Girls With Incarcerated Parents:a Longitudinal Analysis of Adolescent Delinquency and Juvenile Arrest
Year: 2018
Type: article
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: Children with incarcerated parents have been shown to be at increased risk of acting out, exhibiting delinquent behaviors, and becoming involved with the criminal justice system. Research has done little to examine girls’ delinquency with relation to parental incarceration and its effects on girls’ juvenile justice system involvement. This dissertation advances our understanding of girls with incarcerated parents in three important ways: time-ordered data allows for controlling factors prior to a girl’s parental incarceration; delinquency measures are specifically created to compare girls with each other as well as track change over time; and comparison groups are designed according to a parents’ criminal justice system involvement, as gathered through primary data collection. The aim of this study is to identify and measure the independent effects of parental incarceration on girls’ delinquency and arrest. Initial comparisons between groups indicate significant differences in delinquency and arrest between girls with and without incarcerated parents. Girls with incarcerated parents and girls with parents who have been involved with the criminal justice system but never incarcerated showed similar levels of delinquency and arrest. Analyses rerun on propensity score matched groups find that the differences in delinquency and arrest are no longer significant between any groups. Questions about the roles of contextual factors in the lives of girls are addressed.
Author: Heath C. Johnson
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2808591788