Bridging Disciplinary Boundaries (January 11 - 14, 2007)

Purpose: Several indicators suggest that the number of juveniles in residentially incarcerated settings is increasing and this phenomenon exacerbates disproportionate confinement of minority youth, particularly African-Americans. The purpose of our investigation was to compare characteristics of incarcerated African-American and Caucasian youth in a statewide population of juvenile offenders. Our aim was to focus on mental health, substance use, delinquent conduct, and victimization variables in an effort to identify patterns to inform policy, practice and future research. Specifically, as a first step toward understanding if differential chains of risk mechanisms operate for each group. Thus, indicating possibly different risk pathways that can inform prevention and reentry services. Methods: Structured face-to-face interviews of 238 African-American residential youth (M age = 15.5, SD = 1.2; 93% male) and 400 Caucasian youth (M age = 15.5, SD = 1.2; 84% male) in all 32 Missouri Division of Youth Services facilities were conducted. All youth providing written informed consent completed a 45-minute interview assessing lifetime and annual use of various psychoactive substances, substance-related problems, current and lifetime mental health symptoms, thoughts of suicide and actual suicide attempts, trauma history, and violent and nonviolent criminal activity. A sequence of analyses beginning with specific mean differences across variables using t-tests and accompanying effect sizes using Cohen's d were followed by logistic regression analyses (for binary variables) and Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression for continuous scales. Results: Univariate findings revealed that Caucasian youth reported significantly higher (i.e., p<.001) mean levels of mental health distress including suicide ideation, lifetime substance use and earlier initiation of offending and intoxicants. African-American youth, however, reported significantly higher mean levels of overall delinquency, violence, personal victimizations, gang fighting, weapon carrying and traumatic experiences. Logistic regression analyses showed that African-American youth were approximately 67% less likely than Caucasian youth to use substances and not remembering what happened (OR=.335, p<.001), but were approximately twice as likely as White youth to have witnessed someone severely injured or killed in person (OR=2.08, p=.002), nearly five times more likely than Caucasian youth to report being in a gang fight (OR=4.63, p<.001), and approximately 65% more likely to have carried a hidden weapon (OR=1.64, p<.05). Further, OLS regression models showed that prior victimization was an important predictor of mental health symptoms (b=1.13, p<.001) for African-American youth, but not for Caucasian juveniles. Implications for policy and practice: Our findings indicate that African-American youth face somewhat different life problems that possess enormous implications for pathways to criminal justice system involvement and post-release transition. In terms of policy, decisions that ameliorate concentrated disadvantage in urban areas are likely to have broad effects including preventing future incarceration and recidivism. Thus, the massive wave of incarceration which has disproportionately affected African-Americans is not only tied to system-wide punitive measures, but also to the initial social conditions that spawn and maintain problem behaviors. Within the juvenile system, recognition of these patterns may help to improve post-release services by tailoring or adapting pre-existing programs to patterns of risk factors and their relative magnitudes of effect.