Juvenile Justice Research: Community Aspects

Project summary for 2001-JN-FX-0007 (S-1)

The Wichita State University will continue its inquiry into community aspects of re-entry success. This proposal places emphasis on the description of re-entry recidivism, including scripts of crimes committed early in re-entry and geographic analysis of re-entry recidivism. A scripting component involves identifying the mental and behavioral sequence of events that culminates in a crime act by a reintegrating juvenile. Crime scripts will be developed for the most frequently occurring crimes, based on existing data and interviews of selected juvenile offenders. Geographic information analysis involves intergrating recidivism data with key geographic features to describe the interaction. The grantee will continue to work a four-state comparative study: Kansas, Iowa, North Carolina, and Oregon. The overall line of inquiry will remain focused on recidivism by reintegrating juvenile offenders, within the context of specific communities to address whether: 1) Within the context of specific acts of recidivism, what role is played by key variables, such as those identified as linked to juvenile offending (Jones 2001)? 2) Juvenile offending scripts can identify the community-specific process through which local physical, and social components shape the evolution of a criminal act (Bursik, 2001)? and 3) Geographically identified variables have recidivism predictive merit?

nca/ncf