Children’s life chances are hurt when their parents are sent to prison

When criminals go to prison, society hopefully benefits. These individuals, for example, ideally are less likely to commit new crimes. What, though, if incarceration harms the children of those who we send to prison? Daniel P. Mears and Sonja E. Siennick set out to answer that question and found that the concern is far from hypothetical. Children of incarcerated parents are more likely to go on to engage in criminal behavior, have mental health problems, use illegal drugs, and fare worse in their educational achievement, earnings, and intimate relationships

Preventing crime in cooperation with the mental health care profession

Although major mental disorders do not have a central position in many criminological theories, there seems to be an evident relationship between these disorders and criminal behavior. In daily practice police officers and mental health care workers work jointly to prevent nuisance and crime and to keep the city livable. Examining the situations where the criminal justice system and mental health institutes are jointly involved to prevent crime, some pitfalls emerge that seem to threaten successful cooperation. There appear to be unrealistic expectations of the possibility to reduce the risk of reoffending by means of treatment and of the possibility to predict which offender poses a risk to society. Another complexity is the fact that both parties work from different backgrounds and pursue different goals. The way society and the criminal justice system deal with persons who are assumed to be a risk to the community because of a mental disorder demands a further investigation from a criminological perspective

Consequences of Victimization on Perceived Friend Support During Adolescence

Victimization can harm youth in various ways and negatively affect their friendships with peers. Nevertheless, not all victimized youth are impacted similarly, and the literature is unclear regarding why some victims are more likely than others to experience friendship-based consequences. Using five waves of data on 901 adolescents (6th grade at wave 1; 47% male; 88% White) and a subsample of 492 victimized youth, this study assessed (1) whether victimization leads to decreases in perceived friend support, and (2) the factors that explain which victimized youth are most likely to experience decreases in perceived friend support. Explanatory factors included subsequent victimization, victims’ social network status (self-reported number of friends, number of friendship nominations received), and victims’ risky behaviors (affiliating with deviant friends, delinquency, aggression, binge drinking). Random effects regressions revealed that, among the full sample, victimization was linked to decreases in friend support. Among victimized youth, subsequent victimization and deviant friends decreased friend support. Having more friends was associated with increased friend support among victims, though this association weakened as the number of friends increased. The results emphasize that victimized youth are a heterogeneous group with varying risks of experiencing friendship-based consequences

Offending, Substance Use, and Cohabitation in Young Adulthood

Over half of young adults have cohabited, but relatively little is known about the role delinquency and substance use play in youths\u27 odds of cohabiting as well as the implications of cohabitation for early adult offending and substance use. This study focuses on the reciprocal relationship between cohabitation during late adolescence and young adulthood and self-reported offending and substance use. Using longitudinal data, we find that net of traditional predictors delinquency involvement is associated with increased odds of cohabitation and cohabiting at younger ages while substance use is not related to cohabiting during early adulthood. Further analysis indicates that cohabitation is associated with lower reports of substance use. However, cohabitation is not associated with self-reported offending. The results help to unravel the connection between cohabitation experience, offending and substance use, and early adult outcomes