Recidivism in a juvenile court-sponsored delinquency prevention program

Abstract

Previous research on the rates of juvenile re-offending have been found to be as high as 66% when measuring recidivism by rearrest and as high as 33% when measuring re-offending by reconvictions within one to three years of release. However, accurately estimating a national juvenile recidivism rate is problematic. This is even more complicated when attempting to determine recidivism for delinquency prevention programs. One of the oldest, and perhaps most successful of these programs, is the Oakland County (Michigan) Youth Assistance Program (OCYA), which began in 1953. The present paper is an attempt to quantify the recidivism rate for youngsters referred to OCYA in a different sample. This study drew on the entire OCYA database from 2004 to 2014 with a random sample of 1540 cases selected. Demographic information of the selected youths, their number of caseworker contacts, the type of offense, and their recidivism record were evaluated using SPSS statistical software. Results showed a relatively low recidivism rate, but participation in OCYA face-to-face caseworker contacts or auxiliary programs had no predictive value in forecasting recidivism.