Young Adult Outcomes of Juvenile Court Involved Girls

Background and purpose:

Despite an increase in the number of girls involved in the juvenile justice system, little information is available on the trajectories into adulthood of female juvenile offenders; more is known about males. Other systems, notably child welfare, have recognized the importance of using information on young adult outcomes to inform both intervention and policy, as improved adult functioning is an implicit goal of youth-serving systems.

This study is designed to increase knowledge on the relationships among childhood, adolescent, and young adult outcomes for female juvenile offenders. Its aim is to model young adult trajectories of females petitioned for juvenile offenses, using a child and adolescent risk and protective factors framework

Methods:

Data were drawn from administrative records across service sectors in a Midwest metropolitan region. The sample contained 700 female, mostly African American subjects born between 1982 and 1989 who were reported for child maltreatment and/or lived in families receiving support from Aid to Families with Dependent Children during childhood, and who had been petitioned for an offense in the juvenile court. Subjects were 18 to 23 years old at the conclusion of the study. Outcomes measured were adult criminal justice system involvement, adult income maintenance (TANF) use, and adult use of publicly funded mental health and/or substance use services. Multivariate competing risks analyses determined the statistical significance of associations between selected potential risk and protective factors and adult outcomes.

Results:

Approximately 60% of subjects experienced none of the young adult outcomes during the study period. In the model of criminal justice system involvement, significant risk factors were residence in the city (hazard ratio = 2.34; log-rank ÷2 = 5.32; p<.05), juvenile court recidivism (hazard ratio = 1.16; log-rank ÷2 = 16.93; p<.0001), and juvenile justice intervention (hazard ratio = 2.81; log-rank ÷2 = 7.10; p<.01). Over time, delinquent youth and those with incarcerated caregivers had an increased risk of adult criminal justice contact.

Learning disability (hazard ratio = 2.21; log-rank ÷2 = 4.96; p<.05) and adolescent parenthood (hazard ratio = 2.62; log-rank ÷2 = 11.20; p<.001) were associated with young adult use of publicly funded mental health or substance use services. An interaction between African American ethnicity and caregiver education indicates that African American women with high school educated caregivers are less likely than others to access these services.

Risk factors for adult income maintenance use were African American ethnicity (hazard ratio = 2.23; log-rank ÷2 = 7.96; p<.01) and adolescent parenthood (hazard ratio = 9.45; log-rank ÷2 = 87.54; p<.0001). Learning disability and adult parenthood interact with time to increase risk.

Conclusions:

Compared with prior research on men, young women in this sample were less likely to experience negative outcomes. Because risk factors differ according to outcome, a ‘one size fits all' intervention is not likely to prevent negative outcomes in different domains of transition-age functioning. Rather, the needs and resources of juvenile court involved girls require services to be flexible and responsive to diversity.