Study Finds Youth Detention is Precursor to Criminal Behavior

Youth in contact with the juvenile justice system have substantially increased their risks of engaging in criminal activities during early adulthood, according to a new study published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry.

The study shows that juvenile delinquents were seven times more likely to commit criminal acts as adults than youth from the control group who avoided the juvenile justice system.

The study found that youth in the least restrictive environment like community service reoffended as an adult at a rate of 2.3 percent. However 38 percent of delinquent youth placed in juvenile facilities engaged in adult criminal behavior. "For boys who had been through the juvenile justice system, compared to boys with similar histories without judicial involvement, the odds of adult judicial interventions increased almost seven-fold," says study co-author Richard E. Tremblay, a professor at the University de Montreal.

The research team sought out boys from kindergarten who were at risk for delinquent behavior and who were enrolled at 53 schools from the poorest neighborhoods in Montreal. Some 779 participants were interviewed annually from the age of 10 until 17. By their mid-20s, some 17.6 percent of participants ended up with adult criminal records for infractions that included homicide (17.9 percent); prostitution (25.5 percent); drug possession (16.4 percent) and impaired driving (8.8 percent).

"The more intense the help given by the juvenile justice system, the greater was its negative impact," Dr. Tremblay stresses. "Our findings take on even greater importance given that the juvenile justice system in the province of Quebec has the reputation of being among the best. Most countries spend considerable financial resources to fund programs and institutions that group deviant youths together in order to help them. The problem is that delinquent behavior is contagious, especially among adolescents. Putting deviant adolescents together creates a culture of deviance, which increases the likelihood of continued criminal behavior."

"Two solutions exist for this problem," adds Dr Tremblay. "The first is to implement prevention programs before adolescence when problem children are more responsive. The second is to minimize the concentration of problem youths in juvenile justice programs, thereby reducing the risk of peer contagion."

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