NCJ Number
164323
Date Published
1996
Length
18 pages
Annotation
Research conducted in New York City focused on developing a system for release on recognizance by distinguishing between juveniles arraigned in adult court who would be likely to fail to appear from those who would not.
Abstract
Such a system was necessitated by the need to make release recommendations for juvenile offenders automatically brought to criminal courts for certain assaults, robberies, and homicides under the 1978 Juvenile Offender law. The research used a database created for an initiative to reduce reliance on secure detention. The database created a separate analytic record for each person upon each arrest. The analysis focused on those arrested from July 1991 through June 1992. The data were supplemented with information obtained from interview forms but not routinely maintained in the database. Predictive analysis was conducted using logistic regression techniques. Results revealed that the factors that were significant for juveniles differed to those for adults. The specified factors made intuitive sense for this younger group. School attendance and the defendant's sense of family involvement were predictive. Findings confirmed much of what has consistently been revealed in the literature regarding the causes of juvenile delinquency: much of what is predictive concerns the degree to which the youth is tied to conventional society through school, family, and friends. Tables, figure, and appended methodological information and tables