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 Researchers followed nearly 1200 boys and girls for 12 years after
their detention in Chicago’s Cook County Juvenile Temporary
Detention Center. They looked for positive outcomes in eight areas:
educational attainment, residential independence, gainful activity,
desistance from criminal activity, mental health, abstaining from
substance abuse, interpersonal functioning, and parenting
responsibility.
Twelve years after detention, only 22 percent of boys and 55 percent
of girls were successful in more than half of these outcomes,
according to a report in JAMA Pediatrics.
Dr. Linda A. Teplin from Northwestern University in Chicago and
colleagues found that among the boys, 46 percent of non-Hispanic
whites had achieved more than half the outcomes, compared with only
29 percent of Hispanics and 19 percent of African Americans. Results
for girls did not differ by race or ethnicity.
As adults, the former delinquent boys fell into five broad
categories: 24 percent were unlikely to have positive outcomes in
any area; 28 percent were incarcerated; 21 percent were living
independently but struggling; 6 percent were struggling family men;
and 21 percent were functioning independently with positive outcomes
in nearly all domains.
More than half of the former delinquent girls were at-home mothers
(60 percent); 14.4 percent were unstable mothers with positive
outcomes only in parenting responsibility; 10 percent were substance
free but struggling; and 16 percent had positive outcomes in every
domain except interpersonal functioning.
Minority boys were most likely to fall into the worst outcome
classes, while there were no racial/ethnic differences among girls.
The researchers recommend that services for delinquent youth be
expanded, especially for minority males, and they urge support for
policies that make it easier for these youth to obey the law and to
overcome barriers to social stability and employment.
Dr. Robert J. Sampson from Harvard University, Cambridge,
Massachusetts, who wrote an editorial related to this report, told
Reuters Health by email, “The police and courts alone are ill
equipped to handle the needs of adolescents who are falling through
the cracks of society’s support system. Constructing positive
‘turning points’ is central to breaking the reinforcing cycle of
adversities that institutionalization can trigger.”
“Meaningful structural change will likely be long in coming,
however, so how to prevent delinquency in the first place and how to
steer delinquent youth onto a path of success after being involved
in the criminal justice system are the immediate, challenging
questions,” he writes in his editorial.
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“At the very least, we should redesign the juvenile system so that
it does not exacerbate existing inequalities,” he concludes.
“Because juvenile detention has durable consequences for later
development, and because today’s children and adolescents are
tomorrow’s parents, there is urgency to breaking the stigma of a
criminal record and the associated intergenerational cycle of
compounded adversity.”
“I anticipated that outcomes would be dire,” Teplin told Reuters
Health by email. “But I had not realized that so few youth could
achieve milestones that are considered quite routine for most young
people - - for example, establishing independent residence, being
responsible for one’s children, steady employment.”
She continued, “People do not realize the impediments and cycle of
disadvantage faced by youth who are detained. Once detained, they
miss school. When released, they will have fallen behind in school,
may become discouraged, and never catch up. Without a proper
education, they can never find a job. And if they become involved in
the adult justice system, there face great impediments by employers
who refuse to hire prior offenders.”
“Our educational system is the root cause for many of these
problems,” Dr. Teplin said. “Unlike other developed countries
(France, the U.K., Australia), our school systems are funded by
local tax dollars. Thus, the quality of your school is determined by
your zip code. Overall, poor kids receive a much worse education
than wealthier kids. Once they get in trouble with the law, they are
on a one-way road.”
Dr. Teplin added, “There is something called ‘adolescent limited
delinquency,’ meaning that kids may engage in delinquent acts, but
then ‘grow out of it.’ But for poor kids, who may have fewer people
in their lives who can rescue them, delinquency may begin a cycle of
disadvantage that lasts throughout adulthood.”
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