Reentry of Young Offenders from the Justice System

• Author: Laurence Steinberg,He Len Chung,Michelle Little
• DOI: 10.1177/1541204003260045
• Published date: 01 January 2004
• Date: 01 January 2004
• Subject Matter: Journal Article

10.1177/1541204003260045ARTICLEYouth Violence and Juvenile JusticeSteinberg et al. / A DEVELOPMENTAL PERSPECTIVE

REENTRY OF YOUNG OFFENDERS

FROM THE JUSTICE SYSTEM:

A Developmental Perspective

Laurence Steinberg

He Len Chung

Michelle Little

Temple University

This article presents a developmental perspective on the reentry of young offenders into

the community. The authors begin with a discussion of the psychosocial tasks of late

adolescence. Next, they discuss contextual influences on the successful negotiation of

these psychosocial tasks. Third, they examine whether and to what extent the contexts to

which young offenders are exposed in the justice system are likely to facilitate normative

psychosocial development. Finally, they argue that the psychosocial development of

youthful offenders is disrupted, or “arrested,” by their experiences within the justice

system. Interventions designed to facilitate the successful reentry of young offenders

into the community must be informed by what we know about healthy psychosocial

development in late adolescence.

Keywords: youth reentry; community reintegration; youth incarceration

Historically, professionals have advertised two dismal findings about young

offenders reentering the community from the justice system—that nothing works (i.e.,

youthful offenders cannot be rehabilitated) (e.g., Martinson, 1974) and that there are no

success stories (i.e., delinquents are destined for failure) (e.g., Farrington, Gallagher,

Morley, St. Ledger, & West, 1988). Delinquents are forecast to show poor adult outcomes

(e.g., unemployment, welfare dependence, mental health problems), drain millions of

dollars from social services agencies, and pass their legacy of problems to the next

generation of teenagers. Indeed, it is well established that young offenders show poor

adjustment as young adults, precisely during the years when most people gain the level of

education and training that serve as the foundation for their future achievements (William

T. Grant Foundation Commission on Work, Family and Citizenship, 1988).

This article tries to shed light on three important questions about the reentry of young

offenders (those between the ages of 16 and 24) to the community from the juvenile or adult

justice system: (a) why these youth face great challenges during this process; (b) why

certain individuals achieve positive turning points in early adulthood and others do not; and

(c) how programming in the justice system might increase the number of adult success

stories. Framing this discussion is the very important and difficult mission of the justice

21

Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice, Vol. 2 No. 1, January 2004 21-38

DOI: 10.1177/1541204003260045

© 2004 Sage Publications

system—that of deterring crime while balancing the interests of public safety and the needs

of individual adolescents.

Adolescent Offenders: Superpredators or Troubled Teens?

The United States juvenile justice system processes more than 2.5 million juvenile

arrests over the course of a year and makes decisions about nearly 5,000 delinquency cases

every day. According to these statistics, the system affects the lives of between 8% and 10%

of all American youths between the ages of 10 and 17, a figure that has almost quadrupled

within the past few decades (Puzzanchera, Stahl, et al., 2002). In addition to the large

number of young people in the juvenile justice system are a substantial number of late

adolescents and young adults in the criminal justice system. More than one fifth of

individuals in state or federal prisons and jails are between the ages of 18 and 24 (Beck,

Karberg, & Harrison, 2002), and many of these individuals will have spent some portion of

their adolescent years in incarceration.

Usually, the public perception of youthful offending focuses on the criminal and

sometimes callous side of young offenders—that they account for one in every five arrests

in the United States, including 16% of violence-related and 32% of property-related crimes

(Snyder, 2002), and cause substantial economic, physical, and emotional hardships for their

victims, the families of their victims (as well as their own families), and the larger

community. The most damaging depictions of young offenders as superpredators or

psychopaths-in-training emerged in the mid-1990s (McCollum, 1996) following a period

when youth violence in this country was at its highest in contemporary times. Such images

caused citizens to fear for their safety and policy makers to get “tough on crime,” the idea

being that punitive, no-nonsense responses (e.g., incarceration) would keep dangerous

youths off of the streets, prevent them from reoffending, and ultimately, preserve public

safety.

There is a less frightening, but equally worrisome, depiction of young offenders that

is usually not advertised to the public, however. It is the portrait of youth whose

development is marked by the accumulation of disadvantage (Sampson & Laub, 1997) and

whose considerable problems suggest that they are more in need of treatment than

punishment. The image highlights the troubled aspects of these young offenders’ lives—

that they often struggle with multiple problems at home, school, and in their communities

prior to their first contact with the court and that they often lack the individual, family, or

neighborhood resources to improve their situations. It is well established that most young

offenders evince some combination of the following problems: poor school performance

(e.g., truancy, low grades), mental health problems (e.g., substance abuse, depression),

unstable and unsupportive family relationships, poverty- and crime-ridden communities,

delinquent peer influences, and the absence of positive role models (Hawkins et al., 1998).

We also know that ethnic minority youth, particularly Black males, are overrepresented at

every stage of the justice system process and disproportionately afflicted with problems

associated with court involvement, especially at the deep end. For example, Black and

Hispanic youth make up about 15% and 16% of the general juvenile population,

respectively, yet account for about 45% and 20%, respectively, of the near 109,000

adolescents who, on any given day, are in residential placement within the juvenile justice

system. In contrast, White teenagers account for about 80% of the general youth population

22 Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice