This study was conducted to address the dropping rates in residential placements of adjudicated youth after the 1990s. Policymakers, advocates, and reseraches began to attirbute the decline to reform measures and proposed that this was the cause of the drop seen in historic national crime. In response, researchers set out to use state-level data on economic factors, crime rates, political ideology scores, and youth justice policies and practices to test the association between the youth justice policy environment and recent reductions in out-of-home placements for adjudicated youth. This data collection contains two files, a multivariate and bivariate analyses. In the multivariate file the aim was to assess the impact of the progressive policy characteristics on the dependent variable which is known as youth confinement. In the bivariate analyses file Wave 1-Wave 10 the aim was to assess the states as they are divided into 2 groups across all 16 dichotomized variables that comprised the progressive policy scale: those with more progressive youth justice environments and those with less progressive or punitive environments. Some examples of these dichotomized variables include purpose clause, courtroom shackling, and competency standard.

The primary research goal of this study was to explore the effects of juvenile incarceration on future recidivism using social and legal history data about adjudicated juvenile delinquents in New York City. The secondary research goal of this study was to explore family court decision-making and the nature of family court processing. Study subjects were chosen by examining Family Court calendars in all five New York City boroughs for each day in April, May, and June of 2000, which identified every youth who received a disposition during this period. Research staff located case files for each subject in probation department file rooms in the five family courts, using personal and numeric identifiers taken from court calendars. Using a standardized data collection instrument that was developed by the research team, coded information was derived for 698 total cases by examining documents in each subject's probation case file. Coded data from probation case files offered a baseline portrait of this sample of delinquent youth. In order to measure recidivism, the principal investigator linked baseline records, using personal and numeric identifiers, to arrest and incarceration information provided by other city and state agencies. In this dataset, each record is essentially a snapshot of a particular youth at the time of his or her disposition. Variables about the sampled youth include: demographic profile, case processing, legal history, characteristics of present and past family environments, school performance indicators, community and peer relationships, history of alcohol and drug use, mental health history, and history of victimization.

Much of the analysis of juvenile justice reform to date has focused on assessing particular programs and their impacts on subgroups of cases at a particular point in time. While this is instructive as to the effects of those initiatives, it is essential to evaluate the impact of policy across multiple levels and with multiple stakeholders in mind. Ohio has implemented a series of initiatives in its juvenile justice system designed to reduce reliance on state custody of youth in favor of local alternatives. In doing so, they have focused on multiple segments of the population of justice involved-youths throughout the state. The main vehicle for these shifts has been the state's Reasoned and Equitable Community and Local Alternatives to the Incarceration of Minors (RECLAIM) legislation and a series of initiatives that have followed from its inception. Other steps were followed and programming modifications were made during the study period as well. This research project focused on these initiatives as a case study of juvenile justice reform initiatives in order to provide insights about the impact of those recent reforms across multiple dimensions that were viewed as relevant to the discussion of juvenile justice reform. The data set analyzed at the individual level included the records of more than 5,000 youths sampled from cases processed from 2008 to 2015. First, presumed reductions in the number of youth committed to state residential correctional facilities in favor of community-based alternatives were analyzed. The relative effectiveness of residential facilities and community-based alternatives in terms of youth recidivism were then assessed with a subsample of 2,855 case records from randomly-selected counties. A third research objective focused on county-level trends and variation. Specifically, the longitudinal trends in key juvenile justice inputs and official juvenile crime rates across Ohio's 88 counties were formally modeled using data from public reports, data collection with counties, and official juvenile arrest data archived by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Elements of the previous analyses (especially comparative recidivism rates) and cost data collected from existing sources and public reports were used in a preliminary fashion to quantify the potential return on investment that accrued from Ohio's investment in these juvenile justice initiatives. This deposit contains two datasets: Individual Level Data and County Level Data. The Individual Level Data contains the following demographic data: age at admission, sex, and race (White, Black, Asian, Native American, and other).

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.

In nearly every state and in the vast majority of juvenile justice agencies, risk assessments are incorporated into diversion, case management, supervision, and placement practices. Despite two decades of use within the juvenile justice system, little research regarding the methods of risk assessment development is discussed or translated to the field and practitioners. Many of the contemporary tools used today are implemented off-the-shelf, meaning that tools were developed with a specific set of methods, selecting and weighting items used in the prediction of a specified sample of youth. What is not known is how the various designs, methods, and circumstances of tool development impact the predictive performance when adopted by a jurisdiction. This study seeks to provide input into this dilemma. Demographic information in this study includes age, race, and sex.

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. To assess "double transition" (the transition from confinement to community in addition to the transition from adolescence to adulthood), the study used nationally representative data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) to compare psychosocial maturity for three groups: approximately 162 adolescents placed in correctional confinement, 398 young adults who reported an arrest before age 18 but no juvenile correctional confinement, and 11,614 youths who reported no arrests before age 18. Three dimensions of psychosocial maturity (responsibility, temperance, and perspective) were assessed at Waves 1 (baseline) and Wave 3 (post-confinement) in models assessing the effects of confinement on the attainment (or non-attainment) of markers of successful transition to adulthood at Wave 4. Results were contextualized with data from the Survey of Youth in Residential Facilities and discussed with respect to the role of confinement in interrupting the development of psychosocial maturity in the transition to adulthood and for young adult attainment more generally. There are no data files available with this study. Only syntax files used by the researchers are provided.

The purpose of the study was to examine criminal behavior and criminal justice system involvement among youth making the transition from out-of-home care to independent adulthood. The study collected data from two sources: (1) survey data from the Midwest Study of the Adult Functioning of Former Foster Youth (Midwest Study), and (2) official arrest data. The Midwest Study was a longitudinal panel study that was part of a collaborative effort of the state public child welfare agencies in Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin, Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago, and the University of Washington. The participating states funded and/or operated the full range of services supported by the Chafee Foster Care Independence Program. The Midwest Study survey data were collected directly from the youth in the sample every two years over three waves, between May 2002 and January 2007. A total of 732 respondents participated in at least one of the in-person interviews over the three waves. This data collection includes some variables that were directly measured from the original Midwest Study survey instrument and other variables that were computed or derived from variables in the original data for purposes of the current study. To supplement the survey data, the research team accessed official arrest data from each state for this study. Researchers obtained data on all criminal arrests that occurred between the respondents' Wave 1 interview and August 31, 2007, a date by which all of the study participants were at least 21 years old. The study contains a total of 85 variables including indicator variables, demographic and background variables, delinquency and crime variables, out-of-home care experiences variables, and social bonds variables.

These data were collected to measure the degree to which subjective deterrence and rational choice are effective in reducing drug-use recidivism rates. Baseline interviews were conducted with participants upon entering a drug rehabilitation program in New Jersey. Under the terms of this program, which was an alternative to prison, any incident of drug use occurring during the rehabilitation period would result in the participant's returning to prison. Follow-up interviews were conducted when the participant either had a drug/alcohol use relapse or successfully completed a year in the program without a drug-use incident. Baseline interviews included questions about criminal and drug-use history, as well as initial reactions to the drug rehabilitation program. Follow-up interviews probed for participants' feelings about the drug rehabilitation program experience. Further questions concerned participants' failure or success at staying away from drugs or alcohol.

The Pathways to Desistance study is a multi-site, longitudinal study of serious adolescent offenders as they transition from adolescence into early adulthood. Between November, 2000 and January, 2003, 1,354 adjudicated youths from the juvenile and adult court systems in Maricopa County (Phoenix), Arizona (N = 654) and Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania (N = 700) were enrolled into the study.The enrolled youth were at least 14 years old and under 18 years old at the time of their committing offense and were found guilty of a serious offense (predominantly felonies, with a few exceptions for some misdemeanor property offenses, sexual assault, or weapons offenses).Each study participant was followed for a period of seven years past enrollment, with the end result a comprehensive picture of life changes in a wide array of areas over the course of this time.The study sought to inform the ongoing debate in the juvenile justice system regarding the treatment and processing of serious adolescent offenders. The larger aim of the Pathways series is to improve decision-making by court and social service personnel and to clarify policy debates about alternatives for serious adolescent offenders.Additional datasets from the Pathways study will be released during 2013. These datasets will include official records information (e.g. re-arrest, placement), and monthly life-calendar data on a range of topics (e.g. school, work). These additional datasets will not be publicly available, but rather made available through ICPSR's restricted data access system.For more information, please visit the Research on Pathways to Desistance web site.