Citation

Reid SE. Int. J. Offender Ther. Comp. Criminol. 2015; 61(2): 191-209.

Affiliation

University of North Carolina at Charlotte, USA s.reid@uncc.edu.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2015, SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/0306624X15589737

PMID

26063546

Abstract

The present study examines both the patterns of friendship networks and how these network characteristics relate to the risk factors of institutional misconduct for incarcerated youth. Using friendship networks collected from males incarcerated with California's Division of Juvenile Justice (DJJ), latent profile analysis was utilized to create homogeneous groups of friendship patterns based on alter attributes and network structure. The incarcerated youth provided 144 egocentric networks reporting 558 social network relationships. Latent profile analysis identified three network profiles: expected group (67%), new breed group (20%), and model citizen group (13%). The three network profiles were integrated into a multiple group analysis framework to examine the relative influence of individual-level risk factors on their rate of institutional misconduct. The analysis finds variation in predictors of institutional misconduct across profile types. These findings suggest that the close friendships of incarcerated youth are patterned across the individual characteristics of the youth's friends and that the friendship network can act as a moderator for individual risk factors for institutional misconduct.

KW: Juvenile justice .

Language: en