Trauma and the Social Context: Examining Criminal-Justice Involvement Among Homeless Youth

Background/Purpose: As many as 1.7 million youth are estimated to experience homelessness at any given time in the U.S. More than half of homeless youth report being arrested or spending time in jail at least once, which places homeless youth at increased risk of criminal justice involvement than their housed peers.  Homeless youth also report higher rates of trauma and victimization, as well as engagement in substance use and other high-risk behaviors.  While these individual factors associated with justice involvement are fairly well documented in the literature, little is known about the social contexts of homeless youth and how they contribute to justice involvement and incarceration among this marginalized group of youth. This study uses a social network lens to look beyond individual factors to gain a better understanding of who homeless youth connect to and how the normative and functional aspects of these relationships are associated with criminal justice involvement among homeless youth. 

Methods: Egocentric network data was collected from homeless youth, who were all accessing services at two drop-in centers in Los Angeles, CA (N=1046).  Outcome variables included whether youth had ever been arrested (yes/no) or been to jail (yes/no). Assessment of both normative and functional aspects of social networks included 1) perceived drug use by social network members; 2) objections of drug use from social network members and 3) receipt of material and emotional support from social network members. These social network characteristics were separated by relationship roles (i.e. family, peers, caseworkers etc.).  Multivariate logistic analyses were conducted to understand associations between source-specific social network characteristics and arrest and jail history among our participants. 

Results: Almost 60% (n=612) reported ever being in jail and approximately 70% (n=700) reported ever being arrested. In regards to trauma, experiencing family violence and personal violence (OR=3.14; CI=2.33-4.25) were significantly associated with reporting a history of ever being arrested. Experiencing sexual abuse, on the other hand, was significantly associated with youth reporting ever being in jail (OR= 1.90; CI= 1.34-2.70). In regards to social network characteristics, having street-based peers who were hard-drug users was significantly associated with both arrest history (OR=-4.23; CI= 1.57- 11.36) and jail history (OR=2.75; CI=1.16-6.52). On the other hand, having emotional support from home-based peers reduced their likelihood of reporting ever being arrested (OR=0.35; CI= 0.170-0.73) and having instrumental support from home-based peers reduced their likelihood of ever being in jail (OR=0.43; CI= 0.20- 0.96). 

Conclusions and Implications: The results from this study continue to demonstrate that histories of trauma are strongly associated with justice involvement among homeless youth.  Further, the results highlight the important influence of home-based peer relationships on justice involvement among homeless youth. These findings not only suggest the need to incorporate trauma screening and develop trauma-informed services for homeless youth, the findings also implicate the need for developing interventions or programs that leverage their relationships with home-based peers.