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Keywords: juvenile offenders, aggression, racial socialization, moral disengagement, risk model
Abstract
Risk assessment instruments are commonly used within the juvenile justice system to estimate a juvenile's likelihood of reoffending or engaging in aggressive or violent behavior. Although such instruments assess a broad range of factors, the influence of culture is often excluded. The current study examines the unique effect of ethnic/ racial socialization on recent aggressive behaviors above and beyond three well-established risk and protective factors: delinquency history, moral disengagement, and social support. Participants were 95 juveniles who were either on probation or in detention centers in three Midwestern counties and who completed structured surveys related to personal experiences within and outside of the juvenile justice system. The findings provided partial support for our hypotheses: Consistent with previous findings, delinquency history and moral disengagement were significant predictors of recent aggressive behavior. Furthermore, when ethnic/racial socialization was added to the model, promotion of mistrust provided additional predictive validity for aggressive behavior above and beyond the other factors assessed. Based on these findings, the inclusion of education on culture may prove to be an important supplement to established intervention tools for juvenile offenders.
Background
Violence or aggressive behavior among youth is a significant public health concern, with recent statistics estimating that youth are involved in 1 in 13 arrests for murder and approximately 1 in 5 arrests for robbery, burglary, and larcenytheft (U.S. Department of Justice, 2013). Violence involving youth is the third leading cause of death for individuals aged 15 to 24 (Centers for Disease Control, 2015). While the trend for violent crimes among youthful offenders has demonstrated marked decreases for more than two decades (Puzzanchera, 2013), concern about juvenile crime is warranted given that recidivism rates among youthful offenders still remain high-ranging from 50% to 80% (Seigle, Walsh, & Weber, 2014). Moreover, others have suggested that youth who persist in their delinquent behavior are responsible for a majority of crimes committed by juveniles and, later, by adult offenders (Moffitt, 1993). Juvenile delinquency is also associated with a number of adverse consequences during adolescence, including depression (Cleverley, Szatmari, Vaillancourt, Boyle, & Lipman, 2012; Fite, Raine, Stouthamer-Loeber, Loeber, & Pardini, 2010), substance abuse (Tiet, Wasserman, Loeber, McReynolds, & Miller, 2001; Fite et al., 2010), antisocial...