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Does contact with the justice system deter or promote future delinquency? Results from a longitudinal study of British adolescent twins.

ABSTRACT: What impact does formal punishment have on antisocial conduct-does it deter or promote it? The findings from a long line of research on the labeling tradition indicate formal punishments have the opposite-of-intended consequence of promoting future misbehavior. In another body of work, the results show support for deterrence-based hypotheses that punishment deters future misbehavior. So, which is it? We draw on a nationally representative sample of British adolescent twins from the Environmental Risk (E-Risk) Longitudinal Twin Study to perform a robust test of the deterrence versus labeling question. We leverage a powerful research design in which twins can serve as the counterfactual for their co-twin, thereby ruling out many sources of confounding that have likely impacted prior studies. The pattern of findings provides support for labeling theory, showing that contact with the justice system-through spending a night in jail/prison, being issued an anti-social behaviour order (ASBO), or having an official record-promotes delinquency. We conclude by discussing the impact these findings may have on criminologists' and practitioners' perspective on the role of the juvenile justice system in society.

SUBMITTER: Motz RT

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7317788 | biostudies-literature | 2020 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Does contact with the justice system deter or promote future delinquency? Results from a longitudinal study of British adolescent twins.

Motz Ryan T RT Barnes J C JC Caspi Avshalom A Arseneault Louise L Cullen Francis T FT Houts Renate R Wertz Jasmin J Moffitt Terrie E TE

Criminology : an interdisciplinary journal 20191229 2

What impact does formal punishment have on antisocial conduct-does it deter or promote it? The findings from a long line of research on the labeling tradition indicate formal punishments have the opposite-of-intended consequence of promoting future misbehavior. In another body of work, the results show support for deterrence-based hypotheses that punishment deters future misbehavior. So, which is it? We draw on a nationally representative sample of British adolescent twins from the Environmental ...[more]

PMID: 32612292

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Project description:Introduction Parental monitoring is a key intervention target for adolescent substance use, however this practice is largely supported by causally uninformative cross-sectional or sparse-longitudinal observational research designs. Methods We therefore evaluated relationships between adolescent substance use (assessed weekly) and parental monitoring (assessed every two months) in 670 adolescent twins for two years. This allowed us to assess how individual-level parental monitoring and substance use trajectories were related and, via the twin design, to quantify genetic and environmental contributions to these relationships. Furthermore, we attempted to devise additional measures of parental monitoring by collecting quasi-continuous GPS locations and calculating a) time spent at home between midnight and 5am and b) time spent at school between 8am-3pm. Results ACE-decomposed latent growth models found alcohol and cannabis use increased with age while parental monitoring, time at home, and time at school decreased. Baseline alcohol and cannabis use were correlated (r = .65) and associated with baseline parental monitoring (r = −.24 to −.29) but not with baseline GPS measures (r = −.06 to −.16). Longitudinally, changes in substance use and parental monitoring were not significantly correlated. Geospatial measures were largely unrelated to parental monitoring, though changes in cannabis use and time at home were highly correlated (r = −.53 to −.90), with genetic correlations suggesting their relationship was substantially genetically mediated. Due to power constraints, ACE estimates and biometric correlations were imprecisely estimated. Most of the substance use and parental monitoring phenotypes were substantially heritable, but genetic correlations between them were not significantly different from 0. Discussion Overall, we found developmental changes in each phenotype, baseline correlations between substance use and parental monitoring, co-occurring changes and mutual genetic influences for time at home and cannabis use, and substantial genetic influences on many substance use and parental monitoring phenotypes. However, our geospatial variables were mostly unrelated to parental monitoring, suggesting they poorly measured this construct. Furthermore, though we did not detect evidence of genetic confounding, changes in parental monitoring and substance use were not significantly correlated, suggesting that, at least in community samples of mid-to-late adolescents, the two may not be causally related.

Project description:Social learning theories assume that delinquent peer norms and/or peer pressure are the components of delinquent peer socialization that lead to subsequent adolescent delinquency. However, these specific peer influences are rarely investigated. Moreover, social learning theories such as coercion theory posit that parenting behaviors also play an important role in the development or prevention of delinquency. However, surprisingly, little research has investigated whether parent behaviors could moderate the link between the above-described peer influences and adolescent delinquency. Hence, using structural equation modeling, the current 1-year longitudinal study investigated these questions among ethnically-diverse Dutch adolescents (N = 602; M age = 13.50; 46.42% female at baseline), who were mostly between12 and 15 years old. Additionally, using multi-group models, and a stringent p-value of p < 0.01, we explored whether gender and adolescent phase (i.e., early versus middle adolescence) further moderated these links. The majority of the analyses, resulted in non-significant findings. Specifically, in our non-multi group model, we found no significant peer, and family effects for the entire sample. However, for our multi-group models, we found that higher levels of negative mother-adolescent relationship quality exacerbated the link between peer pressure and subsequent early adolescent boys' delinquency 1 year later, while low levels of mother-adolescent negative relationship quality reversed the association. That is, low levels of mother-adolescent negative relationship quality attenuated the link from higher levels of peer pressure to higher levels of delinquency, but only in early adolescent boys. These findings existed above and beyond significant links from prior adolescent delinquency (T1) to future adolescent delinquency (T2). To conclude, although this was not the case for most adolescents, for early adolescent boys fewer negative interactions between mother and adolescents at an earlier time point (in advance) could potentially curtail the negative effects that delinquent peer pressure has on delinquency in the future. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

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Does contact with the justice system deter or promote future delinquency? Results from a longitudinal study of British adolescent twins.

Publications

Does contact with the justice system deter or promote future delinquency? Results from a longitudinal study of British adolescent twins.

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