Personal, background and treatment characteristics associated with offending after residential treatment: A 13-year follow up in adolescent males

Abstract

We report on delinquency for 270 males after residential treatment in a juvenile justice institution in the Netherlands. We describe personality characteristics, relations with peers, school and family, as well as treatment characteristics. Next, we describe post-release offending based on reconviction data, and relate this to background characteristics, differentiating between serious and violent offending. In doing so, we distinguish between incidental offenders, chronic offenders and desisters.

Keywords:

• Recidivism
• juvenile offenders
• treatment
• desistance
• chronic offending

Acknowledgements

Financial support by the Netherlands Ministry of Justice and JJI Harreveld is gratefully acknowledged.

Notes

1. Given legal definitions in the Netherlands, all thefts were included.

2. Respondents who committed more than four post-release offences qualify as chronic (Kempf-Leonard, Tracy, & Howell, 2001). Loeber, Farrington, and Waschbusch (1998) used this same definition describing a sample over a 6-year period, from ages 12 to 18.