Many social workers are unaware of their responsibilities related to African American, male, juvenile delinquents who have gang affiliation. Punishment by detention is detrimental to these youth because detention perpetuates criminal careers and does not rehabilitate juvenile offenders. The purpose of this action research study was to determine how social workers understood their role in the rehabilitation of gang-affiliated, African American, male juvenile delinquents. Differential association theory was used as the conceptual framework to understand the detriment of youth being incarcerated without rehabilitation. One focus group of 5 social workers was formed using purposive sampling of social workers who worked with the juvenile delinquent population in different settings. Manual transcription, hand coding, and thematic analysis were used to analyze the data. Participants explained why social workers see the population of African American, male, juvenile delinquents with gang involvement as vulnerable, reasons for gang affiliation, barriers to treatment, and how to engage this population. Findings include strategies to promote positivity within urban environments, foster a sense community in these areas, and engage clients. Recommendations were made to advocate for policy change, incorporate the arts into intervention, and to create urban beautification programs. Findings and recommendations from this study might bring about social change by providing insight into how social workers understand their role in the rehabilitation of the population of African American, male, juvenile delinquents with gang involvement and what can be done to enhance the social work involvement.

For the past several decades, the county jail in a large metropolitan city in the southeast United States has been overcrowded, which has resulted in violence within the jail, excessive costs to the Sheriff's Office, and a requirement of Federal oversight of the jail from 2005 to 2015. In spite of these events, little is understood about why jail overcrowding is prevalent in the county and what impacts overcrowding may have on the communities around the jail. Using Shaw and McKay's social disorganization theory as the foundation, the purpose of this case study was to understand the unique circumstances around in the geographic region that may contribute to overcrowding in order to avoid the risk of future federal government intervention. Data were collected through interviews with jail administrators and staff, commissioners, and judges. Additionally, publicly available data related to the operations of the jail were collected. These data were inductively coded and then subjected to a thematic analysis procedure. Key findings identified the primary causes of overcrowding to include increases in the number of correctional clients with mental health problems, increases in the number of youthful offenders, and deficiencies in capacity at the primary jail facility that has not kept pace with population changes in the county. Positive social change implications include recommendations to jail administrators and lawmakers to use statutory authority to alleviate some of the problems in and around the jail facility. These recommendations may reduce the financial and legal risk for the county and promote public safety both within and outside the jail.

Female delinquency and adult female incarceration rates increased from the 1980s until the early 2000s. Many of these women and girls have been victimized, and their unresolved victimization issues may have led them to criminal behavior which may not be adequately addressed in the juvenile and criminal justice systems. The theoretical framework for this study consisted of 3 developmental theories (pathways, trauma, and addiction theories) that facilitated an understanding of the impact of victimization and criminality in these women and girls' lives. Florida's Department of Juvenile Justice implemented changes to address the victimization issue in the 10 female gender-specific programs in the state. The purpose of this study was to investigate the extent of that implementation by examining whether those programs use gender-specific interventions and if so, whether they address victimization issues. This quantitative descriptive study investigated the correlation between remedial programming, victimization remediation, and the delinquency facility quality improvement (QI) rating in Florida's gender-specific delinquency programs for girls. Using a checklist questionnaire to gather information on programming content and archival data that reported the state QI ratings, a Fisher's Exact Test was used to determine the relationship between the dependent variable and the independent variable. The results indicated that there was no relationship between the QI ratings and victimization intervention. This study's implication for social change includes the use of findings for future programming and empirical strategies, including victimization interventions. These strategies may decrease future recidivism rates for female delinquents and adult criminality.

The primary purpose of this study was to examine differences in the attributions teachers make toward students in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems. The study utilized vignettes and asked teachers to attribute the responsibility for declines in behavior and academic performance to one of five sources (the student, the parents, the teacher, the court system, or the student's friends). The study further asked teachers to identify the extent to which the changes were due to the student's internal traits and external factors, the likelihood of changes in behavior and academic performance with and without intervention, the teachers' beliefs about their ability to impact change, the amount of time the teachers reported being willing to spend with the students outside of class, and the likelihood of the student pursuing post-secondary education. Teachers were also asked to identify to whom they would first refer the student in the vignette for outside assistance due to declines in behavior and academic performance and then provide all referrals they would make. A total of 224 certified 6th -12th grade teachers in the state of Iowa completed the vignette survey between January 2014 and April 2014. Results indicated that teachers made different attributions toward students on the basis of their involvement in either the child welfare or juvenile justice system. Specifically, teachers attributed the reason for behavioral and academic declines to different sources for students in the child welfare system, the juvenile justice system, and the control condition. Teachers were more likely to attribute academic and behavioral declines to internal factors for students in the juvenile justice system and external factors for students in the child welfare system. Teachers reported students in the juvenile justice system as least likely to change without intervention. The majority of teachers across the three conditions indicated their first referral would be to mental health services within the school. Teachers did not differ in the total number of referrals made, the amount of time until making the referral, the amount of time they would be willing to spend with the student outside of class time in order to impact change, their feelings of efficacy to impact change, and the likelihood of the student obtaining post-secondary education. Finally, limitations of the study are presented, suggestions for future research are discussed, and the implications of this study for teachers and school psychologists are discussed.

This dissertation focused on the topic of youth violence in two very different populations, young workers and youth offenders. Youth violence at the home, in school and in the community has been well documented in the literature but very little is known about the prevalence of and risk factors for victimization at the workplace in young workers. In chapter two, a retrospective cohort study was conducted using National Crime Victimization Survey data from 2008–2012. We calculated a rate of workplace violence victimization and compared those rates between occupations and demographic characteristics in young workers 16–24 years. Multilevel, weighted Poisson regression models were used to compare rates of workplace victimization across occupations and demographic characteristics. The rate of workplace violence victimization was 1.11 (95% CI: 0.95–1.27) incidents per 1,000 employed person-months. Young workers in retail sales occupations had a higher rate of workplace victimization than workers in health care occupations (RR = 0.52, 95% CI: 0.26–1.03) but a lower rate of workplace victimization than workers in protective service occupations (RR = 2.25, 95% CI: 1.34–3.77). Rates of workplace violence victimization differed significantly by age, income and workplace location. In contrast, the prevalence of and risk factors for juvenile offender are well-known. However, there still exist major gaps in determining the effectiveness of tertiary interventions, justice-based processes (i.e. formal appearance in court vs. informal agreement or meeting with court officer) and placement (e.g. detention centers, foster care, mental health institutions). In chapters three and four, the effectiveness of justice-based processes and placement on recidivism in young offenders 12–16.5 years were evaluated using data received from the Iowa Criminal and Juvenile Justice Planning Agency (CJJP) from 2010–2013. Multivariable logistic regression was used to impute risk level scores, to calculate propensity scores and to measure associations between demographic or complaint characteristics and main exposures. A sensitivity analysis was conducted by comparing the associations between process type and recidivism in a sample matched on propensity scores to the original unmatched sample. Cox Proportional Hazards models were used to compare time to recidivism by process type or placement in matched and unmatched samples. In chapter three, out of 2,901 youth offenders, 41% recidivated over an 18-month period. Eighteen percent were formally processed while 82% received an informal agreement. Youth who received an informal agreement had a lower risk of reoffending at any time compared to youth who were formally processed in both the unmatched (HR = 0.93, 95% CI: 0.76–1.13) and matched sample (HR= 0.86, 95% CI: 0.65–1.14). These estimates were not statistically significant. We observed an offense-specific association between processing and recidivism. Property (HR = 0.74; 95% CI: 0.57–0.96) offenders who received an informal agreement were significantly less likely to recidivate compared to property offenders who were formally processed. In chapter four, out of 1,469 youth offenders, 36% recidivated over an 18-month period. Nine percent received placement while 91% did not. Youth who received placement had up to an 87% higher risk of reoffending at any time compared to youth who did not receive placement in both unmatched (HR = 1.52, 95% CI: 1.11–2.08) and matched (HR= 1.87, 95% CI: 1.23–2.84) samples. We observed a charge-specific association between receiving placement and recidivism. Youth charged with a simple misdemeanor (HR = 2.74; 95% CI: 1.63–4.60) or other charges (HR = 6.60, 95% CI: 1.56–28.00) and received placement were significantly more likely to recidivate compared to those who did not receive placement. These findings contribute to the youth violence literature in the following ways. Chapter two identified the occupations and target populations in need of policies and evidence-based interventions aimed at improving the working conditions for young workers. Chapter three and four supports the continual evaluation of the juvenile justice system to determine the best practices that may reduce violence and recidivism in young offenders.

Studies of the association between race/ethnicity and juvenile court outcomes have found that minority youth often receive disadvantaged outcomes compared to similarly situated Whites, and that community context may condition this relationship. Sampson and Laub's (1993) revised conflict perspective is one theoretical model that can potentially explain the social control of youth throughout juvenile justice proceedings. One of the main propositions of Sampson and Laub's (1993) perspective is that communities characterized by underclass poverty and racial inequality will impose greater social control on youth referred to the juvenile court, especially Blacks and youth charged with a drug offense because they are perceived as a threatening population to middle-class values and standards. The current research drew upon Sampson and Laub's (1993) macrolevel theory of inequality and social control to examine the juvenile court outcomes of White, Black, and Hispanic youth from all counties in a Northeast state from 2000-2010. Hierarchical generalized linear modeling (HGLM) was employed to examine the relationship between disadvantaged community characteristics (underclass poverty, racial inequality, ethnic inequality) and juvenile court outcomes; especially if race/ethnicity, drug offending, and type of drug offense (possession versus distribution) tempered these relationships. The results indicate that disadvantaged community characteristics did not directly impact the social control of youth, but individual and joint effects of race/ethnicity and drug offending resulted in greater social control for Black and Hispanic youth of various drug offending combinations. In particular, the effect of race/ethnicity on social control was greater for Hispanic youth compared to Blacks. Depending on the stage examined, the relationship between race/ethnicity, drug offending, and juvenile court outcomes were conditioned by disadvantaged community characteristics. Based on the findings, empirical and theoretical implications are provided that focus on the applicability of Sampson and Laub's (1993) perspective to more recent court outcomes, as well as prevention and intervention programs that focus on decreasing the presence of minority youth in the juvenile justice system. Directions for future research are highlighted to provide greater insights into the circumstances surrounding case outcomes and under what situations community context and race/ethnicity matter in the treatment of youth within the juvenile court.

This research utilised a range of deterministic and stochastic analyses to establish whether Queensland's juvenile justice system processes Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal young male offenders differently. The impetus for this research stemmed from the continued high rates of Aboriginal over-representation within Australia's criminal justice system, despite diversionary measures to reduce such over-representation, and a commitment by the Queensland Government to reduce by 50% the number of Aboriginal peoples in custody by the year 2011. There are two competing hypotheses concerning the cause of this over-representation, (i) external factors such as socioeconomic disadvantage, unemployment or substance abuse, or (ii) systemic disparity within the criminal justice system. For this research, disparity is defined as the unacceptable use of discrimination; discrimination can be appropriate if it is used to define or enhance a situation, such as discriminating between offenders who are recidivists and those who are first time offenders. The inappropriate use of discrimination occurs for example, when harsher sentences are issued to offenders based on non-legal factors such as race or gender. Systemic disparity is therefore used here to represent the inappropriate use of discrimination against an offender by the criminal justice system. The second hypothesis, one of systemic disparity, provided the framework for this research, which posed the following primary question: Is there quantifiable evidence to support the existence of disparity acting against young male Aboriginal offenders within Queensland's juvenile justice system? Two separate but complementary studies were designed to address this issue: the pathways study and the trajectory study. The pathways study utilised 20,648 finalised appearances for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal young male offenders in Queensland's juvenile courts, during 1999 to 2003. Three custodial decision-making stages (police custody, remand, and sentencing) were examined and two questions initially posed: Does the custodial decision made at one stage of the juvenile justice system impact on a subsequent custodial decision-making stage? Does criminal history, Aboriginal status, offence type or an interaction of these factors significantly influence the probability of (i) detention in police custody (ii) court remand (iii) a custodial order at sentencing? It was recognised that other legally relevant factors such as family structure and stability, school attendance and community ties might also influence these custodial decisions; however, for the purposes of this research it was not possible to include these variables in the analyses. Controlling for criminal history, findings from logistic regression analyses indicated that being detained in police custody increased the odds of being remanded into custody, and being remanded into custody increased the odds of a custodial order. Whilst Aboriginal status was not a consistent factor at any of these three custodial stages, there was clear evidence of disparity acting against the young male Aboriginal offender, particularly early in their criminal career. To examine these disparities further, these three custodial stages were modeled as eight processing pathways: four of which resulted in a custodial order and four in a noncustodial order. Using this processing model, a third question was posed: Do young Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal male offenders have different custodial pathways? Findings indicated that Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal young male offenders were in general, processed along similar custodial pathways that did not include police custody, remand or a custodial order. However, young male Aboriginal offenders were less likely than equivalent non-Aboriginal offenders to have been processed along this pathway and more likely to be processed along the pathways that included remand. It was found that young offenders with a chronic criminal history were more likely to be processed along these remand pathways, and Aboriginal offenders were more likely to have a chronic criminal history than non-Aboriginal offenders; there was clear evidence of disparity at specific custodial stages of the system. In addition, as young male Aboriginal offenders progressed deeper into the system there was evidence of cumulative disparity, particularly along the remand pathways, meaning that the probability of being in custody increases as the offender progresses from one custodial stage to the next custodial stage. Given the existence of disparity, acting within the juvenile justice system and against the young male Aboriginal offender, it was important to formulate viable solutions to such disparity, particularly in light of the Queensland government's commitment to reduce Aboriginal offenders in custody by 50%. Deterministic analyses and computer simulations were used to test the viability of various reduction scenarios suggested by the data. Despite in some instances, different results from the deterministic analyses and the computer simulations, overall findings indicated that to reduce custodial disparity whether at the remand stage, the custodial order stage, or in custody overall (the summation of police custody, remand and custodial orders) that reducing remand, regardless of whether the young offender had been in police custody or not, was the best overall solution. The trajectory study built on the findings of the pathways study, which had identified criminal history as an important factor in the processing pathways of young male Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal offenders. Using the semi-parametric group based method, the criminal trajectories of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal young male offenders in Queensland were modeled. These trajectories were based on the finalised appearances of two cohorts of young offenders aged 10 to 17 years of age: those born in 1983 and 1984 and who had turned 18 years of age in 2001 and 2002 respectively. All of these young male offenders had entered the adult system when they turned 17 years of age, and this data provided their complete juvenile history in Queensland. Prior analyses using this method had not considered Aboriginal status or race as a determining factor in these trajectory models, nor had these models been validated either internally or externally in published works. For this research, internal validity was considered as the correct classification of offenders into trajectory groups, and external validity as the ability to reproduce these results in a second or subsequent sample of juvenile offenders. Two questions were therefore posed in the trajectory study: Do young Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal male offenders have different criminal trajectories? Can the predicted model(s) be validated, both internally and externally? Initial findings indicated that the optimal trajectory models selected on prior knowledge and the Bayesian Information Criterion did not validate internally. This finding brought into question the trajectory results of other published works that had not internally validated their models. The models finally selected as optimal indicated that Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal young male offenders did not have a common criminal trajectory and could not be modeled as one population. Both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal young offenders were modeled by a low-frequency group, a late-onset group, and a chronic trajectory group. However, the young male Aboriginal offender was more likely than the non-Aboriginal to have been in the chronic or the late onset group and less likely to have been in the lowfrequency group. External validation utilised an innovative but simple method that utilised all of the data in the modeling process along with a sample of this same data for validation purposes: 10% of the criminal profiles, which were characteristic of the trajectory groups, and a further 5% of randomly selected profiles were chosen for validation. All of the characteristic profiles, but only 50% of the randomly selected profiles were validated, and of the latter, the majority not validated was in the late-onset group. In total, 79.2% of the Aboriginal trajectories and 85.6% of the non-Aboriginal criminal trajectories were correctly externally validated. Overall, there are two important implications from this research for government. First, even though young male Aboriginal offenders are more likely to have a chronic criminal history than non-Aboriginal offenders, this factor does not account for all of the observed disparity acting against the young Aboriginal offender within Queensland's juvenile justice system: there is evidence of disparity within the system that is unaccounted for by either offence type or criminal history. Second, given this chronic criminal history, systemic solutions to systemic disparity whilst viable, will not ultimately resolve this problem: they are only short-term measures at the end of a very long justice system. Longer-term solutions are needed to address external factors such as socio-economic disadvantage, unemployment and substance abuse in Aboriginal communities, before these young people are exposed to the system. Continuing to concentrate on systemic solutions, to such an entrenched problem as Aboriginal overrepresentation and disparity, is a misdirection of system resources and is inconsistent with social justice.

Approximately 2.2 million children and adolescents are arrested each year, and these youthful offenders often display serious psychosocial dysfunction across a wide spectrum of areas: family dysfunction, mental health distress, problems with drug use, risky sexual behaviors, and a history of traumatic experiences. Of particular interest, the rate of female adolescent arrest and incarceration has been on the rise over the past several decades, yet female juvenile offenders are understudied compared with their male peers. It is important to identify risk factors that predispose certain female adolescents to criminal behavior to inform future interventions. Given the associations of mental health problems, substance use, trauma, and family dysfunction with crime in adolescent girls, further study is warranted to more clearly understand the links between these psychosocial factors and criminality in adolescents, especially girls. The impacts of mental health disorders, family functioning, risky sexual behavior, trauma, and substance use on juvenile justice involved youths are of great public health and social importance because of the potential to intervene and to prevent criminal behavior in at-risk teens. However, the relationships between these risk factors and the severity of juvenile offending in girls have not been studied adequately. By analyzing data from interviews and follow-up criminal records for almost 500 arrested and detained adolescent girls, we first investigated the associations between concurrent substance use and psychosocial dysfunction in this population. Secondly, we examined which psychosocial domains (i.e., mental health disorders, substance use/abuse, trauma, sexual behavior, and family functioning) were most predictive of recidivism and violent recidivism during adolescence for this group of offending girls. Finally, we studied which psychosocial variables best predicted time to next arrest, thereby determining if psychosocial functioning can also predict the amount of time before a given adolescent reoffends. Our findings indicated that substance use and sexual risk behaviors are the most important psychosocial predictors of poor outcomes in adolescent female juvenile offenders.

The overall aim of this thesis was to explore patterns of antisocial behaviour, mental health and recidivism among Swedish young offenders in community-based rehabilitative programmes (n=189). Study I explored the character and severity of self-reported behavioural problems prior to programme participation.  Four distinct subgroups were identified: subgroup (SG) 1 (n=60), boys exhibiting adolescent delinquency; SG 2 (n=65), boys exhibi­ting pronounced adolescent delinquency; SG 3 (n=48), boys exhibiting pronounced adolescent delinquency as well as criminality including violence; SG 4 (n=16), boys exhibiting pronounced adolescent delinquency as well as criminality including violence and drug-related crimes. Study II investigated the mental health of the participants, by means of the Strengths and Difficulty Questionnaire (SDQ). When relating SDQ-scores to the previously identified subgroups, SG 1 with the least prominent history of antisocial behaviour was found to resemble a normative sample, while the subgroups with more extensive histories of antisocial behaviour had significantly elevated scores on the hyperactivity/inattention and conduct problem scales. Study III investigated recidivism in criminality in the 18-months following programme start, finding that 60% of the participants had been registered as suspected of new crimes. SG 3 and 4 with the most extensive histories of antisocial behaviour were responsible for a significantly larger part of recidivism than expected. By contrast, SG 1, reporting the least antisocial behaviour in their past, was responsible for a significantly smaller part of the recidivism. This was true for all crimes as well as crimes of violence specifically, confirming the subgroups identified based on the self-reports. The results are related to developmental theories of antisocial behaviour and to contemporary research on risk assessment. Implications for the practice of rehabilitation of convicted young offenders are discussed. / At the time of the doctoral defense, the following papers were unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 1: In press Paper 2: Submitted. Paper 3: Submitted.

The juvenile justice system has been criticized for its inability to curb the trend of juvenile crime and its continued ignorance to the valuable resources of community-based rehabilitation and treatment programs. The goal of this research paper is to discover new solutions to the structural shortcomings of the juvenile justice system and present my findings on the reasons for its contradictive structure and practices.