The impact of modes of administration on self-reports of offending: evidence from a methodological experiment with university students.

Objectives: Current knowledge about the causes of offending behavior is heavily reliant on self-reports of offending (SRO). However, methodological research on the impact of modes of administration on SRO is very scarce. Further, the existing evidence conflicts with the general knowledge about responding to sensitive questions. In this study, we aimed to test whether SRO are affected by modes of administration. Methods: We carried out a methodological experiment, with a 2 (interviewer-administered vs. self-administered surveys) × 2 (paper-and-pencil vs. computer- assisted surveys) factorial design. A total of 181 undergraduate students were randomly assigned to one of these conditions and completed the International Self-Report Delinquency 3 (ISRD3) questionnaire. Results: Findings showed an increased odds of reporting offending behavior in self-administered surveys, compared to face-to-face interviews. Paper-and-pencil and computer-assisted modes resulted in comparable estimates of offending. Conclusions: This experiment provides evidence that SRO provide more accurate estimates of offending behavior using self-administered surveys.

Are Late Bloomers Real? Identification and Comparison of Late-Onset Offending Patterns from Ages 14-40.

Numerous studies have identified a late-onset pattern of offending, yet debate remains over whether this pattern is real or attributable to measurement error. The goal of the present study is to identify whether this late-onset trajectory exists. We used prospective longitudinal data from the Rochester Youth Development Study and group-based trajectory modeling to identify distinct developmental patterns in self-reported incidence of general delinquency from approximately ages 14 to age 31. We then examined and compared the means of general, violent, street, and property offending for individuals belonging to late bloomer, chronic, and low-level offending trajectories across three periods: 1) pre-onset (ages 14-17), 2) post-onset (ages 29-31), and, 3) for a subset of participants participating in a follow-up study, post-trajectory (ages 32-40). Results confirmed the existence of a distinct late bloomers offending trajectory characterized by low rates of delinquency throughout adolescence and high levels throughout adulthood. Furthermore, late bloomers had similar mean levels of delinquency as low-level offenders and that were considerably lower than chronic offenders in the pre-onset period and similar means of offending as chronic offenders that were considerably higher than low-level offenders in the post-onset and post-trajectory periods. Comparisons of these three groups on adolescent risk and protective factors indicated that late bloomers were more similar to individuals in the low-level trajectory and had fewer risk and more protective factors than individuals following a chronic trajectory. Contrary to prior work which attributes late-onset offending to reliance on official data which fails to detect adolescent offending, late bloomer offending appears to be a genuine phenomenon. These results lend greater support to dynamic theories of crime.

Does it matter if those who matter don't mind? Effects of gang versus delinquent peer group membership on labeling processes.

Despite renewed interests in the labeling perspective and the impact of official intervention on individuals' future outcomes, scant attention has been given to potential conditioning factors for theorized labeling processes. We argue that, when viewed through a symbolic interactionist lens, variations in the nature of primary social groups, through which individuals filter official labels like arrest, may generate patterns for subsequent self-concept and delinquency that are contrary to what labeling theory indicates. To test our rationale, we offer a moderated mediation model in which gang membership is expected to differentially impact the effect of arrest on future delinquency through an intermediary mechanism: self-esteem. We test a gang-nongang dichotomy and then probe further to test whether hypothesized effects are gang specific or occur similarly for nongang youths with highly delinquent peer groups. Analyzed using Rochester Youth Development Study (RYDS) data (N = 961), comparisons between gang members and nonaffiliated youths with similarly highly delinquent peer groups revealed no significant differences in conditional indirect effects of arrest on self-esteem and future delinquency; the two groups were similarly insulated from any negative impact of arrest on self-esteem. For nongang youths with fewer delinquent peers, however, arrest significantly reduced later self-esteem, which in turn increased their future delinquency.

The Effects of Parental School Exclusion on Offspring Drug Use: An Intergenerational Path Analysis.

PURPOSE: To determine whether and how exclusionary school punishment experienced by parents affects the drug use of their offspring. METHODS: Using panel data of 360 parent-child dyads from the Rochester Youth Developmental Study and its intergenerational component, the Rochester Intergenerational Study, we conduct path analysis to evaluate the adequacy of a theoretical model that explicates the intergenerational pathways from parental school exclusion to offspring drug use. RESULTS: Parents who were suspended or expelled during adolescence are more likely to drop out of school, which, in turn, leads to parental adult drug use, economic hardship, and ineffective parenting of their children. As a result, their offspring are likely to hold attitudes/beliefs favoring drug use and have reduced bonding to school, which, ultimately, contribute to offspring drug use. CONCLUSIONS: Exclusionary school disciplinary practices not only result in a number of adverse collateral consequences within one generation of respondents, the negative effects of such experiences are also felt by the next generation. Therefore, exclusionary school punishment should only be used as a last resort. Whenever possible, disciplinary practices in school need to involve inclusionary efforts to re-integrate students into the larger school community.

It's F**ing Chaos: COVID-19's Impact on Juvenile Delinquency and Juvenile Justice.

An early examination of the impact of COVID-19 on juvenile delinquency and juvenile justice in America, this review provides initial scholarship to rapidly evolving areas of research. Our appraisals of these topics are made after nearly 2 months of national COVID-19 mitigation measures, like social distancing and limited "non-essential" movement outside the home but also as states are gradually lifting stricter directives and reopening economic sectors. We consider the impact of these pandemic-related changes on twenty-first century youths, their behaviors, and their separate justice system. To forecast the immediate future, we draw from decades of research on juvenile delinquency and the justice system, as well as from reported patterns of reactions and responses to an unprecedented and ongoing situation. As post-pandemic studies on juvenile delinquency and juvenile justice proliferate, we urge careful consideration as to how they might influence societal and the system responses to youths' delinquency. Additional practical implications are discussed.

Sent Home versus Being Arrested: The Relative Influence of School and Police Intervention on Drug Use.

Prior research has demonstrated that school disciplinary practices lead to juvenile justice intervention or the "school-to-prison pipeline" and that juvenile justice intervention leads to adversities, including drug-using behavior, in adolescence and adult life. Yet, it is not clear which form of official intervention, school suspension and expulsion or police arrest, is more predictive of drug use among young people. Using data from the Rochester Youth Developmental Study, we examined both the immediate, concurrent influence of school and police intervention on drug use during adolescence and the long-term, cumulative impact of school and police intervention during adolescence on subsequent drug use in young established adulthood. The results indicate that school exclusionary practices appeared to be more predictive of drug use than police arrest during both adolescence and young adulthood. Additionally, such negative effects mainly exhibited among minority subjects, and the effects by gender appeared contingent on developmental stages.

Criminal Justice Contact Across Generations: Assessing the intergenerational Labeling Hypothesis.

PURPOSE: The present study assesses the intergenerational labeling hypothesis and examines whether the relationship between a child's involuntary contact with the police and subsequent offending depends on parental arrest history (and its timing in the life course of the child) and parent sex. METHODS: Using data from 312 parent-child dyads from the Rochester Youth Development Study and Rochester Intergenerational Study, generalized linear regression models estimate the main and interactive effects of a child's involuntary contact and parental arrest history on subsequent delinquency as well as potential mechanisms for deviance amplification. RESULTS: Main effects are consistent with labeling theory and moderation analyses reveal that the impact of involuntary contact on subsequent delinquency depends on parental arrest history. More specifically, contact with the police on subsequent offending is greater when the focal parent has an arrest history, regardless of when the most recent arrest occurs in the life course of the child. However, some differences in the magnitude of the exacerbating effect of recent parental arrest emerged. Results also speak to potential mechanisms across mother-child and father-child dyads with respect to deviance amplification. CONCLUSIONS: This research supports the life-course principles of "linked lives" and "timing in lives" and their application to labeling theory in an intergenerational context. To reduce deviance amplification, special attention should be paid to youth who experience a police contact in the context of a parental arrest history.

Modification of Housing Mobility Experimental Effects on Delinquency and Educational Problems: Middle Adolescence as a Sensitive Period.

Residential mobility is one documented stressor contributing to higher delinquency and worse educational outcomes. Sensitive period life course models suggest that certain developmental stages make individuals more susceptible to the effects of an exposure, like residential mobility, on outcomes. However, most prior research is observational, and has not examined heterogeneity across age or gender that may inform sensitive periods, even though it may have important implications for the etiology of adolescent development. Moreover, there are important translational implications for identifying the groups most vulnerable to residential mobility to inform how to buffer adverse effects of moving. In this study, low-income families were randomized to residential mobility out of public housing into lower poverty neighborhoods using a rental subsidy voucher ("experimental voucher condition"), and were compared to control families remaining in public housing. The sample was comprised of 2829 youth (51% female; 62% Non-Hispanic Black, 31% Hispanic, 7% other race). At baseline, youth ranged from 5 to 16 years old. This study hypothesized that random assignment to the housing voucher condition would generate harmful effects on delinquency and educational problems, compared to the control group, among boys who were older at baseline. The results confirmed this hypothesis: random assignment to the experimental voucher condition generating residential mobility caused higher delinquency among boys who were 13-16 years old at baseline, compared to same-age, in-place public housing controls. However, residential mobility did not affect delinquency among girls regardless of age, or among boys who were 5-12 years old at baseline. The pattern of results for educational problems was similar but weaker. Families with teenage boys are particularly vulnerable to residential transitions. Incorporating additional supports into housing programs may help low-income, urban families to successfully transition to lower poverty neighborhoods.

Exploring Intergenerational Continuity in Gang Membership.

Little is known regarding intergenerational continuity in gang membership. Qualitative literature is suggestive of intergenerational parallelism yet no known research examines the causal mechanisms associated with this cycle, if it even exists. Prospective, longitudinal data from the Rochester Youth Development Study (RYDS) and the Rochester Intergenerational Study (RIGS) assess intergenerational continuity in gang membership among 371 parent-child dyads in a series of logistic regressions accounting for moderating influences of parent sex, child sex, parent-child sex combinations, and level of contact. Path analyses reported herein explore whether parenting behaviors mediate the relationship between parent and child gang membership among fathers and mothers, respectively. Three key findings emerge. First, intergenerational continuity in gang membership exists between mothers and daughters and, conditional on contact, between fathers and sons. Second, maltreatment mediates some of this relationship among father-son dyads. Third, no pathways to daughter gang membership were identified among mothers. In sum, this study provides evidence of intergenerational continuity in gang membership and further highlights the importance of parent sex, child sex, and level of contact in intergenerational research. Future research should further explore the causal pathways between parent and child gang membership.

The Protective Effects of Family Support on the Relationship between Official Intervention and General Delinquency across the Life Course.

PURPOSE: Previous research on the labeling perspective has identified mediational processes and the long-term effects of official intervention in the life course. However, it is not yet clear what factors may moderate the relationship between labeling and subsequent offending. The current study integrates Cullen's (1994) social support theory to examine how family social support conditions the criminogenic, stigmatizing effects of official intervention on delinquency and whether such protective effects vary by developmental stage. METHODS: Using longitudinal data from the Rochester Youth Development Study, we estimated negative binomial regression models to investigate the relationships between police arrest, family social support, and criminal offending during both adolescence and young adulthood. RESULTS: Police arrest is a significant predictor of self-reported delinquency in both the adolescent and adult models. Expressive family support exhibits main effects in the adolescent models; instrumental family support exhibits main effects at both developmental stages. Additionally, instrumental family support diminishes some of the predicted adverse effects of official intervention in adulthood. CONCLUSIONS: Perception of family support can be critical in reducing general delinquency as well as buffering against the adverse effects of official intervention on subsequent offending. Policies and programs that work with families subsequent to a criminal justice intervention should emphasize the importance of providing a supportive environment for those who are labeled.

The impact of adolescent risk behavior on partner relationships.

Prior literature suggests that involvement in adolescent risk behaviors will have short- and long-term consequences that disrupt the orderly flow of later development, including impacts on patterns of partner relationships. In this study, we explore how adolescent involvement in delinquency, drug use, and sexual behavior at an early age affects the likelihood and timing of both marriage and cohabitation using a sample from the Rochester Youth Development Study. We also examine the direct effects of dropping out of high school, teenage parenthood, and financial stress during emerging adulthood as well as their potential role as mediators of the relationships between adolescent risk behaviors and partnering for both males and females. Overall, there is not very strong support for a direct relationship between adolescent delinquency, drug use, or early sexual behavior and patterns of partner formation. In contrast, the more proximal relationships, indicated by precocious transitions to adulthood and financial instability, are more consistently related to partner formation. These findings support models of cumulative disadvantage: early adolescent problem behaviors are weakly related to partner formation, but appear to set in motion cascading consequences that influence the transition to adulthood and, in turn, these more proximal variables are more consistently related to partner formation.

Dual Trajectories of Gang Affiliation and Delinquent Peer Association During Adolescence: An Examination of Long-Term Offending Outcomes.

Prior research has demonstrated that both adolescent gang affiliation and perceived delinquent peer association are important predictors of individual offending. A crucial question is whether and how youth gang affiliation contributes to a spectrum of criminal acts above and beyond the influence of associating with delinquent peers. Using 14 waves of data from the Rochester Youth Developmental Study, an ongoing longitudinal panel study aimed at understanding the causes and consequences of delinquency and drug use in an urban sample of adolescents, the current study employs a relatively new modeling technique-dual trajectory analysis-to illustrate the dynamic relationship between these two measures among 666 male youth. The results suggest that the two measures, while overlapping, may constitute distinct concepts that operate in different ways. The most convincing evidence of gang effects, above and beyond the influence of perceived peer delinquency, is for violent behavior and by extension police arrest. Our findings contribute to developmental research and provide information that informs future gang control efforts.

Explaining Adolescent Drug Use in Adjacent Generations: Testing the Generality of Theoretical Explanations.

We tested the assumption that theories of drug use are able to account for behavior across varying contexts and populations by examining whether control, learning, and elaborated theories provide similar explanations for adolescent drug use in adjacent generations. We used data from the Rochester Youth Development Study and Rochester Intergenerational Study which followed a sample of adolescents starting at age 14 and their oldest biological child. Cross-generational analysis between theoretical variables measured at age 14 and drug use measured at approximately ages 15 and 16 were used. Regression models testing for each theoretical framework found that in general, they appear to operate similarly in adjacent generations. We conducted 14 tests of equality for pairs of coefficients across the generations; no statistically significant differences are observed. Overall, these theories offer general explanations for adolescent drug use with respect to risk and protective factors for parents and their children. Theoretical and policy implications are discussed.

Like Parent Like Child? The Role of Delayed Childrearing in Breaking the Link Between Parent's Offending and Their Children's Antisocial Behavior.

This paper investigates the impact of parents' history of violent offending, their age at first birth, and the interaction of the two on their adolescent children's violent behavior. We employ intergenerational longitudinal data from the Rochester Youth Development Study to estimate parental trajectories of offending from their early adolescence through early adulthood. We show that the particular shape of the parents' propensity of offending over time can interact with their age at first birth to protect their children from delinquency. We investigate these relationships for children at 6 and 10 years of age. We find that for some groups delaying childrearing can insulate children from their parents' offending.

Exploring Intergenerational Discontinuity in Problem Behavior: Bad Parents with Good Children.

Using data from the Rochester Youth Development Study, a series of regression models are estimated on offspring problem behavior with a focus on the interaction between parental history of delinquency and the parent-child relationship. Good parenting practices significantly interact with the particular shape of parental propensity of offending over time, functioning as protective factors to protect against problematic behaviors among those who are most at risk. The moderation effects vary slightly by the age of our subjects. Accordingly, it is important to distinguish the effect of not only the level of parental delinquency at one point in time, but also the shape of the delinquency trajectory on outcomes for their children. Good parenting holds the hope of breaking the vicious cycle of intergenerational transmission of delinquency.

Gang Membership and Pathways to Maladaptive Parenting.

A limited amount of research examines the short-term consequences of gang membership. Rarer, though, is the examination of more distal consequences of gang membership. This is unfortunate because it understates the true detrimental effect of gang membership across the life course, as well as the effects it may have on children of former gang members. Using data from the Rochester Youth Development Study, this work investigates the impact of gang membership in adolescence (ages 12-18) on a particularly problematic style of parenting, child maltreatment. Using discrete time survival analysis, this study finds that gang membership increases the likelihood of child maltreatment and this relationship is mediated by the more proximal outcomes of gang membership during adolescence, precocious transitions to adulthood.

The effects of police contact on trajectories of violence: a group-based, propensity score matching analysis.

This study uses a life course framework to investigate how police contacts may serve as a potential turning point in a violent crime trajectory. Drawing on the central ideas from deterrence and labeling theories, we determine whether individuals on different violent offending trajectories increase or decrease their offending following a police contact. Analyzing nine waves of data from the Rochester Youth Development Study, an integrated propensity score matching and latent class growth model was used. First, three violent trajectory groups emerged including high offenders, non-offenders, and low offenders. Second, after accounting for selection bias using propensity score matching procedures, experiencing a police contact increased the likelihood of future violent offending for the entire sample and for those who were on a low violent-offending trajectory specifically. These findings are interpreted as partial support for labeling theory. Limitations of the study and directions for future research are discussed.

Are Risky Youth Less Protectable As They Age? The Dynamics of Protection During Adolescence and Young Adulthood.

Research on recidivism in criminal justice and desistance in criminology are not integrated. Yet, both fields seem to be moving towards models that look at how positive elements in a person's environment can impact a person's behavior, conditional on different levels of risk. This study builds on this observation by applying interactional theory and the concept of Risk-Needs-Responsivity to theorize that both Needs and Responsivity will change over time in predictable ways. We then use a novel empirical approach with the Rochester Youth Development Study to show that even in late adolescence, individuals who are at risk for violence can be protected from future violence and risky behavior like gun carrying with positive events in their environment and personal life. In young adulthood, fewer people are still at risk for violence, and those who are at risk are harder to protect from future violence and gun carrying.