Health Risk Behavior Among Justice Involved Male and Female Youth: Exploratory, Multi-Group Latent Class Analysis

Abstract

Results indicate a three class solution provided the optimal fit with the data for each gender group: a Lower Health Risk group, a Higher Health Risk group, and a Highest Health Risk group. Multinomial logistic regression analysis identified significant sociodemographic and depression effects among both male and female youth. Conclusions/Importance: Youth characterized by risky sexually behavior, elevated depression, and drug involvement should be the focus of integrated intervention services. This study documents the critical need for front end, juvenile justice intake facilities to provide behavioral and public health screening, with treatment follow-up, on newly arrested youth.

Substance Use and HIV Among Justice-Involved Youth: Intersecting Risks

“…Of the 46 studies that enrolled justice-involved youth (e.g., court-involved truancy, arrestees, probation, juvenile drug court, detention), a little over half of the studies (54%; n=25) included youth who were community-supervised (e.g., truancy, juvenile drug court or juvenile probation) and approximately 47% (n=21) focused on detained or incarcerated youth. With respect to study design, 22% (n=10) were intervention trials [28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37] of which 9 were randomized controlled trials (RCTs); 56% (n=26) were cross-sectional [6, and 22% (n=10) were longitudinal or prospective analysis designs [11,[63][64][65][66][67][68][69][70][71]. At time of enrollment, study participant ages ranged from 11-18 years with most studies including age range of 13-17 years and several studies extending into young adulthood (i.e., up to 30 years of age [11,27,59,61]).…”

“…Studies have found that drug use (e.g., marijuana and other drugs) is associated with unprotected sex (e.g., inconsistent condom use), number of sexual partners, drug use during sexual activity and increased rates of STIs [49,51,58]. Several studies focused specifically on the effects of marijuana [6,54] or alcohol [39] alone. For example, one study found that attention-deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) was associated with sexual risk behavior for youth with conduct problems, but that cannabis use completely accounted for this association [54].…”

“…Several cross-sectional studies identified critical social ecological factors associated with enhanced risk for substance use and HIV, such as gang violence (e.g., being gang-involved and/or having a dating partner who was gang-involved) [47,60,62,65], dating violence victimization [61] and a history of child maltreatment [57]. Several studies also included psychiatric risk factors, such as depression [6]. The majority of cross-sectional studies focused on individual-level factors associated with HIV and substance use risk and, as stated above, several studies included an examination of larger socioecological factors [42,46].…”

“…In 2016, over 850,000 youth under age 18 were arrested [4] At any given time, nearly 50,000 youth are incarcerated or detained in residential settings [5]. Prevalence of other sexually transmitted infections (STIs) among youth with justice involvement is significantly higher than what is observed in the general adolescent population, ranging from 9% and 13% chlamydia diagnosis among newly arrested males and females, respectively [6] to 20% to 42% infection rates in studies of detained females [7]. Yet prevalence rates of HIV among the juvenile justice population remain largely unknown and challenging to accurately measure, particularly since many youth are not screened for HIV when entering the juvenile justice system [8,9].…”

Justice involvement and girls' sexual health: Directions for policy and practice

“…Compared to girls in the general population, justice-involved girls experience earlier sexual debut, higher rates of sexual activity, and higher numbers of lifetime partners (Biswas & Vaughn, 2011;Braverman, 2011;Dembo, Belenko, Childs, Greenbaum, & Wareham, 2010;Dembo et al, 2017;Gallagher, Dobrin, & Douds, 2007;Golzari, Hunt, & Anoshiravani, 2006;Hatcher, King, Nordberg, Bryant, & Woolen, 2018;Kaplan et al, 2001;Kelly, Morgan-Kidd, Champion, & Wood, 2003;Morris et al, 1995;Odgers, Robins, & Russell, 2010;Rizk & Alderman, 2012). Other risks are also prevalent in studies with justiceinvolved samples: One study reported that 19% of detained girls (n = 197) disclosed exchanging sex for money or drugs within the previous two months (Crosby et al, 2004).…”