Violence Exposure, Continuous Trauma, and Repeat Offending in Female and Male Serious Adolescent Offenders, Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania and Maricopa County, Arizona, 2000-2010 (ICPSR 37623)

Version Date: Mar 25, 2021

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Principal Investigator(s):
Noni Gaylord-Harden, Loyola University Chicago

https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR37623.v1

Version V1

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Summary

A major goal of juvenile justice reform is to reduce reoffending and recidivism among juvenile offenders. Advocates of trauma informed practices assert that disproportionately high rates of violence exposure and trauma symptoms exacerbate the delinquent and violent behavior of juvenile offenders, but there is little evidence of the role of trauma in reoffending, particularly for the group of juvenile offenders that are at the highest risk for reoffending: serious offenders. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to conduct secondary data analysis on data from the Pathways to Desistance Study (Mulvey et al., 2004) to enhance understanding of how continuous trauma exposure and related symptoms impact reoffending in serious juvenile offenders. This study utilized secondary data analysis on six annual waves of data from the Pathways to Desistance study (Mulvey et al., 2004), a large multi-site, longitudinal study of adolescents who had committed a serious criminal offense.

The study followed juvenile offenders into adulthood. The current study analyzed youth self-report of demographic variables, community violence exposure, trauma-related symptoms, and violent offending, as well as official records of youth offending. Regression analysis, latent transition analysis, and survival analysis were used to examine the research questions and hypotheses.

Results showed that the majority of participants experienced continuous violence exposure as witnesses to community violence, with lower rates for victimization. Further, violence exposure and trauma-related symptoms (anxiety and hostility) co-occurred over time. Also, continuous violence exposure during adolescence predicted self-reported violent reoffending in early adulthood, even after controlling for demographic factors. Victimization significantly increased the risk for re-arrest. Further, this risk of re-offending was higher for male offenders than for female offenders. Finally, callous-unemotional traits and hostility mediated the relationship between continuous violence exposure and later violent offending.

In this study, data from the Pathways to Desistance study were analyzed using SPSS and Mplus software packages, and the syntax files used to analyze the data have been included. The Pathways to Desistance study datasets are archived at the University of Michigan Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), and the PI obtained the Pathways data from ICPSR.

Citation

Gaylord-Harden, Noni. Violence Exposure, Continuous Trauma, and Repeat Offending in Female and Male Serious Adolescent Offenders, Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania and Maricopa County, Arizona, 2000-2010. Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2021-03-25. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR37623.v1

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Funding

United States Department of Justice. Office of Justice Programs. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (2016-MU-MU-0067)

Subject Terms

Geographic Coverage

Distributor(s)

Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research
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Time Period(s)

2000-11-01 -- 2010-03-31

Date of Collection

2000-11-01 -- 2010-03-31 (Baseline interviews: November 2000 - March, 2003; follow-up interviews were completed 6, 12, 18, 24, 30, 36, 48, 60, 72 and 84 months past baseline interviews.)

Data Collection Notes

  1. For additional information on Violence Exposure, Continuous Trauma, and Repeat Offending in Female and Male Serious Adolescent Offenders, Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania and Maricopa County, Arizona, 2000-2010, please visit the Pathways to Desistance website.
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Study Purpose

The goal of juvenile justice reform is to reduce reoffending and recidivism among juvenile offenders (Seigle, Walsh and Weber, 2014). Reoffending rates average 30 percent to 60 percent, and in Illinois, 50 perecent of juvenile offenders are eventually re-incarcerated, thereby decimating their future opportunities for employment and education (Tsui, 2014). For all of the interest in reducing recidivism, there has been a lack of well-designed, prospective studies that target the group of juvenile offenders that are at the highest risk for reoffending--serious juvenile offenders (Mulvey et al., 2004). Serious offenders are more than twice as likely to reoffend than other juvenile offenders (Baglivio, Jackowski, Greenwald and Howell, 2014), and advocates of trauma informed practices assert that disproportionately high rates of violence exposure and trauma symptoms exacerbate the delinquent and violent behavior of juvenile offenders.

Therefore, the purpose of this study was to conduct secondary data analysis on data from the Pathways to Desistance Study (Mulvey et al., 2004) to enhance understanding of how continuous trauma exposure and related symptoms impact reoffending in serious juvenile offenders.

Study Design

The sample is comprised of participants in the Pathways to Desistance Study (Schubert et al., 2004), a comprehensive longitudinal study of serious adolescent offenders in Philadelphia and Phoenix. The multi-site study followed juvenile offenders as they moved through the juvenile justice system and into adulthood while evaluating developmental and psychosocial factors that may contribute to engagement in or resistance from antisocial behaviors. Youth were eligible for the study if they were between the ages of 14 and 17 and had been found guilty of a serious criminal offense. These criminal offenses were almost exclusively felonies, with a few exceptions for some misdemeanor property offenses, sexual assaults, or weapons offenses. Court records were reviewed to determine eligibility for enrollment. Enrollment of male drug offenders was intentionally limited and only comprised 15 percent of participants in order to prevent over-representation of this population. This cap did not apply to those adolescents transferred to the adult criminal system or to female offenders.

Sample

Youth were eligible for the study if they were between the ages of 14 and 17 and had been found guilty of a serious criminal offense. These criminal offenses were almost exclusively felonies, with a few exceptions for some misdemeanor property offenses, sexual assaults, or weapons offenses. Court records were reviewed to determine eligibility for enrollment. Enrollment of male drug offenders was intentionally limited and only comprised 15 percent of participants in order to prevent over-representation of this population.

This cap did not apply to those adolescents transferred to the adult criminal system or to female offenders. Recruitment occurred from November 2000 through January 2003 in the juvenile court system in Maricopa County (Phoenix), AZ, or Philadelphia County, PA; a total of 1,354 (48 percent from Maricopa and 52 percent from Philadelphia) youths were enrolled into the study.

Time Method

Longitudinal: Panel

Universe

Serious adolescent offenders between ages 14 and 18 convicted and found guilty of a serious offense (predominantly felony offenses).

Unit(s) of Observation

Individual

Data Type(s)

Mode of Data Collection

Response Rates

As reported in the final technical report for the Pathways to Desistance study, 1,354 adjudicated adolescents who were between the ages of 14 and 17 years at the time of their committing offense were recruited. At the time of enrollment, the study participation rate for the Pathways to Desistance Study, defined as the number of participants enrolled divided by the number attempted for enrollment, was 67 percent. The refusal rate, defined as the number of adolescents or parents who would not take part in the study divided by the number we approached, was 20 percent. The time-point retention rates indicated that Pathways interviewed an average of 90 percent of participants at each wave, with an average of 92 percent from the 6-month interview point to the 36-month interview point, and an average of 87 percent from the 48-month interview point to the 84-month interview point.

Presence of Common Scales

There is an extensive list of scales used in the Pathways to Desistance study. A list of scales used in the original data collection can be found on the Pathways to Desistance website.

The current study used the following scales from these data:

  • The Exposure to Violence Inventory (Selner-O'Hagan, Kindlon, Buka, Raudenbush, and Earls, 1998): This measure assesses the frequency and types of exposure to violent events the youth has both experienced and observed.
  • Dimensions of Organizational Functioning (Mulvey, Schubert and Odgers, 2010); Sanctioning Practices and Institutional Climate (adapted from Parent et al, 1994; Moos, 1997; and Fagan, 1998): These measures assess multiple dimensions of the institutional climate including sanctioning practices, safety, staff connectedness, and overall climate.
  • Children's Emotional Intensity Report (Walden, Harris, Weiss, and Catron, 1995): These 12 items are a subset of a larger scale and measure the adolescent's ability to regulate emotions on a 4-point Likert scale.
  • Emotionality Activity, Sociability and Impulsivity inventory (Buss and Plomin, 1984): This measure captures emotional reactivity in the form of anger or external manifestations of being upset.
  • The Youth Psychopathic Traits Inventory (Andershed, Kerr, Stattin and Levander, 2002): This is a self-report measure that assesses psychopathy among youth. The callousness and unemotionality subscales will be used.
  • Demographics Measure: This measure captures descriptive characteristics of the youth including age, race, gender, ethnicity, and family structure.
  • Official Record Information: Official record information regarding arrests and court involvement from juvenile and adult court record information systems.
  • Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI; Derogatis and Melisaratos, 1983): The Anxiety and Hostility subscales of BSI will be utilized to capture post traumatic stress responses.
  • Composite International Diagnostic Interview (CIDI; World Health Organization, 1990): The CIDI provides both lifetime and current diagnoses as defined by the DSM-IV and ICD-10.
  • Self-Reported Offending Scale (SRO; Huizinga, Esbensen, and Weihar, 1991): Official record information regarding arrests and court involvement from juvenile and adult court record information systems. The SRO uses 24 items to measure the adolescent's account of involvement in antisocial and illegal activities.

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    Original Release Date

    2021-03-25

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    Notes

    • The public-use data files in this collection are available for access by the general public. Access does not require affiliation with an ICPSR member institution.