NCJ Number
191720
Journal
Criminal Justice and Behavior Volume: 28 Issue: 5 Dated: October 2001 Pages: 588-613
Date Published
October 2001
Length
26 pages
Annotation
This article presents a study on criminal recidivism of adolescents during adulthood.
Abstract
The two purposes of this study are to examine the relative effects of factors including criminal history, static factors, and dynamic needs on criminal recidivism of adolescents during adulthood; and the effect of composite scores on the Jesness Inventory and the Carlson Psychological Survey on adult recidivism prediction. The sample represents 90 percent of all serious offenders who went through the Serious Offender Program in the Arkansas Division of Youth Services (DYS) from 1993 to 1996. The Serious Offender Program provides residential and aftercare services for adjudicated male and female youth, aged 10 through 17 years, who are committed to DYS for serious violent offenses and for persistent offending. Residential services comprised an accredited educational program; vocational services; individual, group, and family counseling; a life skills curriculum; and work and physical education. The primary behavior change intervention is a cognitive restructuring curriculum that teaches individuals how to reexamine the thoughts, attitudes, comfort zones, and personal beliefs that have perpetuated their drug use, failures, and criminal activities. Didactic group counseling is a primary intervention used to teach adolescents to realize that they are responsible for their behavior and that they are making choices that bring certain consequences but can choose alternatives that lead to more desirable outcomes. The most important findings in the study are the significant odds of entering the correctional system for adults associated with certain predictors. The atypical finding that females are more likely to be recidivists than males is conceivable because the sample comprises adolescents who were placed in the only Serious Offender Program in the state. Females are not sent to the program unless they seem to be unmanageable in more traditional programs in Arkansas. The strongest predictors of criminal recidivism involve prior commitments to DYS and the age people initiated crime and illicit drug use. Use of denial and asocial and antisocial characteristics also are significantly related to recidivism. 5 tables, 79 references