The Effects of Committal to a Special School for Truants

Length of stay, therapeutic change, and recidivism for incarcerated juvenile offenders

“…The recidivism rate among the five lengths of stay levels stayed consistent with a slight, nonsignificant, dip for stays lasting 9-11 months. This finding adds to a growing body of literature also failing to find any empirical support for the relationship between longer custodial sentences and reduced future offending (Gendreau et al, 1996;Kraus, 1981;Loughran et al, 2009;Lovins, 2013;Winokur et al, 2008). An important implication of the current study is that providing a therapeutic environment does not change this effect (length of stay and outcomes) for the general population of youth in placement.…”

“…However, even with this decline, the United States continues to commit the largest proportion of youth to placement among industrialized countries (Hazel, 2008), with around 41,934 youth in postadjudicatory facilities a day (Sickmund et al, 2015). Systematic reviews of correctional treatment, including meta-analyses of community and institutional sanctions show mixed results regarding the effect of incarceration on recidivism (Kraus, 1981;Lipsey & Cullen, 2007;Lipsey & Wilson, 1998;Nagin, Cullen, & Jonson, 2009;Villettaz, Killias, & Zoder, 2006). This lack of clear effect between juvenile incarceration and subsequent recidivism is due to differences in the needs of youth sent to these facilities as well as diversity in programming and environmental quality (Lipsey & Cullen, 2007).…”

“…Thus far, research on length of stay for juvenile institutional care has involved facilities without any explicit therapeutic orientation. Among these studies, there is either no meaningful difference in length of stay (Kraus, 1981;Winokur, Smith, Bontrager, & Blankenship, 2008), or a modest relationship between increasing length of stay and increasing recidivism (Gendreau, Little, & Goggin, 1996;Lovins, 2013). In the most recent and well-controlled study thus far on juvenile incarceration and length of stay (Loughran, Schubert, Fagan, Piquero, & Losoya, 2009), researchers found no benefit to longer or shorter stays and no differences in placement versus probation after matching samples.…”

Relationship Between Prison Length of Stay and Recidivism: A Study Using Regression Discontinuity and Instrumental Variables With Multiple Break Points

“…Nagin, Cullen, and Jonson identified two experiments (Berecochea, Jaman, and Jones, ; Deschenes, Turner, and Petersilia, ) and three matching studies (Jaman, Dickover, and Bennett, ; Kraus, ; Loughran et al., ) aimed at evaluating the effect of length of stay in their 2009 review. They concluded there was no evidence of a dose‐response relationship between time served and recidivism.…”

Assessing the impact of imprisonment on recidivism

“…We next explain the details of the specific mechanics of how a precision matching dataset of prison and Community Control cases was created from the 144,416 cases on a step-by-step basis. The reason for a detailed explanation is because most prior studies examining the effect of imprisonment on recidivism using this methodology fail to explain the technicalities associated conducting precision matching (Kraus 1974(Kraus , 1978(Kraus , 1981Muiluvuori 2001;Savoainen 1968;Smith and Akers 1993; for an exception, see Petersilia et al 1986). 8 This is problematic since readers may not be able to assess the accuracy of the precision matching process and to assist those who seek to replicate or improve upon previously used methods.…”