حبس، آموزش و انتقال بزهکاری

Abstract Purpose Much of what is known regarding the transition away from crime is limited to young adulthood and specific life events and samples of non-serious offenders comprised mainly of white males. Methods The current study assesses the potential links between educational achievement, post-release schooling, and re-arrest for a cohort of 4,147 incarcerated youths drawn from 115 Florida juvenile institutions and followed for two years post-release. Results Incarcerated youths with higher levels of educational achievement are more likely to return to school after release, and those youths who returned to and attended school regularly were less likely to be rearrested within 12 and 24 months. Moreover, among youths who were rearrested, those youth who attended school regularly following release were arrested for significantly less serious offenses compared to youths who did not attend school or attended less regularly. Conclusions The study concludes with discussion of the importance of educational achievement as an important turning point for juvenile offenders as they transition into young adulthood.

Introduction During the past two decades, a series of studies have contributed to a body of literature that has come to be named Developmental/Life-Course criminology (Farrington, 2003). Emerging from these efforts has been a focus on life events occurring during young adulthood that may lead to transition away from criminal behavior. For example, several studies have found that marriage, military experience, and employment contribute to transitions away from crime among some young adults (King et al., 2007, Laub et al., 1998, Laub and Sampson, 2003, Piquero et al., 2002, Sampson and Laub, 1993 and Warr, 1998). Although important, the knowledge base regarding the relationship between life events and persistence/desistance remains limited largely because of the focus on only a few, select life events and the effect of these life events in young adulthood, and the inclusion of mainly samples of non-serious offenders comprised mostly of white males. Also absent from these studies has been an explicit focus on identifying those adolescent life events and associated experiences that may lead to transition from delinquency among serious youthful offenders (Mulvey et al., 2004), a highly relevant policy group for which limited knowledge exists regarding the correlates of persistence/desistance (Laub & Sampson, 2001). Sampson and Laub (1993) have led the more general theoretical and empirical effort regarding the importance of studying life events, and have recently identified certain life events associated with incarceration and post release that may lead to a reduction in subsequent delinquency and crime (Laub & Sampson, 2003). One such life event is educational achievement. Prior research has shown that educational success can lead to a decreased likelihood of delinquency (Arum and Beattie, 1999 and Foley, 2001), that the process of disengagement from school can begin as early as first grade (Finn, 1989, Ensminger and Slusarick, 1992 and Alexander et al., 2001), and that high school dropout (a type of educational “turning point”) has negligible effects on subsequent delinquency, once selection due to stable unobservable variables is taken into consideration (Sweeten, Bushway, & Paternoster, 2009). At the same time, studies linking life transitions to persistence/desistance from offending have not paid specific attention to the potentially important turning point associated with academic achievement generally (Natsuaki et al., 2008), and post release schooling in particular. Further, most studies exploring the relationship between academic achievement and delinquency/crime have relied on normative samples of non-serious offenders. The present study responds to these research voids by assessing the impact of educational achievement during incarceration, post-release schooling, and subsequent re-arrest. Moreover, it examines this association among a very policy-relevant group, serious youthful offenders, for whom little is known regarding the factors that are associated with transitions from crime generally (Laub and Sampson, 2001 and Mulvey et al., 2004), and for whom the link between educational achievement and offending has not been systematically studied. In this regard, it is important to recognize that many serious-offending (and incarcerated) youths exhibit a number of education-related disabilities and histories of poor school achievement (Gottfredson, 2001, Glueck and Glueck, 1950, Loeber and Farrington, 1998 and Payne et al., 2009). Specifically, they are characterized by disproportionate learning, behavioral, and cognitive disabilities, as compared to their non-delinquent counterparts in public schools. Incarcerated youths are typically several years behind their age appropriate grade level and have records of frequent school suspensions, expulsions, or dropout (Juvenile Justice Educational Enhancement Program, 2004). For example, Wang et al. (2005) found that incarcerated youths were significantly more likely to have lower grade point averages (GPAs), lower attendance rates, and more school disciplinary actions than were a matched group of public school students. Additionally, these authors found that incarcerated youths were less likely to be promoted to the next grade level as compared to public school students. Using a sample of nearly 10,000 incarcerated youths in Florida, further analysis revealed that 43% were identified as having a disability, compared to only 15% of the youths in the state's public schools (Juvenile Justice Educational Enhancement Program, 2004). Despite these disproportionate educational deficiencies and histories of poor school achievement, school may potentially serve as one of the more positive and influential institutions for incarcerated youths. Moreover, in most instances, incarcerated youths must attend school, and suspension and expulsion are not imposed for school disciplinary problems. Further, incarcerated youths cannot elect to drop out of school. Consequently, and because of mandatory school attendance, a number of incarcerated youths experience regular and sustained school attendance for the very first time. And because school attendance and participation can increase the likelihood for educational achievement for these youths, educational achievement can help spur stronger attachment and emotional bonds to conventional institutions and behaviors, thereby facilitating the transition from crime. In sum, incarcerated youths who experience educational achievement may be expected to develop stronger school attachment and see the benefits of education and, therefore, be more likely to return to and stay in school following release and be more likely to transition from delinquency. It is this pattern of relationships that has been neglected in the extant literature—especially among serious youthful offenders—and to which we focus on in the current study.

Results To help maintain the framework of an observational study, the intervention of educational achievement while incarcerated is defined as a binary variable: individuals who score above the mean were coded 1 (youth with above average educational achievement) and individuals who scored at or below the mean were coded 0 (youth with below average educational achievement). The former can be thought of as the treatment/intervention group and the latter the control group. Ancillary analysis in which this variable was retained as a continuous variable in the logistic models produced significant effects consistent with the dichotomous measure. Effect of educational achievement while incarcerated on returning to school after release To address the first question of whether higher educational achievement while incarcerated increases the likelihood of youth returning to school following their release, Table 2-A presents a logistic regression model of the outcome variable of whether youth return to school after release. As can be seen, youths released from juvenile institutions who had above average academic achievement while incarcerated were significantly more likely to return to school (B = .525, p < .001), as compared to youths with below average academic achievement. After controlling for several other factors including prior school performance, age at release, race, sex, disability, prior arrests, and various facility characteristics, the odds of youth returning to school with above average academic achievement while incarcerated were 69% higher than for youths with below average academic achievement. This finding indicates that youth who make above average advancements in their academic careers while incarcerated are significantly more likely to be successful in community reintegration in the form of returning to school than those who fail to achieve academically while incarcerated.