Recidivism in subgroups of severe male juvenile offenders

Abstract

Prior research is lacking on the incremental contribution of juvenile offender classification systems in predicting recidivism. To address this gap, the present study examined a five-group classification system of severe adolescent male offenders based on the personality and clinical scales of the Millon Adolescent Clinical Inventory (MACI). Group membership was used to predict adult recidivism while controlling for criminal history. Male juvenile offenders classified as anxious/impulsive were less frequent recidivists than most other groups and had fewer charges after release than some other groups. Offenders classified into the psychopathy group were notable for their high rate of recidivism (nearly 50%). These results highlight the potential utility of offender classification systems for informing risk assessments among severe male juvenile offenders.

Keywords:

• juvenile delinquent
• MACI
• classification
• recidivism
• psychopathy

Notes

1. In addition to conducting cluster analysis on the MACI scores of the full sample, we also compared the results of the cluster analysis reported in Taylor et al. (2006) which was based on a subset of the present sample and compared those results to a cluster analysis of MACI scores obtained with the additional participants who were not part of the prior study. Results were remarkably similar in that extracting a five-cluster solution (to confirm the original cluster analysis) fit the data for the new sample and the pattern of MACI subscale scores for each cluster closely replicated across samples (data available upon request from the first author).

2. Comparisons among groups from only the sample of 447 newly classified boys showed a very similar pattern of group differences to those found in the original sample of classified boys reported in Taylor et al. (2006).