Prior research indicates that adolescent offenders transferred to adult court are more likely to recidivate than those retained in the juvenile system. The studies supporting this conclusion, however, are limited in addressing the issue of heterogeneity among transferred adolescents. This study estimates the effect of transfer on later crime using a sample of 654 serious juvenile offenders, 29% of whom were transferred. We use propensity score matching to reduce potential selection bias, and we partition the sample on legal characteristics to examine subgroup effects. We find an overall null effect of transfer on re-arrest, but evidence of differential effects of transfer for adolescents with different offending histories. These results suggest that evaluating the effects of transfer for all transferred adolescents together may lead to misguided policy conclusions.
This study examines changes over time in ethnic affirmation/belonging and ethnic identity achievement, Spanish language use, English language use, Mexican/Mexican-American affiliation/ identification and Anglo affiliation/identification in a sample of Mexican-American adolescents participating in a longitudinal study of juvenile offenders. The Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure and the Acculturation Rating Scale for Mexican Americans-II were completed by the MexicanAmerican adolescents 7 times over a 3-year period. The findings from longitudinal growth modeling analyses and growth mixture modeling analyses indicate that there is heterogeneity in the initial scores and changes over time on these variables that are related to markers for the cultural qualities of the home environment (i.e., generational status and mother's most frequent language use). In contrast to expectations, marginalized or assimilated acculturation trajectories/types were not overrepresented in this sample of adolescent offenders. Implications for our understanding of the nature of acculturation and enculturation processes and the way these processes are studied are discussed.As a result of immigration and birth rates the ethnic minority populations (i.e., Latinos, Asian Americans, etc.) in the United States are rapidly increasing in absolute and relative size (U.S. Census Bureau, 2004). Further, for some ethnic minority groups, increased exposure to the mainstream culture of the United States has been associated with increased delinquency (Buriel, Calzada, & Vasquez, 1982;Fridrich & Flannery, 1995;Samaniego & Gonzalez, 1999;Vega, Khoury, Zimmerman, Gil, & Warhaheit, 1995;Wall, Power, & Arbona, 1993) and poor mental health (Hovey & King, 1996;Katragadda & Tidwell, 1998;Rasmussen, Negy, Carlson, & Burns, 1997;Rogler, Cortes, & Malgady, 1991). Several authors (e.g., Gonzales, Knight, Morgan-Lopez, Saenz, & Sirolli, 2002;Szapocznik & Kurtines, 1993) NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript demands to adapt to both the mainstream and ethnic cultures experienced by ethnic minority youths may create challenges that place them at risk for negative mental health outcomes (i.e., depression, low self-esteem, or conduct problems) and negative life outcomes (i.e., school failure, drug and alcohol abuse, juvenile delinquency, and financial instability). That is, ethnic minority individuals may be at greater risk because they are often expected to adhere to many of the behavioral expectations and values of the ethnic culture in their home and proximal neighborhood while at the same time they are expected to adhere to the behavioral expectations and values of the mainstream culture at school and in the broader community.Although some (e.g., Berry, 2006) describe this dual cultural adaptation under the rubric of acculturation, we describe this dual cultural adaptation as occurring through the processes of acculturation and enculturation (Gonzales et al., 2002;Knight, Jacobson, Gonzales, Roosa, & Saenz, 2009) to diff...
Past research suggests that early pubertal maturation predicts delinquency for Anglo American boys. Little research has been done on the effects of pubertal maturation on problem behavior for boys of other ethnic groups. This study investigated the relationship between relative pubertal status and delinquency for Anglo American, African American, and Mexican American adolescent boys. Early-maturing boys across all three ethnic groups reported higher levels of both violent and nonviolent delinquentbehavior. These results are consistent with a theory of differential peer access and not consistent with a theory of asynchronicity between testosterone-driven aggression and social-cognitive maturity.
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