JUVENILE INCARCERATION AND BONDS TO EDUCATION
Open Access
- Author:
- Nur, Alexandra
- Graduate Program:
- Criminology
- Degree:
- Master of Arts
- Document Type:
- Master Thesis
- Date of Defense:
- March 22, 2019
- Committee Members:
- Holly Nguyen, Thesis Advisor/Co-Advisor
Jeremy Staff, Committee Member
David M Ramey, Committee Member - Keywords:
- juvenile offender
juvenile incarceration
social bonds - Abstract:
- The United States sentences a staggering number of juvenile delinquents to detention facilities each year. With more juveniles than ever being sentenced to correctional facilities, many with a history of truancy, learning disabilities, and emotional/behavioral disorders, it is imperative that we turn our attention to understanding the mechanisms behind juvenile justice involvement and stunted academic achievement. Guided by Hirschi’s social bond theory and Sampson and Laub’s age-graded theory of informal social control, this study aims to understand whether bonds to education change after incarceration. Using longitudinal data from the Pathways to Desistance study of serious juvenile offenders, this study analyzes pre- and post-incarceration bonds to education to understand a) whether incarcerated youth are less likely to be enrolled in school in late adolescence and b) whether bonds to education change after a period of incarceration. Results indicate that incarcerated juveniles are academically disadvantaged in the community, that bonds to education do change after incarceration, and that demographic and social factors are predictive of change in bonds to education. Implications of these findings may inform juvenile correctional administration regarding the importance of strong bonds to education for juvenile offenders.