Jonathan W. Caudill

The Cycle of Violence Behind Bars: Traumatization and Institutional Misconduct Among Juvenile Delinquents in Confinement

The prospective link between early life exposure to violence and victimization and subsequent antisocial behaviors is known as the cycle of violence. Although the cycle of violence has been linked to an array of behavioral and psychiatric outcomes, less is known about its relationship to compliance with the juvenile/criminal justice systems. Data from 813 confined delinquents selected from the California Youth Authority and the Traumatic Experiences scale from the Massachusetts Youth Screening Instrument Version 2 (MAYSI-2) were used to examine the cycle of violence and three forms of misconduct. After controlling for other 18 demographics, delinquent history, commitment offense type, and comorbid psychiatric symptoms that are consistent with the importation model of inmate behavior, the authors found that wards with greater exposure to early life trauma evinced more sexual misconduct, suicidal activity, and total misconduct reviewed by the parole board. Implications and discussion for future research are offered.

Delinquent Careers Behind Bars

There is an increasing recognition that incarceration time, instead of a period characterized by intermittency or lulls in offending, is for many a period of continued involvement in misconduct and other problematic behaviors. Yet, despite mounting evidence on the offending patterns of incarcerated adults, little research attention has been paid to the institutional behavior of incarcerated delinquents. The current research explored the institutional misconduct careers of 2,520 serious and violent delinquent offenders incarcerated in a large southern juvenile correctional system. Analyses revealed that the study cohort engaged in more than 200,000 instances of minor misconduct behaviors and nearly 19,000 instances of major misconduct behaviors during their incarceration. Multivariate analyses examining the incidence of major, minor, and assaultive institutional misconduct revealed that offenders with more extensive delinquent backgrounds had an increased expected rate of misconduct, net the effects of a number of variables. Implications for research and practice are explored.

Cliqued Up The Postincarceration Recidivism of Young Gang-Related Homicide Offenders

This study examines the interrelationship between gang affiliation and commitment for a gang-related homicide on the postincarceration recidivism of a sample of 1,804 serious and violent delinquents released from a large southern juvenile correctional system. Controlling for a battery of preincarceration youth characteristics, delinquent background, and social history measures, this research revealed that gang murderers—gang-affiliated offenders committed for a gang-related homicide—were more likely to experience any rearrest and any felony rearrest postrelease than those not considered gang murderers. General homicide offenders without gang affiliations were also more likely to experience felony rearrest postrelease. Being considered a gang murderer or a general homicide offender, however, was not related to the frequency of postrelease rearrests. Analyses also revealed consistent support for the effect of gang affiliation on all measures of postrelease recidivism, regardless of incarceration offense. Implications for research and practice are explored.

Angry Inmates Are Violent Inmates: A Poisson Regression Approach to Youthful Offenders

The importation model of inmate behavior posits that pre-confinement characteristics and behaviors contribute to inmate misconduct; however most of this research has centered on criminal history and not psychosocial characteristics that might predict misconduct, namely anger. Controlling for 14 confounds, including psychiatric symptoms, age, race, gender, commitment offense type, and four measures of prior delinquency, anger significantly predicted sexual misconduct, staff assaults, and aggressive misconduct and approached significance in predicting ward assaults. ROC-AUC analyses indicated that the MASYI-2 angry-irritable scale had significant but modest classification power, with sensitivities ranging from .58 to .66. Suggestions for future research are provided.

Not My Fault Blame Externalization Is the Psychopathic Feature Most Associated With Pathological Delinquency Among Confined Delinquents

The association between psychopathy and crime is established, but the specific components of the personality disorders that most contribute to crime are largely unknown. Drawing on data from 723 confined delinquents in Missouri, the present study delved into the eight subscales of the Psychopathic Personality Inventory–Short Form to empirically assess the specific aspects of the disorder that are most responsible for explaining variation in career delinquency. Blame externalization emerged as the strongest predictor of career delinquency in ordinary least squares regression, logistic regression, and t-test models. Fearlessness and carefree nonplanfulness were also significant in all models. Other features of psychopathy, such as stress immunity, social potency, and coldheartedness were weakly and inconsistently predictive of career delinquency. Implications of these findings for the study of psychopathy and delinquent careers are discussed in this article.

Back on the Swagger Institutional Release and Recidivism Timing Among Gang Affiliates

Extant literature suggests gang affiliates are at higher risk of a number of deleterious consequences compared to nongang affiliates, including recidivism following release from institutionalization. Although insightful, little is known as to when gang affiliates are at higher risk of recidivism postincarceration compared to their nongang counterparts. This research explores the effect of gang affiliation on recidivism by examining the time to rearrest for a cohort of 2,436 state incarcerated delinquents 5 years following their release from incarceration. Utilizing event history analysis, results indicate that gang affiliates are at a significantly higher risk of recidivism within 6 months postrelease, but risk ratios converged with nongang affiliates shortly thereafter. Implications for research and practice are explored.

The Road to Murder: The Enduring Criminogenic Effects of Juvenile Confinement Among a Sample of Adult Career Criminals

In the juvenile justice literature, deep-end interventions such as commitment to a confinement facility are reserved for the most severe delinquents but unfortunately have been shown to have negative consequences. The current study repurposes juvenile confinement within a criminal career context to empirically examine its role in homicide offending based on data from a sample of 445 male, adult habitual criminals. Poisson regression models indicated that juvenile confinement— measured both dimensionally and categorically—predicted murder arrests despite controls for juvenile homicide offending, juvenile violent delinquency, juvenile felony adjudications, juvenile non-compliance violations, juvenile arrest charges, onset, age, three racial/ethnic classifications, career arrests, career violent index arrests, and career property index arrests. Receiver operating characteristics—area under the curve (ROC-AUC) graphs showed that juvenile confinement predicted murder significantly but modestly better than chance although career violent offending was the strongest predictor of murder perpetration.

Pathways through the juvenile justice system: predictors of formal disposition

Previous scholarship on juvenile case dispositions has suggested a complex relationship between legal and extra-legal factors. Previous studies, however, have suffered from methodological limitations of cross-sectional data that potentially overstated the salience of extra-legal factors. This study addressed that limitation using longitudinal case-management system data from a large southern state. The findings suggested a distinction between the first referral and subsequent referrals. Extra-legal factors, such as age, gender, and race contributed to formal case disposition in the first referral, but waned in referrals two through six. Legal factors significantly and robustly predicted formal case disposition in the first and subsequent referrals. Felony offense significantly increased the likelihood of a formal disposition across all referrals and previous case disposition significantly increased the likelihood of formal disposition in subsequent referrals. Concluding remarks focus on implications and future research.

Adverse Childhood Experiences, Commitment Offense, and Race/Ethnicity: Are the Effects Crime-, Race-, and Ethnicity-Specific?

Adverse childhood experiences are associated with an array of health, psychiatric, and behavioral problems including antisocial behavior. Criminologists have recently utilized adverse childhood experiences as an organizing research framework and shown that adverse childhood experiences are associated with delinquency, violence, and more chronic/severe criminal careers. However, much less is known about adverse childhood experiences vis-à-vis specific forms of crime and whether the effects vary across race and ethnicity. Using a sample of 2520 male confined juvenile delinquents, the current study used epidemiological tables of odds (both unadjusted and adjusted for onset, total adjudications, and total out of home placements) to evaluate the significance of the number of adverse childhood experiences on commitment for homicide, sexual assault, and serious persons/property offending. The effects of adverse childhood experiences vary considerably across racial and ethnic groups and across offense types. Adverse childhood experiences are strongly and positively associated with sexual offending, but negatively associated with homicide and serious person/property offending. Differential effects of adverse childhood experiences were also seen among African Americans, Hispanics, and whites. Suggestions for future research to clarify the mechanisms by which adverse childhood experiences manifest in specific forms of criminal behavior are offered.

A Problem of Fit: Extreme Delinquents, Blended Sentencing, and the Determinants of Continued Adult Sanctions

One of the most significant changes to juvenile justice processing in recent decades has been blended sentencing. Unlike traditional juvenile court or adult court waiver processes, blended sentencing statutes provide authority to juvenile or adult court judges to sanction delinquent offenders with juvenile and adult dispositions. Although state variations abound, most blended sentencing schemes feature a fail-safe postadjudication stage where decisions are made to suspend or invoke the adult portion of the original blended sentence. Based on data from 1,504 serious and violent male delinquents sanctioned via a blended sentencing statute, this study explored the relationship of a battery of delinquent background, commitment offense, and postadjudication institutional misconduct variables on decisions to invoke or suspend the adult portion of a blended sentence. Results of the analysis revealed that commitment offense type, age at commitment and, to a lesser extent, institutional misconduct behavior weighed most heavily in decisions to invoke the adult portion of the blended sentence.