Pathways to Recidivism: Do Behavioral Disorders Explain the Gang-Recidivism Relationship during Reentry?

• Author: Matt Delisi,Kevin T. Wolff,Katherine E. Limoncelli,Michael T. Baglivio
• Published date: 01 July 2020
• Date: 01 July 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0093854820915631
• Subject Matter: Articles

CRIMINAL JUSTICE AND BEHAVIOR, 2020, Vol. 47, No. 7, July 2020, 867 –885.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0093854820915631

Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions

© 2020 International Association for Correctional and Forensic Psychology

867

PATHWAYS TO RECIDIVISM

Do Behavioral Disorders Explain the Gang-Recidivism

Relationship During Reentry?

KEVIN T. WOLFF

John Jay College of Criminal Justice

MICHAEL T. BAGLIVIO

Analytic Initiatives, LLC

KATHERINE E. LIMONCELLI

John Jay College of Criminal Justice

MATT DELISI

Iowa State University

Current scholarship on gang involvement and behavior has focused on several individual and environmental factors believed

to drive the use of violence, yet limited research has explored the potentially confounding role of behavioral disorders. Using

a sample of youth who completed a long-term residential placement within the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice (FDJJ),

this study extends the recent findings of DeLisi et al. to determine whether the presence of a conduct disorder or other behav-

ioral disorder renders the effect of gang involvement on recidivism spurious. Using a series of logistic regression models,

behavioral disorders were associated with rearrest, but for males only. Furthermore, behavioral disorders did not render the

effect of gang membership on rearrest or readjudication spurious, as the main effect of gang involvement held across all

models estimated. Gang-involved adjudicated youth present with myriad mental health, temperamental, and individual risk

factors.

Keywords: gangs; recidivism; behavioral disorders; psychopathology; juvenile offenders; conduct disorder

Gang activity, involvement, or membership is among the most robust correlates of delin-

quency, externalizing symptoms, violence, and recurrent juvenile justice system involve-

ment. An assortment of existing research shown that gang status is significantly associated

AUTHORS’ NOTE: Matt DeLisi receives consulting income and travel expenses in criminal and civil litiga-

tion relating to criminological and forensic assessment of criminal offenders, receives editorial remuneration

from Elsevier, receives expert services income from the U.S. Department of Justice and the Administrative

Office of the United States Courts, and receives royalty income from Cambridge University Press, John Wiley

& Sons, Jones & Bartlett, Kendall/Hunt, McGraw-Hill, Palgrave Macmillan, Routledge, Sage, University of

Texas Press, and Bridgepoint Education. No direct remuneration is associated with the current study.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Matt DeLisi, Iowa State University, 510 Farm

House Lane, 203A East Hall, Ames, IA 50011-1054, USA; e-mail: delisi@iastate.edu.

915631CJBXXX10.1177/0093854820915631Criminal Justice and BehaviorWolff et al. / Pathways to Recidivism

research-article2020

868 CRIMINAL JUSTICE AND BEHAVIOR

with increased victimization (Fox, 2017; Peterson et al., 2004); increased violence perpetra-

tion (Decker, 1996; Dong & Krohn, 2016; Trulson et al., 2016); increased violence exposure

(Decker, 1996; Watkins & Melde, 2018); a higher rate of offending (Craig et al., 2002), greater

likelihood of arrest, adjudication, or out-of-home placement (DeLisi et al., 2013; Dong &

Krohn, 2016; Trulson et al., 2012); and elevated recidivism (Caudill, 2010; Dooley et al.,

2014). Gang-involved youth have greater and more expansive psychopathology encompass-

ing both externalizing (Barnes et al., 2010; Melde & Esbensen, 2013; Wood et al., 2002) and

internalizing (Watkins & Melde, 2016; Wood et al., 2002) symptoms and generally fare worse

in interventions designed to improve their behavioral functioning (Boxer et al., 2015). In

terms of global effects on the gang-offending relationship, a meta-analysis of 179 studies and

107 independent datasets producing 1,649 effect sizes found a significant association between

gang membership and criminal offending (Pyrooz et al., 2016).

Although gang status and offending are related, there is more ambiguity about the rela-

tive roles of environmental-level and individual-level factors in the etiology of gang-delin-

quency. Historically, sociological researchers have dominated gang scholarship (e.g.,

Cohen, 1955; Miller, 1958; Short & Strodtbeck, 1963, 1965) but even within the sociologi-

cal tradition, there have been episodic references to the roles of psychological deficits and

potentially even behavioral disorders (e.g., conduct disorder [CD], Attention-deficit/

Hyperactivity Disorder [ADHD]) in producing gang status and subsequent gang-related

delinquency. Several classic descriptions of gang youth focused on their deficits in self-

regulation that relate to low effortful control, low inhibitory control, low attentional control

and overall poor self-control; their problems with emotional regulation that relate to anger,

hostility, dysphoria, poor temper, and frustration; and their neurocognitive deficits that

relate to verbal intelligence, impulsivity, and poor decision-making. For example, Cohen

(1955, p. 132) suggested, “For the child who breaks clean with middle-class morality, on

the other hand, there are no moral inhibitions on the free expression of aggression against

the sources of his frustration.” Miller’s (1958) focal concerns of trouble, toughness, smart-

ness, excitement, fate, and autonomy are effectively colloquial terms for temperamental and

neurocognitive constructs, such as fearlessness, aggression, antagonism, sensation-seeking,

impulsivity, and external locus of control. These various psychological deficits create mani-

fold social adjustment problems. According to Short and Strodtbeck (1965, p. 230),

The failure of individuals to make satisfactory adjustments in any institutional sphere inevitably

handicaps their ability to achieve future goals. Our gang boys fail often in school, on the job,

in conventional youth-serving agencies, and in the eyes of law enforcement officials (and

therefore in the public eye). They fail more often in each of these respects than do the non-gang

boys we have studied.

In sum, lurking in the historical gang literature are examples that suggest gang-involved

youth evince behavioral disorders that serve to drive their antisocial conduct.

GANG MEMBERS AND BEHAVIORAL DISORDERS

In recent years, several scholars identified various psychological constructs and behav-

ioral disorders that were associated with the gang-offending relationship (Alleyne & Wood,

2010; Dupéré et al., 2007; Lahey et al., 1999; Valdez et al., 2000). For example, Dupéré