Psychosocial Predictors of Clinicians Recommendations and Judges Placement Orders in a Juvenile Court

• NCJ Number: 224492
• Journal: Criminal Justice and Behavior Volume: 35 Issue: 11 Dated: November 2008 Pages: 1429-1448
• Author(s): Philip C. O'Donnell; Arthur J. Lurigio
• Date Published: November 2008
• Length: 20 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

Cases of 248 youth, ages 11-17 years old, adjudicated in the Cook County Juvenile Court (Chicago) were examined for the link between clinical recommendations for placement and judges’ sentencing decisions.

Abstract

The findings of this study support previous findings that judges are inclined to adopt clinical recommendations at the disposition phase, and it suggests that the material provided by comprehensive clinical evaluations could diminish the effects of offense-based or delinquency-based factors in dispositional planning. Clinicians’ recommendations alone explained more than half of the variance in judges’ decisions. The Externalizing Behaviors in forensic clinical assessment--a significant predictor for both clinicians and judges--included ratings of dangerousness to others, anger, control, and antisocial behavior. Among all the psychosocial variables measured, this was the single most relevant variable for disposition decisions; however, ratings of externalizing behaviors were unrelated to the severity of the current offense and only weakly related to the early onset of offending and prior offenses. This suggests that this factor was more clinical than legal in nature. Other significant predictors included family dysfunction, substance use and delinquency histories, and age at first offense. The dependent variables examined were clinicians’ recommendations for placement (community setting versus secure facility) included in their final reports and judges’ decisions about placement at sentencing. For each variable, one of four levels was possible, from least to most restrictive placement: community placement with outpatient services, community placement with multisystemic therapy, residential mental health or substance abuse treatment, and placement in the Department of Corrections. Data were obtained from archival records. 4 tables and 66 references