An Examination of the Relative Effects of Juvenile Dispositions on Offending Trajectories

• In Event: Developmental, Life-Course Research on Delinquency: Offending Trajectories and Patterns

Abstract

While growing developmental criminology has analyzed longitudinal data to understand the patterns of development of offending pathways and their significant correlates, the relative impacts of different juvenile dispositions on future criminality remain to be investigated. In addition, juvenile justice literature has focused primarily on the short-term rather than long-term consequences of juvenile sanctions. The current study seeks to contribute to both sets of literature by examining the relative effects of juvenile disposition on the patterning of offending into adulthood using a unique sample of Korean juvenile offenders. A recent integrated analytic approach, combining semiparametric group-based trajectory modeling and propensity score matching, is utilized to assess data from over 3,000 Korean male juvenile offenders. The causal mechanism of potential effects of disposition types on future offending is investigated using a matching technique by creating counterfactual conditions by balancing the effects of preconditions across different groups, such as prior criminal history, familial characteristics, and school performance.

Author

• Daiwon Lee, John Jay College of Criminal Justice / CUNY Graduate Center