Social Science and the Courts: The Role of Amicus Curiae Briefs

Social scientists have increasingly become involved in the submission of amicus curiae or friend of the court briefs in legal cases being decided by state and federal courts. This increase has triggered considerable debate about the use of briefs to communicate relevant social science research. This article evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of various methods of summarizing social science research for the courts. It also reviews the procedures for submitting briefs developed by the American Psychology-Law Society which, in collaboration with the American Psychological Association, has submitted its first brief in Maryland v. Craig, a case recently decided by the U.S. Supreme Court

Romantic Relationships Matter for Girls’ Criminal Trajectories: Recommendations for Juvenile Justice

Ideally, contact with the juvenile justice system provides high-risk girls with an opportunity to receive intervention services, which will instigate their desistance from crime and promote competence in important adult developmental tasks, such as work, marriage, and parenting. Emerging research provides strong evidence that romantic relationships play an important and complex role in girls’ criminal trajectories, and interventions designed with a clear understanding of the associations between relationship outcomes, partner characteristics, and offending will be the most likely to reduce criminal activity and promote self-sufficiency in adulthood. Indeed, involvement in delinquency and/or crime in adolescence is a consistent and robust predictor of negative outcomes —including victimization and violence—within girls’ future romantic relationships. This is not too surprising, given that most youth begin to form partnerships with only the training they have acquired through prior interpersonal relationships, and many girls who resort to crime possess long histories of conflict and aggression within the context of peer and family relationships. In turn, poor-quality partnerships are known to have negative and long-term effects on girls’ health, general functioning, and, of foremost importance to juvenile justice professionals, criminal trajectories. Until recently, romantic partners’ effects on antisocial behavior received little attention, probably because the focus has largely been on male juvenile offenders, and male peers were assumed to have a stronger influence than romantic partners on boys’ antisocial behavior. However, relationships are very important to girls’ sense of self and well-being, and existing research has demonstrated a consistent pattern of findings, which illustrate that romantic relationships play an important role in whether girls will offend in adolescence and adulthood. This article provides a summary of empirical research on the associations between romantic relationship characteristics and involvement in antisocial behavior. In addition, we present findings from the Gender and Aggression Project—Virginia Site to illustrate the level of violence within romantic relationships among incarcerated girls, theoretically the most atrisk girls in the juvenile justice system

Racial Disparities among Female Juvenile Offenders: The Contribution of Neighborhood Disadvantage and Exposure to Violence in Antisocial Behavior

Significant racial disparities exist within the juvenile justice system. Across age and gender, black and minority Americans are disproportionately represented within the justice system as compared to white Americans. In examining issues related to disproportionate minority contact, research has historically focused almost exclusively on males, given their greater presence in the system. However, the representation of females in the juvenile justice system is rising. For instance, from 1980 to 2003, the proportion of girls under the age of 18 who were arrested increased for both the Violent Crime Index (i.e., aggravated assault, rape, robbery, and murder) and the Property Crime Index (i.e., larceny, motor vehicle theft, arson, and burglary). Hence, as the gender gap in arrest rates continues to decrease and the overrepresentation of minorities persists, it becomes important to consider two crucial questions: 1) Are black and white female juvenile offenders different in terms of their risk profiles? and 2) Do these risk profiles differentiate the pathways by which these two groups of girls reengage in antisocial behavior? This article summarizes the prevalence and function of neighborhood- and individual-level risk factors for antisocial behavior among black and white female juvenile offenders from the Gender and Aggression Project (GAP)—Virginia Site, which consisted of a sample of incarcerated girls followed into the community. Specifically, we examined the prevalence of the following risk factors: 1) absolute neighborhood disadvantage, defined as the percentage of female-headed households, people on public assistance, people below the poverty line, and people unemployed using census data at tract level, 2) relative disadvantage disadvantage, defined as the amount of income inequality within a given census tract, 3) physical victimization by parents and/or peers, and 4) witnessing criminality and violence within the environment. We next determined whether racial differences existed with regard to these risk factor—that is, are black versus white female offenders more likely to have grown up in disadvantaged neighborhoods and/or to have witnessed violence within their surroundings. Finally, we assessed whether these risk factors operated differently by race. In other words, we wanted to know whether specific risk factors—such as growing up in a disadvantaged neighborhood—were more predictive of antisocial behavior for black versus white girls. These findings have the potential to lead to a better understanding of the discrepant representation of minorities in the judicial system and provide an opportunity to tailor interventions and reentry programs to divergent population needs

A Review of Findings from the “Gender and Aggression Project” Informing Juvenile Justice Policy and Practice Through Gender-Sensitive Research

Adolescent girls comprise nearly a third of juvenile arrests, and rates of incarceration among young females have been rising rapidly. Yet, young women continue to be a neglected population in juvenile justice research and service delivery. This special issue is devoted to describing the critical issues that arise when young women come into contact with the juvenile justice system. Over the last decade, our research team has been working together to better understand the lives of justice-involved youth. To this end, we have conducted a multisite longitudinal study that has followed adolescents as they have moved through the juvenile justice system, with our most recent wave of assessments occurring as these young people made the transition back into their communities and into young adulthood. This special issue represents a collection of key findings from the Gender and Aggression Project, with a special emphasis on pathways that young women follow both into and out of the juvenile justice system. The Gender and Aggression Project (GAP) involved a partnership of researchers from across diverse disciplines who came together to build a common research instrument that could be used within both normative and high-risk populations. The findings reviewed in this special issue are derived from two longitudinal studies that used this common assessment instrument to assess the profiles, risk factors, and outcomes of justice-involved youth in the United States and Canada. Study One, the Gender and Aggression Project— Virginia Site, recruited an entire population of females sentenced to secure custody during a 14-month period in a large southeastern state (93% of all admissions). Participants included 141 adolescent females who were, on average, 16 to 17 years of age at the time of the first assessment. The sample was racially/ethnically diverse, with 50.0% self-identifying as African-American, 2.2% as Native American, 1.4% as Hispanic and 8.0% as “Other”: the remaining 38.4% identified as Caucasian. Following their sentencing, each participant underwent a 30-day assessment, which included psychological and educational testing, in addition to a full medical examination completed by a physician. Each participant also completed approximately 6-8 hours of individual assessments, including semi-structured clinical interviews, computerized diagnostic assessments, and a self-report protocol. Approximately two years after the initial interview, 78.5% (N=102) of eligible study members who had been released into the community for at least six months completed a 2-3 hour in-person assessment focused on reentry into the community and on mental and physical health functioning. The third wave of in-person assessments has just been completed with 120 of the study members being followed into young adulthood. To our knowledge, this is one of the largest in-depth studies of girls who have reached the deep-end of the juvenile justice system for which there is now longitudinal assessments available