Juvenile delinquency continues to be a social ill with parents often being liable for their child's reprehensible behavior. In this nonexperimental, correlational study, the relationship between experienced parenting style and psychosocial maturity was examined in a sample of juvenile offenders receiving intensive in-home services. The General Theory of crime by Gottfredson and Hirshi provided the framework for the study along with parenting style typologies by Baumrind. Data were collected from a convenience sample of 60 11th grade juvenile offenders and their parent/caretakers using questionnaires. Multiple regression analysis was used to examine the data. The Psychosocial Maturity Index was used to measure psychosocial maturity, and the Parenting Skills Dimensions Questionnaire Short Version was used to measure experienced parenting style. Results indicated parenting style did not account for the variance in measures of psychosocial maturity. Stakeholders may benefit from an improved understanding of how measures of psychosocial maturity are impacted by parenting practices.

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As the courts have evolved over the past 30 years towards increasingly punitive sanctions for youthful offenders, the fundamental protections afforded to adult defendants have become increasingly relevant for youthful offenders. Among these protections, the right of juveniles to be competent to stand trial has gained nearly universal recognition throughout this country’s courts. Congruent with theory and previous research, we hypothesized that age, intellectual ability, psychiatric symptomatology, and maturity would all be directly related to adolescents’ competence. It was also anticipated that adolescents in the detention sample would evidence lower maturity and competency-related abilities compared to the community sample. Expanding on previous research that has consistently documented an association between age and competence, we hypothesized that psychosocial maturity would partially mediate this relationship. Further, we hypothesized that psychosocial maturity would moderate the direct relations between intellectual ability, psychiatric symptomatology, and competence. In order to test these hypotheses, we utilized a secondary sample from the MacArthur Adjudicative Competence Study that included 927 male and female adolescents ages 11- to 17-years-old recruited from 11 juvenile detention facilities and their surrounding communities. Results demonstrated that age, intellectual ability, and maturity were each directly positively related to competence, and psychiatric symptomatology was negatively related to competence. Further, results provided some support for the hypothesis that maturity partially explains the relationship between age and competence. While the relationship between psychiatric symptomatology and competence did not vary across high and low levels of maturity, results supported the hypothesis that the relationship between intellectual ability and competence varies across high and low levels of psychosocial maturity. Findings suggest that intellectual ability plays an essential role in juveniles’ adjudicative competence and can serve as a protective factor against some aspects of immaturity. Given these findings, it is suggested that youth with deficient intellectual abilities facing the possibility of transfer be automatically referred for evaluations of adjudicative competence. Further, findings suggest that maturity appears to warrant further attention from researchers and clinicians involved in evaluating juveniles’ adjudicative competence. Results are discussed in terms of the legal and clinical implications of developmental immaturity on the prosecution of youthful offenders.

The current study examined the influence of parental warmth/support on adolescent psychological well-being (i.e., depression and psychosocial maturity), and how the impact of parental warmth/support on these outcomes may differ based on the relationship an adolescent is able to develop with at least one teacher at school (i.e., teacher-student bond). It was of particular interest to explore whether a close teacher-student bond might moderate the effect a parent-child relationship lacking warmth and support has on adolescent depressive symptoms and psychosocial maturity. Participants were a sample of 15-year-old adolescents (N= 815) from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development. Multiple regression analyses were conducted to explore the potential interaction effects of teacher bonding and parental warmth/support on depressive symptoms and psychosocial maturity in 15-year-old adolescents. Results suggested that the teacher-adolescent relationship moderated the impact of parental warmth/support on adolescent depression scores for female adolescents only. The teacher-adolescent relationship did not moderate the influence of parental warmth/support on adolescent psychosocial maturity.