Sonja E. Siennick

Prison Visitation and Recidivism

Scholars and policymakers have called for greater attention to understanding the causes of and solutions to improved prisoner reentry outcomes, resulting in renewed attention to a factor—prison visitation—long believed to reduce recidivism. However, despite the theoretical arguments advanced on its behalf and increased calls for evidence-based policy, there remains little credible empirical research on whether a beneficial relationship between visitation and recidivism in fact exists. Against that backdrop, this study employs propensity score matching analyses to examine whether visitation of various types and in varying amounts, or “doses,” is in fact negatively associated with recidivism outcomes among a cohort of released prisoners. The analyses suggest that visitation has a small to modest effect in reducing recidivism of all types, especially property offending, and that the effects may be most pronounced for spouse or significant other visitation. We discuss the implications of the findings for research and policy.

A Review of Research on the Impact on Crime of Transitions to Adult Roles

For centuries, criminologists have observed thatmost criminal offenses showa sharp rise in prevalence during adolescence, followed by a relatively rapid decline in the early twenties (Hirschi & Gottfredson, 1983; Quetelet, 1984 [1833]). The dramatic decrease in criminal behavior during young adulthood, and increasing scholarly interest in desistance more generally, have led researchers to work to uncover the processes behind age-linked change in offending. Because the drop in offending occurs during the same period of the life course in which many individuals adopt adult roles, role transitions have received growing attention as potential explanations for desistance.

Here and Gone: Anticipation and Separation Effects of Prison Visits on Inmate Infractions:

Objectives: This study examines the effect of prison visitation on the probability of inmate misconduct. Method: Our sample is an admissions cohort of over 7,000 inmates admitted to Florida correctional facilities between 2000 and 2002. The authors conducted multilevel analyses of the week-to-week association between officially recorded disciplinary infractions and prison visits, including spousal, significant other, parental, relative, and friend visits. Results: The probability of an in-prison infraction declines in anticipation of visits, increases immediately following visits, and then gradually declines to average levels. This pattern is relatively consistent across visitors and infraction types but is strongest for spousal visits and contraband infractions. More frequent visits are associated with a more rapid postvisit decline. Conclusions: If visits reduce the pains of imprisonment or increase social control, then these effects may be too short-lived to create lasting improvements in the behavior of individuals while incarcerated. Future research should attempt to replicate and explain these findings and examine the longer term effects of visitation on inmate adjustment during and after incarceration.

EXPLAINING THE ASSOCIATION BETWEEN INCARCERATION AND DIVORCE

Recent studies have suggested that incarceration dramatically increases the odds of divorce, but we know little about the mechanisms that explain the association. This study uses prospective longitudinal data from a subset of married young adults in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (N = 1,919) to examine whether incarceration is associated with divorce indirectly via low marital love, economic strain, relationship violence, and extramarital sex. The findings confirmed that incarcerations occurring during, but not before, a marriage were associated with an increased hazard of divorce. Incarcerations occurring during marriage also were associated with less marital love, more relationship violence, more economic strain, and greater odds of extramarital sex. Above-average levels of economic strain were visible among respondents observed preincarceration, but only respondents observed postincarceration showed less marital love, more relationship violence, and higher odds of extramarital sex than did respondents who were not incarcerated during marriage. These relationship problems explained approximately 40 percent of the association between incarceration and marital dissolution. These findings are consistent with theoretical predictions that a spouses incarceration alters the rewards and costs of the marriage and the relative attractiveness of alternative partners.

Racial, Ethnic, and Immigrant Threat Is There a New Criminal Threat on State Sentencing?

Objectives: The racial threat perspective argues that racial minorities are subjected to greater punishment in places with large or growing minority populations. However, prior research has focused largely on Black populations while devoting limited attention to potential “Latino threat” or “immigrant threat” effects. To address these gaps, this study explores the effects of racial, ethnic, and immigrant threat on sentence disposition (jail, prison, or community corrections) and sentence length. Methods: Using 2000 through 2006 data from the Florida Department of Corrections Guideline database, we use multilevel modeling techniques to explore the effects of racial, ethnic, and immigrant threat on state criminal sentencing. Results: The results provide support for racial/ethnic threat theory among Black but not Latino defendants. Black defendants are more likely to be sentenced to prison and are given longer sentences in counties with growing Black populations. In contrast, Latino sentences are not significantly influenced by Latino population growth. Results provide no support for immigrant threat positions. Conclusions: Overall, our findings offer a complex picture for racial/ethnic and immigrant threat. However, one pattern remains clear. Within Florida courts, Black defendants continue to be the prime targets for effects of racial threat and resulting disadvantages in criminal sentencing.

Young Adult Outcomes and the Life-Course Penalties of Parental Incarceration

Objectives: The transition to adulthood can be challenging, especially for children of incarcerated parents. Drawing on reentry and life-course scholarship, we argue that parental incarceration may adversely affect multiple life outcomes for children as they progress from adolescence into adulthood and that such effects may persist from early young adulthood into late young adulthood. Methods: The study uses propensity score matching analyses of National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health data (N = 12,844). Results: Analyses identified harmful effects of parental incarceration on many life domains, including criminal behavior, mental health, illegal drug use, education, earnings, and intimate relationships. These effects typically surfaced by early young adulthood and continued into late young adulthood. Conclusions: The results suggest that parental incarceration constitutes a significant turning point in the lives of young people and underscore the importance of life-course perspectives for understanding incarceration effects. They also illustrate that formal punishment policies may create harms that potentially offset intended benefits.

Partnership Transitions and Antisocial Behavior in Young Adulthood A Within-person, Multi-Cohort Analysis

Objectives: This study examines the effects of young adult transitions into marriage and cohabitation on criminal offending and substance use, and whether those effects changed since the 1970s, as marriage rates declined and cohabitation rates rose dramatically. It also examines whether any beneficial effects of cohabitation depend on marriage intentions. Methods: Using multi-cohort national panel data from the Monitoring the Future (N = 15,875) study, the authors estimated fixed effects models relating within-person changes in marriage and cohabitation to changes in criminal offending and substance use. Results: Marriage predicts lower levels of criminal offending and substance use, but the effects of cohabitation are limited to substance use outcomes and to engaged cohabiters. There are no cohort differences in the associations of marriage and cohabitation with criminal offending, and no consistent cohort differences in their associations with substance use. There is little evidence of differences in effects by gender or parenthood. Conclusions: Young adults are increasingly likely to enter romantic partnership statuses that do not appear as effective in reducing antisocial behavior. Although cohabitation itself does not reduce antisocial behavior, engagement might. Future research should examine the mechanisms behind these effects, and why nonmarital partnerships reduce substance use and not crime.

Project ALERT with Outside Leaders: What Leader Characteristics are Important for Success?

A previously published effectiveness study of Project ALERT delivered in schools by outside providers from Cooperative Extension found no positive effects for the adult or teen-assisted delivery of the curriculum despite high-quality implementation. Those findings and the likelihood that more outside providers will deliver evidence-based drug prevention programs in the future, led to this investigation of possible influences of leaders’ personal characteristics on ALERT’s program effects. Influence of leader characteristics on students’ drug use and mediating variables for use were assessed by modeling program effects on within-student change as a function of leader characteristics. Students in classrooms with adult leaders who were more conscientious, sociable, or individuated were more likely to experience beneficial program effects. Students in teen-assisted classrooms with teen leaders who were more sociable or, to a lesser extent, highly individuated, showed more positive effects. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

Juvenile Court and Contemporary Diversion

Research Summary The juvenile court was established to help children through the use of punishment and rehabilitation and, in so doing, “save” them from a life of crime and disadvantage. Diversion programs and policies emerged in the 1970s as one way to achieve this goal. Despite concerns about its potential harm, diversion became increasingly popular in subsequent decades. We examine the logic of a prominent contemporary diversion effort, civil citation, to illuminate tensions inherent to traditional and contemporary diversion. We then review extant evidence on traditional diversion efforts, examine civil citation laws, and identify the salience of both traditional and contemporary, police-centered diversion efforts for youth and the juvenile court. The analysis highlights that diversion may help children but that it also may harm them. It highlights that the risk of net-widening for the police and the court is considerable. And it highlights the importance of, and need for, research on the use and effects of diversion and the conditions under which it may produce benefits and avoid harms. Policy Implications This article recommends a more tempered embrace of diversion and a fuller embrace of research-guided efforts to achieve the juvenile courts ideals. Diversion may be effective under certain conditions, but these conditions need to be identified and then met.

EARLY LIFE RISKS, ANTISOCIAL TENDENCIES, AND PRETEEN DELINQUENCY.

Early age-of-onset delinquency and substance use confer a major risk for continued criminality, alcohol and drug abuse, and other serious difficulties throughout the life course. Our objective is to examine the developmental roots of preteen delinquency and substance use. Using nationally representative longitudinal data from the UK Millennium Cohort Study (n = 13,221), we examine the influence of early childhood developmental and family risks on latent pathways of antisocial tendencies from ages 3 to 7, and the influence of those pathways on property crime and substance use by age 11. We identified a normative, non-antisocial pathway; a pathway marked by oppositional behavior and fighting; a pathway marked by impulsivity and inattention; and a rare pathway characterized by a wide range of antisocial tendencies. Children with developmental and family risks that emerged by age 3-specifically difficult infant temperament, low cognitive ability, weak parental closeness, and disadvantaged family background-face increased odds of antisocial tendencies. There is minimal overlap between the risk factors for early antisocial tendencies and those for preteen delinquency. Children on an antisocial pathway are more likely to engage in preteen delinquency and substance use by age 11, even after accounting for early life risk factors.