquent onset is needed to understand launching points of serious antisocial careers.

Tests of three hypotheses regarding the predictors of delinquency

Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 1994

Three hypotheses regarding the predictors of criminal activity in children and adolescents were assessed. These dealt with family, peer, and attitudinal variables, and they were explored in relation to indices based on seriousness of criminal activity and reoffending. The data were based on a sample of 338 youths who had been convicted of crimes and received probation or custody dispositions. The results provided general support for a model implicating family, peer, and attitudinal variables in youthful criminal activity. They did not, however, provide support for hypothesized interactions between family relationship and family structuring dimensions or between family relationship and peer association variables. The results did support an hypothesis regarding the independent contribution of an antisocial attitudes variable to the prediction of criminal activity.

The three latent classes of adolescent delinquency and the risk factors for membership in each class

This study used latent class analysis to examine subpopulation membership based on self-reports of delinquent behaviors obtained from Australian youth. Three discrete identifiable classes were derived based on 51 indicators of physical violence, property damage, minor infractions, drug use, and social delinquency. One class of youth engaged in primarily rule breaking and norm violations including underage alcohol use, typical of this age period. A second class was more actively delinquent emphasizing drug use, trespassing, and various forms of disobedience. A third class of highly delinquent youth differed from their counterparts by endorsing drug use, thievery that involved stealing money, goods, and cars, property damage, gambling, precocious sexual experiences, involvement with pornographic materials, and fighting. Multinomial logistic regression predicting class membership indicated highly delinquent youth were more likely to be older males, use venting coping strategies, and be fun or novelty seeking compared with rule breakers. Findings are discussed in terms of refining current taxonomic arguments regarding the structure of delinquency and implications for prevention of early-stage antisocial behavior. Aggr. Behav. 37:19-35, 2011.

The Prediction of Criminal Recidivism in Juveniles

2004

368 CRIMINAL JUSTICE AND BEHAVIOR 1998, accounted for 18% of all persons arrested in 1998, and are among the fastest growing groups of offenders (FBI, 1998). The per-centage of offenses committed by children and adolescents increased by 24% from 1989 to 1998, ...

The longitudinal association between substance use and delinquency among high-risk youth

Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 2008

Over the past two decades, studies have provided evidence for the strong link between substance use (SU) and delinquency among adolescents. However, the dynamics of this relationship and its temporal ordering remain unclear. The current study used four waves of data collected from high-risk youth over a 12-month period to examine the temporal association between SU and delinquency. Youth (n = 449) were recruited from the Los Angeles juvenile probation system. The majority of the sample was male (87%), with 43% Hispanic, 16% White, 15% African American, and 26% of participants describing themselves as some other ethnicity. We estimated a series of cross-lagged path models using maximum likelihood estimation and controlled for gender, age, ethnicity, and time spent in a controlled environment during the study period. We estimated models examining the cross-lagged association between SU and drug-related crime, interpersonal crime, and property crime. The temporal relationship between SU and delinquency was similar across the three types of crime, thus we estimated a fourth model examining the relationship between SU and a latent delinquency variable indicated by the three crime scales. Findings indicated that the relationship between SU and delinquency was reciprocal at each time point, suggesting that the reciprocal effects of SU and delinquency appear to be fairly stable over time.

A Classification of High-Risk Youths

Crime & Delinquency, 2003

abuse treatment history. The findings indicate the youths were experiencing overlapping delinquency, alcohol/other drug use, and emotional/psychological problems. The cooccurrence of these problems among youths entering the juvenile justice system extends findings of their co-occurrence reported in studies of incarcerated youths.

Investigating the long-term influence of adolescent delinquency on drug use initiation

Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 2008

Prior research has found a positive relationship between delinquency and early onset of drug use. However, little is known about the influence of delinquency on drug initiation through midadulthood. This paper investigates the long-term relationship between serious adolescent delinquency and the onset of marijuana and cocaine use among an epidemiologically-defined community sample of African American males and females followed from first grade through age 42. Using propensity score methods we match individuals on several etiological variables that may explain both delinquency and drug use in an attempt to examine the extent to which there may be a causal link between delinquency and drug use initiation. Through a comparison of survival curves on the unmatched and matched samples of serious delinquents and non-serious delinquents, we find that serious adolescent delinquency has at least some causal influence on drug use initiation that extends into mid-life. We discuss how these results can inform future research and delinquency and drug prevention and intervention initiatives.

Exploring Long-Term and Short-Term Risk Factors for Serious Delinquency

European Journal of Criminology, 2009

Scholars in the field of developmental criminology traditionally assign a major role to long-term risk factors such as inadequate parental supervision or poor school performance. Only recently has attention been paid to the effects of situational risk factors such as the presence of co-offenders and being drunk. Hardly any empirical research, however, integrates both long-term and short-term risk factors. We formulated hypotheses derived from the Integrated Cognitive Antisocial Potential theory (Farrington 2005) with regard to long-term and shortterm risk factors for serious delinquency, and tested these hypotheses using data from the WODC Youth Delinquency Survey (data sweep 2005) of 292 juvenile delinquents. The findings indicate that serious delinquency is related not only to (an accumulation of) long-term risk factors, but also to situational factors, such as lack of tangible guardians and having used substances (alcohol or drugs) prior to the offence.

PREDICTORS OF JUVENILE DELINQUENCY

Indian Journal of Psychological Science, 2017

Newspapers are full of villainies of adolescents. The multiplicity of adolescent wrongdoings has thus, instigated a need to conduct the present investigation. Abundant literary review in terms of definitions, causal factors and predictors of juvenile delinquency is found present. However, it lacks clarity in terms of listing elements defining delinquency and discerning appropriate predictors leading to this phenomenon. This lack of clarity can result in the misuse of our already limited resources to prevent delinquency. Therefore, Firstly, the paper aims to identify common elements of delinquency across various definitions, so that these extractions can be utilized heuristically. Secondly, it attempts to elucidate theoretically the predictors of juvenile delinquency. Behavior is seen as a complex blend of continuities and discontinuities. Since continuities (gradual behavioral changes) appear over a longer span of time as compared to discontinuities (sudden behavioral changes), they are regarded as better predictors to deviant behavior. Emotional reactivity and regulation, disturbed family atmosphere, cultural disparities and environmental attributes are all potential predictors for such transgression, elaborated in depth in the current investigation. Lastly, the paper suggests certain procedures which can be utilized especially in the Indian setup so as to bring a decline in this growing rate of felony.