Juvenile Recidivism Paper

I chose an article about the correlation between behavioral/mental issues and recidivism for juvenile offenders. Prior to reading this article, I assumed juvenile recidivism is largely affected by mental health illnesses just as it is for adult offenders. However, I was amazed by the staggering number of youths with mental illnesses in juvenile detention centers. Therefore, this article surprised me to an extent. It seems as if individuals with one or more mental illnesses make up over half of the population for both juvenile centers and prisons.

First and foremost, this article is about a study performed on 8,363 individuals in juvenile detention centers in Indiana between 2008 and 2012. Six detention centers were used for this study. The size of each center ranged from 12-146 beds with average monthly admissions ranging from 13-102 individuals (Aalsma, White, Lau, Perkins, Monahan, & Grisso, 2015). The mean, or the average of the variables, for each center size and monthly admissions were 53.3 and 55.1 (Walker, 2009; Aalsma, White, Lau, Perkins, Monahan, & Grisso, 2015). The standard deviation, or the square root of the variance, for each

In fact, sixty to eighty percent of the individuals in juvenile detention centers suffer from mental illnesses versus fifteen to twenty percent of the youth in the community (Aalsma, White, Lau, Perkins, Monahan, & Grisso, 2015). This is more than half of the total detention center population. Ironically, the same could be said for the adult prison population. Also, 25.3% of the juveniles in this study returned to a detention center within twelve months of being released (Aalsma, White, Lau, Perkins, Monahan, & Grisso, 2015). Hence, the reason I believe mental and behavioral issues must be addressed and treated before the population of juvenile detention centers and adult prisons will