Citation

Cuervo K, Villanueva L. Int. J. Offender Ther. Comp. Criminol. 2018; 62(11): 3562-3580.

Affiliation

1 Jaume I University, Castellón de la Plana, Spain.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2018, SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/0306624X17741250

PMID

29134854

Abstract

Intervention in youth recidivism is critical in helping prevent young people from continuing their criminal career into adulthood, on a life-course-persistent trajectory. Andrews and Bonta attempt to provide an explanation of risk and protective factors using a conversion of the Youth Level of Service/Case Management Inventory (YLS/CMI), which predicts recidivism. In this study, scores have been obtained from 382 adolescents ( M age = 16.33 years) from the juvenile court, to check the ability of a reduced version of the YLS/CMI, to predict recidivism. The outcome variables for recidivism were examined in the 2-year follow-up period, after their first assessment in the court. The risk factors showed good levels of recidivism prediction. Recidivists obtained significant higher mean total risk scores than nonrecidivists in the reduced ( M = 6.54, SD = 2.44; M = 3.66, SD = 2.85), with areas under the curve (AUCs) ranging from.601 to.857. The factors that emerged as the most discriminative were education/employment, criminal friends, and personality. All the protective factors differentiated between recidivists and nonrecidivists. The results, therefore, showed that this reduced version would be capable of predicting youth recidivism in a reliable way.

Language: en

Keywords

Spanish youth offenders; YLS/CMI; recidivism; reduced version