Really interesting. I think this statement from the amendment is particularly suspect, "Youthful individuals also are more amenable to rehabilitation." While I have not seen a systematic review of court-based rehabilitation by age, my work suggests the opposite is true: 18-24-year-olds are substantially less likely to do well in court-based interventions compared to 35-39-year-olds. And not by a little, by a lot...
Thank you so much, John, for your comment. Could you please direct me to your work which suggests that 18-24 year olds are substantially less likely to do well in court-based interventions compared to older individuals?
Sure. Take for example the five-year longitudinal study of adult drug courts, drug courts being the most common court-based intervention: https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/nijs-multisite-adult-drug-court-evaluation#researchquestions. If you look at Table 4-4.4. Predictors of Criminal Activity at 18 Months and Re-Arrests at 24 Months (page 73) (https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/237112.pdf) you will see that each additional year of age is associated with a statistically significant reduction in recividivism. If you look at Table 4.5, you will see the interaction between age and drug court is negative (but nonsignificant). Meaning, to the extent drug court reduces recidivism, older people do better (like all drug court effects, the recidivism reductions are modest, so you'll see that almost all the interactions are nonsignificant). I've seen this result in pretty much every problem-solving court I've ever studied: to the extent they improve outcomes, they improve them more for older participants.
Really interesting. I think this statement from the amendment is particularly suspect, "Youthful individuals also are more amenable to rehabilitation." While I have not seen a systematic review of court-based rehabilitation by age, my work suggests the opposite is true: 18-24-year-olds are substantially less likely to do well in court-based interventions compared to 35-39-year-olds. And not by a little, by a lot...
Thank you so much, John, for your comment. Could you please direct me to your work which suggests that 18-24 year olds are substantially less likely to do well in court-based interventions compared to older individuals?
Sure. Take for example the five-year longitudinal study of adult drug courts, drug courts being the most common court-based intervention: https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/nijs-multisite-adult-drug-court-evaluation#researchquestions. If you look at Table 4-4.4. Predictors of Criminal Activity at 18 Months and Re-Arrests at 24 Months (page 73) (https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/237112.pdf) you will see that each additional year of age is associated with a statistically significant reduction in recividivism. If you look at Table 4.5, you will see the interaction between age and drug court is negative (but nonsignificant). Meaning, to the extent drug court reduces recidivism, older people do better (like all drug court effects, the recidivism reductions are modest, so you'll see that almost all the interactions are nonsignificant). I've seen this result in pretty much every problem-solving court I've ever studied: to the extent they improve outcomes, they improve them more for older participants.
Thank you, John.