Evaluation of Waiver Effects in Maryland, 1998-2000 (ICPSR 4077)
Version Date: Mar 4, 2005 View help for published
Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s)
Cindy J. Smith, University of Baltimore. Schaefer Center for Public Policy;
Kimberly S. Craig, University of Baltimore. Schaefer Center for Public Policy;
Sallie M. Brodus, University of Baltimore. Schaefer Center for Public Policy;
Cynthea Kimmelman, University of Baltimore. Schaefer Center for Public Policy
https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR04077.v1
Version V1
Summary View help for Summary
The purpose of this research was to assist policymakers in determining if the targeted youths affected by the waiver laws passed by the Maryland legislature in 1994 and 1998 were being processed as intended. The waiver laws were enacted to ensure that a youth who was unwilling to comply with treatment and/or committed a serious offense would have a serious consequence to his/her action and, therefore, would be processed in the adult system. As a result of the legislation, four pathways of court processing emerged which created four groups of youths to study: at-risk of waiver (not waived), waiver, legislative waiver, and reverse waver. A variety of data sources in both the juvenile and adult systems were triangulated to obtain the necessary information to accurately describe the youths involved. The triangulation of data from multiple file sources happened in a variety of formats (automated, hardcopy, and electronic files) from a variety of agencies to compare and contrast youths processed in the juvenile and adult systems. The five legislative criteria (age, mental and physical condition, amenability to treatment, crime seriousness, and public safety) plus extra-legal data were used as a framework to profile the youths in this study. Many of the variables chosen to explore each domain were included in previous studies. Other variables, such as those designed to operationalize mental health issues (not defined by the legislation) were chosen to extend the literature and to generate the most complete profile of youths processed in each system. The study includes variables pertinent to the five legislative criteria in addition to demographic and family information variables such as gender, race, and socioeconomic status, information on school expulsions, school suspensions, gang involvement, drug history, health, and hospitalization.
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Subject Terms View help for Subject Terms
Geographic Coverage View help for Geographic Coverage
Smallest Geographic Unit View help for Smallest Geographic Unit
None
Restrictions View help for Restrictions
Access to these data is restricted. Users interested in obtaining these data must complete a Restricted Data Use Agreement, specify the reasons for the request, and obtain IRB approval or notice of exemption for their research.
Distributor(s) View help for Distributor(s)
Time Period(s) View help for Time Period(s)
Date of Collection View help for Date of Collection
Study Purpose View help for Study Purpose
The purpose of this research was to assist policymakers in determining if the targeted youths affected by the waiver laws passed by the Maryland legislature in 1994 and 1998 were being processed as intended. The waiver laws not only affected the lives of youths but also changed the court of original jurisdiction to the adult court for 1,500 youths per year. The waiver laws were enacted to ensure that a youth who was unwilling to comply with treatment and/or committed a serious offense would have a serious consequence to his/her action and, therefore, would be processed in the adult system. This research project set out to pursue the following three objectives: (1) to develop prediction models of waiver by asking whether the decision to waive or reverse waive was based on the five legislative criteria for waiver and whether the waiver group could be predicted from the legislative criteria or whether there were other factors more predictive, (2) to create profiles of the youths in each waiver category by asking who was being waived in Maryland and what their characteristics were, and (3) to compare 1990-1992 overrepresentation results to 1998-1999 data for various decision points and extension into the adult system by asking whether the waiver further exacerbated an already disproportionate minority system.
Study Design View help for Study Design
As a result of the legislation, four pathways of court processing emerged which created four groups of youths to study: at-risk of waiver (not waived), waiver, legislative waiver, and reverse waiver. The at-risk and reverse waiver youths were processed in the juvenile justice system, and the waiver and legislative waiver youths were processed in the adult system. During 1998, 599 youths housed in Maryland's secure commitment facilities created the population of at-risk youths for this study. There were 1,200 legislatively waived youths, of whom only 66 could be identified by the Division of Corrections (DOC) because they were under 18 at the time of admission (October 1998 to March 1999). The reverse waiver group was randomly selected from those identified as being returned to the juvenile justice system. A variety of data sources in both the juvenile and adult systems were triangulated to obtain the necessary information to accurately describe the youths involved. The triangulation of data from multiple file sources happened in a variety of formats (automated data sets, hardcopy files, and electronic files) from a variety of agencies to compare and contrast youths processed in the juvenile and adult systems. Triangulation is the process of examining a phenomenon from varied perspectives to verify or support the findings of a study. For example, to determine if a youth had delinquent peers, it was not sufficient to read the Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) file and see if the case worker reported delinquent peers. Triangulation included reviewing the parental summary of the youth's activities in the home and reviewing the court files to determine if the youth had co-defendants. The five legislative criteria (age, mental and physical condition, amenability to treatment, crime seriousness, and public safety) plus extra-legal data were used as a framework to profile the youths in this study. Many of the variables chosen to explore each domain were included in previous studies. Other variables, such as those designed to operationalize mental health issues (not defined by the legislation), were chosen to extend the literature and to generate the most complete profile of youths processed in each system.
Sample View help for Sample
From the population of at-risk (N = 599), waived (N = 258), reverse waived (N = 282), and legislatively waived (N = approximately 1,200) Maryland youths, a disproportionate stratified sample of 298 youths processed in 1998 was selected. From lists provided by the Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ), a stratified disproportionate random sample of cases from counties that represented both rural and urban Maryland was extracted from the population resulting in at-risk (N = 69), waiver (N = 105), and reverse waiver (N = 72) youths. All files that could be readily located were included from the Maryland Department of Correction list (N = 52). As the manual file review progressed, it became evident that the waiver codes used in the DJJ automated data were incorrect. Therefore, the final sample sizes varied by as much as 47 percent error from the original sample sizes by category -- at-risk (N = 79), waived (N = 123), reverse waived (N = 38), and legislatively waived (N = 58) -- which demonstrates the necessity of triangulation to ensure that the results were accurate.
Universe View help for Universe
Urban and rural youths ages 12 to 19 processed in the Maryland court system in 1998.
Unit(s) of Observation View help for Unit(s) of Observation
Data Source View help for Data Source
Data were collected in a variety of formats (automated, hardcopy, and electronic) from a variety of agencies. Department of Juvenile Justice, Department of Probation and Parole, Baltimore City Jail, Division of Correction within the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services provided automated datasets, Department of Juvenile Justice, Division of Correction within the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services also provided hardcopy files. Baltimore City Juvenile Court, Baltimore City Adult Court, Prince George's Adult Court, Prince George's Adult Jail, and Montgomery County Adult Jail provided electronic files.
Data Type(s) View help for Data Type(s)
Description of Variables View help for Description of Variables
Variables pertinent to the five legislative criteria include age (at current offense/intake), mental condition (mention of prior psychological or psychiatric evaluations or commitments, notations of prior mental health counseling, the presence of relevant DSM [Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders] diagnoses, current or previous use of psychotropic medications, exposure to trauma, experiencing or witnessing serious injury, and information on suicide attempts), physical condition (birth complications, number of hospitalizations, and traumatic factors such as head injuries and loss of oxygen to the brain), amenability to treatment (gang involvement, a history of delinquent peers, employment history), crime seriousness (gun use in offense, total prior crimes including current), and public safety (safety risk). In addition, demographic and family information was also studied based on its pertinence to the waiver decision, such as gender, race, height, and weight information on each offender, rural versus urban environments, birthplace, socioeconomic status, family structure, the presence and absence of an adult male in the home, family support structure, familial criminal and drug abuse history information, special education needs, number of grades repeated, a history of attendance problems, expulsions, and/or suspensions.
Response Rates View help for Response Rates
Not applicable.
Presence of Common Scales View help for Presence of Common Scales
None.
HideOriginal Release Date View help for Original Release Date
2005-03-04
Version History View help for Version History
- Smith, Cindy J., Kimberly S. Craig, Sallie M. Brodus, and Cynthea Kimmelman. Evaluation of Waiver Effects in Maryland, 1998-2000 . ICPSR04077-v1. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2004. http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR04077.v1
2005-03-04 ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:
- Standardized missing values.
- Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.
Notes
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