The Liberation Hypothesis Perspective and Juvenile Court Outcomes: Implications for an Understanding of the Interplay Between Offender and Offense Characteristics

Abstract

Extensive empirical support demonstrates the importance of legal (e.g., crime severity, prior record) and extralegal factors (e.g., race/ethnicity, gender) in predicting juvenile court outcomes. An understudied area is inquiry into how certain extralegal factors interact with legal determinants to impact the social control of juveniles. This study uses a sample of delinquent referrals from a Northeast state over 10 years to examine the impact of race/ethnicity, gender, crime severity, and prior record, individually and in combination, on juvenile court outcomes. Although the liberation hypothesis predicts that extralegal factors have a diminishing effect on case outcomes as the severity of the case increases, overall, we fail to find support for this expectation.

Crossroads in juvenile justice: The impact of initial processing decision on youth 5 years after first arrest

“…Although the juvenile justice system's ability to utilize discretionary processes was intended to benefit youth and society, little is known about the actual consequences of various paths through which the system can process and sanction youth (Lau et al, 2018; Petitclerc et al, 2013). A few studies have examined how these decisions are made (Beaudry-Cyr, Leiber, Brubaker, & Jaynes, 2020; Fine et al, 2017) and how much youth understand their conditions (Schwalbe & Koetzle, 2020), yet they do not focus on the long-term consequences of these decisions. In fact, despite juvenile justice system contact being viewed to be a critical point in youths’ lives that likely has long-term implications for both sustained justice system contact and opportunities for a successful future (Beardslee et al, 2019; Verbruggen et al, 2016), few longitudinal studies have examined the effects of present-day juvenile justice system processing in multiple justice systems within the United States across a wide range of outcomes over an extended follow-up period.…”

Psychological Knowledge Used In Criminal Practice With The Involvement Of Minors

“…If a case of analyzing the current practice for investigation, it can be mentioned that the key and most common form of participation of a psychologist is psychological expertise in court or complex expert psychiatric examination, usually called for a minor suspect and an accused (Beaudry-Cyr et al, 2020).…”