Justice system involvement is an increasingly important issue for young people in foster care. Foster youth are at increased risk of entering the justice system, particularly when they age out of foster care. Research shows that about one-third to one-half of foster youth experience arrest or incarceration during their transition to adulthood. This high prevalence of crime among foster youth has concerned practitioners, researchers, and policymakers. Over the past three decades, states have developed polices and protocols and passed legislation to address the complex needs of young people who come into contact with both the child welfare and justice systems. However, how state systems and programs can provide youth with structural support to prevent justice system involvement and to facilitate a smooth transition to adulthood remains largely unexplored. Moreover, little research has examined the influence of contextual factors or structural influences on justice system involvement of foster youth during their transition from adolescence to adulthood.
Focusing on the social context surrounding foster youth, this dissertation examines risk and protective factors contributing to their justice system involvement. In the interest of improving our understanding of contextual factors on youths’ justice system involvement and addressing limitations in prior research, two empirical studies were conducted. Paper 2 focuses on how new federal legislation for extending foster care to age 21 impacted juvenile justice system involvement. Analyses draw from 2006-2016 state administrative child welfare data on individuals in care at the age of 16 or 17 (n=69,140) from California which has the largest foster care population in the nation. This paper examines whether the extended care policy is associated with reduced juvenile justice system involvement among older adolescents in foster care. Drawing on Life Course Theory, this study employs differences-in-differences (DID) analysis to examine juvenile justice system involvement between 16-year-olds and 17-year-olds during the periods before the legislation extending foster care to age 21 was enacted and after. Paper 3 focuses on the association between youths’ social bonds at the onset of adulthood and later adult justice system involvement. Analyses draw from longitudinal data from a study of the transition to adulthood for youth in California foster care at ages 17, 19, and 21 (n=540). This paper examines whether adult criminal justice system involvement varies over time based on social bonds at age 17. Drawing on Social Control Theory, this study uses Latent Class analysis (LCA) to track adult crime patterns based on subgroups of social bonds at age 17.
The results from Paper 2 show that youth approaching the age of majority in foster care were more likely to avoid juvenile justice system involvement after the state implemented the new policy of extended care, controlling for the general declining trend in juvenile delinquency petition cases handled by juvenile courts within the state. As evidenced in the DID analysis, findings also show that there were no age-related patterns in juvenile justice system involvement, suggesting that there was no difference in the gap between 16-year-olds and 17-year-olds in juvenile justice system involvement in the extended foster care era. The results from Paper 3 provides tentative evidence that social bonds at the onset of adulthood predict later adult justice system involvement for foster youth transitioning to adulthood. While the general trend shows a decline over time in adult justice system involvement, youths in the institutional bonds group appear to experience a faster decline (with the marginal significance) in justice system involvement between age 19 and 21 than those in the family bonds group. The LCA provides nuanced findings indicating that institutional bonds may be stronger than other bonds in helping to mitigate later justice system involvement.
This dissertation finds that contextual factors (i.e., intentional macro-level change extending foster care until 21st birthday, social bonds characterized by high education) may have the potential to mitigate the risk of justice system involvement among foster youth. Focusing on these social contexts may help improve our strategies for developing targeted service delivery and structural supports and preventing youths’ involvement with the justice system. Implications and recommendations for professionals, researchers, policymakers are provided in each paper. (Publisher abstract provided.)
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