This study examined the effect of exposure to violence on juveniles. It was specifically concerned with juveniles' perceptions of violence in schools and communities and how exposure to violence served as a risk factor for juvenile drug and alcohol use and participation in other delinquent activities. It also sought to develop a more complete picture of the context and consequences of violence in schools. The data for this study were drawn from the NATIONAL SURVEY OF ADOLESCENTS IN THE UNITED STATES, 1995 (ICPSR 2833). The data were collected through a national probability telephone sample of 4,023 juveniles and their parents or guardians. The current study drew primarily on the questions that were asked about respondents' experiences witnessing violence, their own victimization, peer and family deviance, their own delinquent activities, and drug and alcohol use.

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.

This study examined the evolution of exposure to violence and psychological distress among adolescents using a sample of 1,354 male and female youths who completed a baseline assessment and 10 follow-up interviews over a seven-year period as part of the Pathways to Desistence study. Statistical analyses were utilized to identify a taxonomy based on adolescents' patterns of exposure to violence as well as to explore the association between the analytically-identified exposure to violence patterns and various psychological symptoms. Additional models were analyzed to examine changes in exposure to violence over time, changes in psychological distress over time, the contemporaneous, parallel processes of changes in exposure to violence and psychological distress over time, and differences in the evolution of violence exposure and psychological distress across sex and race/ethnicity.

This research project was designed as a replication and extension of earlier research on how childhood victimization relates to delinquency, adult criminality, and violent criminal behavior (CHILD ABUSE, NEGLECT, AND VIOLENT CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR IN A MIDWEST METROPOLITAN AREA OF THE UNITED STATES, 1967-1988 (ICPSR 9480)). The study consisted of a sample of abused and neglected children who were made dependents of the Superior Court of a large urban county in the Northwest between 1980 and 1984, and a matched control group of children. Dependency records were obtained from the county court house. Control match criteria were collected from Department of Health birth records data. Type of abuse/neglect precipitating the dependency petition was collected and coded using a modified version of the Maltreatment Classification Coding Scheme (MCS). Data on juvenile arrests from juvenile court records, including both number and types, were collected for each abused and/or neglected youth and each matched control subject. Adult criminal arrests, excluding routine traffic offenses, for all abused and neglected subjects and matched controls were collected from local, county, state, and federal law enforcement sources. A subset of arrests consisting of violent crimes was developed as a key outcome of interest. Major types of variables included in this study are demographics, criminal records, dependency records (only for those subjects abused/neglected as children), including type and severity of child abuse/neglect, and census socioeconomic variables. Several derived variables were also included.

This collection includes data collected from a subsample of participants interviewed near the end of the thirteenth follow-up of the Northwestern Juvenile Project (NJP). NJP is a longitudinal assessment of alcohol, drug, and mental health service needs and outcomes of juvenile detainees. The thirteenth follow-up occurred approximately 16 years after the baseline interview. The subsample of participants received two additional modules that were added to the interview. These interview modules, the Juvenile Justice Experiences module and the Weapons-Related Injury module, retrospectively assessed behaviors and experiences during adolescence. The original NJP sample included 1,829 randomly selected youth recruited at intake to the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center (CCJTDC) in Chicago, Illinois from 1995 to 1998. The sample was stratified by gender, race/ethnicity, age, and legal status (for a total of 13 strata) to obtain enough participants to examine key subgroups. Both additional modules were administered at follow-up thirteen to a subsample 389 participants. The Juvenile Justice Experiences module assessed experiences with corrections in the juvenile justice system. Items were drawn from the Survey of Youth in Residential Placement (SYRP) which ask a series of questions covering an individual's emotion and mental states among youth who are in custody. NJP utilized a modified SYRP to assess juvenile justice experiences retrospectively among the sample. The Weapons-Related Injury module was created for the NJP, and assesses gunshot-related and stabbing-related victimization during adolescence.

This study was a secondary analysis of Survey of Youth in Residential Placement (SYRP) 2003 [United States] ICPSR 34304. In recent years, considerable empirical and theoretical attention has been given to the overlap between gang membership and victimization. Gang-involved youth are significantly more likely to experience both violent and nonviolent victimization than are their non-gang peers. Much of what is known about the gang-victimization link, however, comes from studies of youth in the community. In this study, we explore the relationship between gang affiliation and victimization in a nationally representative sample of youth in residential placement.

The objective of the Trauma-Focused Interventions for Justice-Involved and At-Risk Youth meta-analysis was to systematically review and statistically synthesize all available research on the effectiveness of trauma-informed treatment programs for justice-involved youth and youth at-risk of justice system involvement who experienced some form of trauma in their lives. A systematic search identified 29 publications that met the eligibility criteria and represented 30 treatment-comparison contrasts. Of these studies, 6 evaluated the effectiveness of trauma-informed programs for justice-involved youth, and the remaining 24 evaluated programs for at-risk children and youth. From these studies, researchers extracted results related to delinquency, problem behaviors, aggression, antisocial behavior, substance use, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) outcomes. Most of these studies (24) used random assignment to conditions designs, with the remaining 6 using a quasi experimental design with a comparison condition. Variables in this collection include type of publication, authors, country of study, type of primary study design, publication year, youth type (at-risk or delinquent), frequency and duration of treatment, treatment techniques and types of therapy, treatment and control group sample sizes, as well as variables summarizing respondent histories of abuse, neglect, trauma, violence, delinquency, institutionalization, homelessness, and involvement in foster care. Demographic information on primary study respondents includes overall sample, treatment, and control group percentage breakdowns by ethnicity and respondent age summary statistics.

The goal of this study was to test specific hypotheses illustrating the relationships among serious victimization experiences, the mental health effects of victimization, substance abuse/use, and delinquent behavior in adolescents. The study assessed familial and nonfamilial types of violence. It was designed as a telephone survey of American youth aged 12-17 living in United States households and residing with a parent or guardian. One parent or guardian in each household was interviewed briefly to establish rapport, secure permission to interview the targeted adolescent, and to ensure the collection of comparative data to examine potential nonresponse bias from households without adolescent participation. All interviews with both parents and adolescents were conducted using Computer-Assisted Telephone Interviewing (CATI) technology. From the surveys of parents and adolescents, the principal investigators created one data file by attaching the data from the parents to the records of their respective adolescents. Adolescents were asked whether violence and drug abuse were problems in their schools and communities and what types of violence they had personally witnessed. They were also asked about other stressful events in their lives, such as the loss of a family member, divorce, unemployment, moving to a new home or school, serious illness or injury, and natural disaster. Questions regarding history of sexual assault, physical assault, and harsh physical discipline elicited a description of the event and perpetrator, extent of injuries, age at abuse, whether alcohol or drugs were involved, and who was informed of the incident. Information was also gathered on the delinquent behavior of respondents and their friends, including destruction of property, assault, theft, sexual assault, and gang activity. Other questions covered history of personal and family substance use and mental health indicators, such as major depression, post-traumatic stress disorders, weight changes, sleeping disorders, and problems concentrating. Demographic information was gathered from the adolescents on age, race, gender, number of people living in household, and grade in school. Parents were asked whether they were concerned about violent crime, affordable child care, drug abuse, educational quality, gangs, and the safety of their children at school. In addition, they were questioned about their own victimization experiences and whether they discussed personal safety issues with their children. Parents also supplied demographic information on gender, marital status, number of children, employment status, education, race, and income.

The study investigates protective factors for maltreated children and predictors of self-reported crime desistence among maltreated and multiply victimized children. Data are from the Lehigh Longitudinal Study, a prospective investigation of children and families that began in the 1970s. The original sample was comprised of 457 children and their families. Over 80 percent of the children, now adults, were most recently assessed in 2010, at an average of 36 years, using a comprehensive, interviewer-administered survey. Data on child maltreatment and related risk and protective factors were collected much earlier, beginning when participants were preschoolers, 18 months to 6 years of age. Childhood data are from multiple sources, including child welfare case observations of parents and children, school records, and parent and adolescent surveys. Data collected during adolescence and adulthood offer detailed accounts of the psychosocial adjustment and well-being of participants and their families at later life stages, ongoing experiences of abuse and victimization, self-reported crime and antisocial behavior, and protection and resilience.

These data are part of NACJD's Fast Track Release and are distributed as they were received from the data depositor. The files have been zipped by NACJD for release, but not checked or processed except for the removal of direct identifiers. Users should refer to the accompanying readme file for a brief description of the files available with this collection and consult the investigator(s) if further information is needed. This collection features secondary analyses of restricted-use data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health), a nationally representative longitudinal study of a sample of U.S. adolescents who were in grades 7-12 in the 1994-95 school year, who were interviewed at three key developmental junctures from adolescence to young adulthood. Self-reported data were used for both maltreatment (measured at the latter two time points) and delinquent or criminal behaviors (measured at all three time points). Linear mixed-effects analyses were used to model growth curves of the frequency of violent and non-violent offending, from ages 13 to 30. Next, maltreatment frequency was tested as a predictor, and then potential protective factors (at peer, family, school, and neighborhood levels) were tested as moderators. Sex, race/ethnicity, and sexual orientation were also tested as moderators of delinquent or criminal offense frequency, and as moderators of protective effects. The study collection includes 1 Stata (.do) syntax file (AddHealthOJJDPAnalysis_StataSyntax.do) that was used by the researcher in secondary analyses of restricted-use data. The restricted archival data from the Add Health survey series are not included as part of this release.