Policymakers, advocates, and even some researchers claim that youth confinement rates across the United States dropped in recent years due to changes in policy and practice. Such claims remain unproven, but voters and elected officials are inclined to accept them as factual because they are offered by reputable agencies and repeated in news media sources. Without reliable evidence, however, the notion that state-level youth confinement rates fall primarily in response to progressive policy reforms is merely appealing rhetoric.
Category: Kevin Wolff
Assessing the Efficacy of Alternatives to Incarceration within Seven Federal Districts
Though alternatives to incarceration (ATI) courts have existed in the state system for 30 years, such courts are a relatively new phenomena at the federal level. We assess the impact of participation in an ATI program on a number of outcomes using a quasi-experimental matching design. Results suggest that defendants who successfully completed an ATI program were employed a greater percentage of the days, and received favorable case dispositions and less severe sentences.
The Effects of Neighborhood Context on Exposure to Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Among Adolescents Involved in the Juvenile Justice System: Latent Classes and Contextual Effects
This study uses latent class analysis to examine adverse childhood experience (ACE) typologies among a large sample of justice-involved Florida youth between ages 10 and 18. Multilevel, multinomial logistic regression is used to assess the relationship between individual- and community-level factors and class membership.
Considering the Mediating Effects of Drug and Alcohol Use, Mental Health, and Their Co-Occurrence on the Adverse Childhood Experiences–Recidivism Relationship
Using data from a large sample of adjudicated juveniles in Florida, this study examines the mediating effects of drug and alcohol use, mental health problems, and their co-occurrence on the relationship between adverse childhood experiences (ACE) and recidivism.
Quasi-experimental Designs for Community-level Public Health Violence Reduction Interventions: A Case Study in the Challenges of Selecting the Counterfactual
Demonstrates methods of using propensity score matching for an impact analysis of the Cure Violence Public Health Model in Philadelphia.
The Effects of Cure Violence in the South Bronx and East New York, Brooklyn
Promising evidence that the public health approach to violence reduction championed by Cure Violence may be capable of creating safe and healthy communities.
The Mobility of Youth in the Justice System: Implications for Recidivism
Both residential mobility and community disadvantage have been shown to be associated with negative outcomes for adolescents generally and juvenile offenders specifically. The current study examines the effects of moving among a large sample (n = 13,096) of previously adjudicated youth (31.6 % female, 41.2 % Black, 16.5 % Hispanic). Additionally, we examine whether moving upward to a more affluent neighborhood, moving downward to an area of greater disadvantage, or moving laterally to a similar neighborhood tempers the effects of residential mobility. We use a combination of analytical techniques, including propensity score matching to untangle the effects of mobility sans pre-existing conditions between movers and non-movers. Results show relocation increases recidivism, irrespective of the direction of the move with regard to socioeconomic context. Moving upward has the most detrimental impact for adjudicated male adolescents, while downward relocations evidenced the largest effect for female youth. Implications for policy and future research needs are discussed.
Predicting Adverse Childhood Experiences
Effects of concentrated disadvantage and affluence on ACE scores are examined in a statewide sample of more than 59,000 juvenile offenders, controlling for salient individual (including family and parenting) measures and demographics. Both disadvantage and affluence affect ACE exposure. Implications for research and policy are discussed.
Violent Attitudes and Antisocial Behavior among a College Sample
Drawing on Elijah Anderson’s (1999) Code of the Street thesis, this study assesses the generalizability of street code attitudes among a sample of college students from a large Midwest university.
Disproportionality in Psychiatric Diagnoses and Treatment in a Sample of Serious Juvenile Offenders
Black males were 32 % less likely to receive psychiatric treatment than White males...
Risk Assessment Trajectories of Youth During Juvenile Justice Residential Placement
Dynamic risk/promotive factors change during youth residential placement. Agencies should assess an array of dynamic risks and promotive factors at intake.
Juvenile Animal Cruelty and Firesetting Behaviour
The current study assesses the prevalence, co-occurence and correlates of animal cruelty and firesetting behavior among juvenile delinquents.
Adverse Childhood Experiences, Negative Emotionality, and Pathways to Juvenile Recidivism
Prior work has illustrated youth exposed to adverse parenting practices are more likely to offend and juvenile offenders with maltreatment histories more likely to re-offend. In addition, aggressive tendencies and a hostile interpretation of the actions of others and one’s environment increase antisocial behavior.
Do Social Bonds Buffer the Impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences on Reoffending?
Research from multiple disciplines has reported that exposure to childhood traumatic events, often referred to as adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), increases an individual’s chances of experiencing a wide variety of negative consequences such as chronic disease, unemployment, and involvement in serious, violent, and chronic offending.
The Relationship Between Adverse Childhood Experiences and Recidivism
Results from a series of Cox hazard models suggest that ACEs increase the risk of subsequent arrest, with a higher prevalence of ACEs leading to a shorter time to recidivism. The relationship between ACEs and recidivism held quite well in demographic-specific analyses.
Effortful Control, Negative Emotionality, and Juvenile Recidivism
Recently, DeLisi and Vaughn articulated a temperament-based theory of antisocial behavior which they expressed as the first within criminology to use temperament explicitly, and as the exclusive explanatory construct of both antisocial behavior and negative interactions with the criminal justice system.
The Triple Crown of Antisocial Behavior: Effortful Control, Negative Emotionality, and Community Disadvantage
Findings indicate that net of a wide array of known risk factors, youth with poor temperaments, and those living in disadvantaged communities are more likely to reoffend. Additionally, those youth who face a triple threat of temperament issues and disadvantage reoffend faster post-completion.
New York City Gun Violence: 2004-2014
Shootings per 1,000 population by Sheyla Delgado, Kevin Wolff, and Jeffrey Butts Research & Evaluation Center July 28, 2015 With funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) and the New York City Council, the Research & Evaluation Center at John Jay College is conducting a program of studies known as NYC Cure. One study [...]
The Relationship between Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) and Juvenile Offending
Adverse childhood experiences have been identified as a key risk factor for offending and victimization, respectively. At the same time, the extent to which such experiences distinguish between unique groups of offenders who vary in their longitudinal offending patterns remains an open question, one that is pertinent to both theoretical and policy-related issues. This study examines the relationship between adverse childhood experiences for distinguishing offending patterns through late adolescence in a large sample of adjudicated juvenile offenders.
Shooting Trends in New York City
New York City Census Tracts According to Trajectory of Shootings from 2004 to 2014 by Kevin Wolff, Sheyla Delgado and Evan Misshula Research & Evaluation Center February 2015 The accompanying map portrays New York City census tracts according to recent trends in gun violence. The Research & Evaluation Center calculated trend patterns based on the [...]
Effectiveness of the Cure Violence Model in New York City
New research from the John Jay College Research & Evaluation Center (JohnJayREC) suggests that the Cure Violence Strategy may be effective in reducing the incidence of homicide. Researchers at John Jay worked with analysts at the New York Police Department (NYPD) to assemble information about violence in New York City neighborhoods and to compare areas with and without Cure Violence programs.
Evaluating Contemporary Crime Drop(s) in America, New York City, and Many Other Places
Baumer, Eric P. and Kevin T. Wolff (2014). Evaluating Contemporary Crime Drop(s) in America, New York City, and Many Other Places. Justice Quarterly, 31(2): 5-38. This paper describes and evaluates some fundamental facts about the contemporary crime drop, summarizes the major explanations that have been offered for it, and assesses the validity of these explanations in [...]