The Role of Family Factors in the Outcomes of Court-Involved Youth

• Published date: 01 October 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/15412040231179110
• Author: Elizabeth M. Olsen,Laura B. Whiteley,Kayla K. Giorlando,Nancy Beausoleil,Marina Tolou-Shams,Christianne Esposito-Smythers,Larry K. Brown
• Date: 01 October 2023
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice

2023, Vol. 21(4) 309–324

© The Author(s) 2023

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DOI: 10.1177/15412040231179110

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The Role of Family Factors in

the Outcomes of

Court-Involved Youth

Elizabeth M. Olsen

1,2

, Laura B. Whiteley

1

, Kayla K. Giorlando

3

,

Nancy Beausoleil

3

, Marina Tolou-Shams

4

,

Christianne Esposito-Smythers

5

, and Larry K. Brown

1,2,3

Abstract

Court-involved youth (CIY) comprise a signif‌icant portion of the U.S. population and have a high

prevalence of psychiatric illness and substance use. Youth delinquency has also been associated

with family variables and parenting practices. However, it is not known which family factors are

most relevant to behavioral outcomes in CIY mandated to outpatient mental health treatment.

Self-report measures from 163 CIY (M= 15.19 years; 58.3% male) starting psychiatric care in two

U.S. cities were utilized in a cross-sectional analysis to examine the association of parental

monitoring and family functioning with the severity and variety of delinquent acts. Results

demonstrate that, even after controlling for psychiatric symptoms and substance use, parental

monitoring is signif‌icantly associated with the delinquent behavior of CIY in mental health

treatment. Improved understanding of inf‌luential family factors can enhance tailoring of existing

interventions to ensure that they are relevant to the needs of CIY, especially those in psychiatric

treatment.

Keywords

delinquency, youth, parental monitoring, psychiatric, substance use

Introduction

According to the National Center for Juvenile Justice, in 2019 approximately 700,000 youths

under the age of 18 received dispositions through the juvenile court system in the United States

1

Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior, Warren Alpert Medical School of BrownUniversity, Providence, RI, USA

2

Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Bradley Hospital, East Providence, RI, USA

3

Young Adult Behavioral Health Program, Rhode Island Hospital, Providence, RI, USA

4

Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA

5

Department of Psychology, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA

Corresponding Author:

Elizabeth M. Olsen, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Bradley Hospital, 1011 Veterans Memorial Pkwy,

Room 110, East Providence 02915, RI, USA.

Email: elizabethmeryl.olsen@gmail.com

(U.S.; Sickmund et al., 2020). Considering this vast number, it is important to recognize that court-

involved youth (CIY) have a high prevalence of psychiatric illnesses, such as disorders of at-

tention, anxiety, mood, substance use, and learning (Winkelman et al., 2017;Perry and Morris,

2014;Teplin et al., 2003;Shufelt and Cocozza, 2006). In addition, CIY have been shown to have

an elevated risk of suicide (Coffey et al., 2003;Barnert et al., 2016;Morris et al., 1995;Kemp

et al., 2016). Furthermore, in studies involving CIY, approximately 50% or more of participants

endorsed engaging in substance use (Castrucci and Martin, 2002;Teplin et al., 2003;Teplin et al.,

2005;Tolou-Shams et al., 2021) with cannabis being one of the most common (Morris et al., 1995;

Tolou-Shams et al., 2021). Psychiatric symptoms, including diff‌iculties with affect regulation

(Brown et al., 2012), externalizing symptoms (Haney-Caron et al., 2019), and aggressive dis-

orders (Barrett et al., 2014), have also been associated with risky and delinquent behaviors.

Therefore, providing mental health treatment to CIY is a potential means by which to reduce and

prevent recidivism or system re-entry, as well as reducing other morbidities associated with

psychiatric disorders. Studies have demonstrated that receiving mental health treatment reduces

time-to-re-offending and recidivism rates in CIY (Zeola et al., 2017;Kendall et al., 2017;Perry

et al., 2019), emerging adults (Davis et al., 2015;Sheidow et al., 2016), and adults (Wallace and

Wang, 2020).

Although providing mental health treat ment to CIY is a critical component of recidivism

prevention, these youths’psychiatric symptoms, behaviors, and justice-involvement cannot be

viewed in isolation from the larger family system. As CIY are minors, their caregivers are engaged

in both their home lives and in their court-appointed dispositions. Furthermore, the relationship

between youth behavior and the family unit appears to be bidirectional. Namely, youth delin-

quency and court-involvement cause stress and strain on the family system, and the family unit

itself impacts youth behavior with notable potential for buffering and improvement in outcomes.

Viewing delinquency in the context of both psychopathology and family factors is consistent with

the Social-Personal Framework (SPF), which has been previously utilized in interventions tar-

geting adolescent risk behaviors (Donnenberg et al., 2018;Brown et al., 2014;Snow-Hill et al.,

2021;Kendall et al., 2017). The SPF highlights that adolescent risk-taking does not occur in

isolation, but rather in the setting of personal attributes, family context, peer and partner rela-

tionships, and environmental circumstances (Donenberg & Pao, 2005).

In support of this theoretical framework, previous research has demonstrated relat ionships

between family functioning, parental mental health, parenting practices, and youth behavior in

CIY (Tolou-Shams et al., 2012;Tolou-Shams et al., 2018;Folk et al., 2020;Bouffard &

Armstrong, 2021) and in non-court-involved populations (Barker et al., 2019;Donenberg

et al., 2012,2018). Findings to date have demonstrated that differences in family context, in-

cluding communication, relationships, monitoring, and permissiveness, are associated with

substance use, functional impairment, risky sexual behavior, psychiatric symptom burden, and

response to psychosocial interventions (Barker et al., 2019). Furthermore, among CIY, impaired

parent-child communication and family affective responsiveness have been shown to be related to

engagement in unprotected sex and cannabis use (Tolou-Shams et al., 2012). Interventions for

juvenile offenders that involve caregivers have shown promise in targeting unsafe behaviors, such

as substance use and risky sex (Tolou-Shams et al., 2017) as well as re-offending (Davis et al.,

2015;Sheidow et al., 2016;Perry et al., 2019;Celinska et al., 2019;Gottfredson et al., 2018).

These interventions have utilized a variety of methodologies including Multisystemic Therapy

(MST; Davis et al., 2015;Sheidow et al., 2016), affect management strategies (Tolou-Shams et al.,

2017), and Functional Family Therapy (FFT; Celinska et al., 2019;Gottfredson et al., 2018).

Therefore, CIY’s families and caregivers are an important biopsychosocial factor to consider in

recidivism prevention.

310 Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice 21(4)