Early Court Adjudication of Juvenile Offenders: Giving the Data Another Chance

TLDR: In this article, a critical analysis is presented of a study purporting to show that juveniles who are adjudicated delinquent at first offence are less likely to go on to prison in adulthood than are first offenders who are more leniently treated.

Abstract: A critical analysis is presented of a study purporting to show that juveniles who are adjudicated delinquent at first offence are less likely to go on to prison in adulthood than are first offenders who are more leniently treated. It is argued that this study was fatally flawed in that it compared adjudicated first-offenders with only those non adjudicated first-offenders who had a record of re offending as juveniles; the exclusion from the sampling frame of non adjudicated juveniles who did not re offend precludes any evaluation of the relative prognoses of adjudicated and non adjudicated first-offenders. It is further argued that the researchers' causal conclusions, and the extension of these to the explanation of age-and race-related differences in prognosis, are fallacious, irrespective of the adequacy of the sampling frame.