Extant research suggests that some of the potential harms to social bonds during the incarceration experience may be mitigated by visitation. In particular, previous studies have found visitation from family and friends to be significantly related to decreased recidivism rates among adult prisoners. Little is known about the impact of visitation on recidivism among juvenile populations, which this study sought to address. Utilizing data from the Pathways to Desistance study, a series of negative binomial regressions were carried out to observe the potential relationship between maternal and paternal caregiver visitation and post-release self-reported offending among serious juvenile offenders. No significant relationship was found between caregiver visitation and recidivism, contrary to expected results. This held true for both maternal and paternal caregiver visitation as well as both dichotomous and visit count measures. Further research is needed to determine why visitation studies among adult populations do not appear to generalize to juveniles. Visitation quality and nature of the relationship with caregivers should be observed in future studies.

This research comprised a secondary study using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health restricted data set to examine the buffering effects of religiosity on adolescent alcohol coping following victimization within the context of Agnew's general stain theory. Its purpose was to determine if religiosity buffered the effects of alcohol abuse coping following victimization for native-born and foreign-born non-Hispanic adolescents, and was designed as a follow-up research study to similarly replicate a prior study limited to native-born and foreign-born Hispanic adolescents. This study's findings were consistent with prior research that higher religiosity was generally predictive of lower levels of alcohol abuse. However, in the presence of violent victimization, religiosity did not buffer later increased alcohol abuse coping for non-Hispanic adolescents. Native-born religiously oriented adolescents were as likely to abuse alcohol following violent victimization as their native-born non-religious peers. Foreign-born religiously oriented versus non-religiously-oriented adolescents did not have statistically significant different outcomes on later alcohol abuse following victimization. Foreign-born non-Hispanic adolescents as a group appeared generally insensitive to victimization strain as measured by alcohol abuse coping. An important outcome of this study was the collateral finding that being Catholic substantially increased the likelihood of later alcohol abuse for both native-born and …

Each year over half a million children are victims of childhood maltreatment. While a plethora of interdisciplinary research has evaluated the detrimental outcomes of these experiences, few studies have analyzed the effects contextual components of child abuse and neglect can have on the life-course of maltreated youth. Juvenile delinquency has been identified as a prominent outcome of maltreatment, however, a lesser portion of the empirical literature has focused on outcomes among more serious justice-involved juveniles. This study analyzed the effects of childhood maltreatment severity on the recidivism outcomes of 853 blended-sentenced juveniles in a large southern state. Previous studies demonstrated worsened outcomes associated with more severe maltreatment, thus higher recidivism rates were expected for more severely maltreated juveniles. The results indicated only sexual abuse severity impacted recidivism rates, and the direction of the relationship was negative. Implications of the findings and directions for future research are discussed.