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

• Published date: 01 May 2020
• Author: Renate Houts,Terrie E. Moffitt,Avshalom Caspi,Francis T. Cullen,J.C. Barnes,Ryan T. Motz,Jasmin Wertz,Louise Arseneault
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9125.12236
• Date: 01 May 2020

Received: 15 February 2019 Revised: 31 October 2019 Accepted: 9 November2019

DOI: 10.1111/1745-9125.12236

ARTICLE

Does contact with the justice system deter or

promote future delinquency? Results from a

longitudinal study of British adolescent twins∗

Ryan T. Motz1J.C. Barnes1Avshalom Caspi2,3,4, 5

Louise Arseneault5Francis T. Cullen1Renate Houts2

Jasmin Wertz2Terrie E. Moffitt2,3,4, 5

1School of Criminal Justice, University of Cincinnati

2Department of Psychology & Neuroscience, Duke University

3Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, Duke University School of Medicine

4Center for Genomic and Computational Biology, Duke University

5MRC Social, Genetic, & Developmental Psychiatry Centre, Institute of Psychiatry,Psychology, & Neuroscience, King’s

College London

Correspondence

RyanT. Motz, School of Criminal Justice, Uni-

versityof Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH 45221.

Email:motzr t@mail.uc.edu

Fundinginformation

U.K.Medical Research Council, Grant/Award

Number:G1002190; National Institute of Child

Health and Human Development,Grant/Award

Number:HD077482

∗Additionalsupporting information can

befound in the full text tab for this arti-

clein t he WileyOnline Library at http://

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/

crim.2020.58.issue-2/issuetoc.

TheEnvironmental Risk (E-Risk) Longi-

tudinalTwin Study is funded by the U.K.

MedicalResearch Council (UKMRC grant

G1002190).Additional support was provided

bythe U.S. National Institute of Child Health

andDevelopment (NICHD) grant HD077482,

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 conse-

quence 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 nationallyrepresent ative 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

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in

any medium, provided the original work is properlycited.

© 2019 The Authors. Criminology published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of American Society of Criminology

Criminology. 2020;58:307–335. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/crim 307

308 MOTZ ET AL.

the Jacobs Foundation, and the AvielleFoun-

dation.Special t hanks go to the U.K.Min-

istry of Justiceand to Dr. Nick Morgan of the

U.K.Home Office for supporting the use of

PoliceNational Computer Records. L. Arse-

neaultis t he Mental Health Leadership Fellow

forthe UK Economic and Social Research

Council(ESRC). We are grateful to the study

mothersand fathers,the twins, and the twins’

teachersfor their participation. Our thanks

toCACI, Google Streetview, and members

oft he E-Risk team fortheir dedication, hard

work,and insights. The premise and analy-

sisplan for this project were preregistered on

https://sites.google.com/site/dunedinerisk-

conceptpapers/documents.Analyses reported

herewere checked for reproducibility by an

independentdat a analyst,who recreated the

codeby working from the manuscript and

appliedit to a fresh dat a set.

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.

KEYWORDS

delinquency, family fixed effects,labeling, specific deterrence, twins

The juvenile justice systems of the Western world were established to embrace the doctrine of parens

patriae and to emphasize the treatment and rehabilitation of wayward youth (Parsloe, 1978). Yet, as

the world was swept by dramatic social change in the 1960s and 1970s, many began to question the

legitimacy of social institutions like the justice system. Part of this skepticism was from a relative lack

of faith in correctional programming, which was partially driven by two damning critiques—one from

the United States (Martinson, 1974) and one from the United Kingdom (Brody, 1976)—of its ability

to rehabilitate offenders and reduce recidivism. In particular, after reviewing the available evidence,

Martinson (1974, p. 25) concluded, “[T]he rehabilitative efforts that have been reported so far havehad

no appreciable effect on recidivism.” Brody (1976, p. 37) similarly stated, “Reviewers of research …

haveunanimously agreed that t he results haveso far offered little hope that a reliable and simple remedy

for recidivism can be easily found.” Sweeping changes followed both reports. For example, there were

reductions in rehabilitative programming for both juvenile delinquents and adult offenders in their

respective countries, which ultimately led to the “get tough” era in the United States (Cullen & Gilbert,

2013) and the implementation of the neo-correctionalist model in the United Kingdom (Cavadino &

Dignan, 2006). Motivated by fear of the “super-predator” (Bennett, DiIulio, & Walters, 1996), these

movements opened the door for the philosophies of deterrence and incapacitation to form the basis for

many policy decisions.

But the pendulum seems to be swinging back toward rehabilitation in recent years as both the United

States and the United Kingdom have reduced their use of punitive actions against delinquent youth

(Bateman, 2017; Taylor, 2017). Such trends are at least partially the result of a movement away from

conservative era policies because of an increase in the discomfort with deterrence theory and the revival

of a fear that labeling effects are indeed real. These shifts in policy have shone light on one of the

classic theoretical debates in criminology: Does contact with the justice system deter or promote future

criminal behavior? Two long-standing theoretical traditions—deterrence theory and labeling theory—

have been focused on answering this question, but they have arrived at different conclusions. Both

have shifted the primary focus awayfrom the individual offender and have placed it on the actions and

impact of the justice system where contact with the system works as a turning point that alters the life