Relationships Between Education Track, Adverse Childhood Experience, and Recidivism Among Juveniles

Author

Catherine GammageFollow

Campus Location

Dallas Campus (Online)

Date of Award

1-2020

Document Type

Dissertation

Department

Organizational Leadership

Degree Name

Doctor of Education

Committee Chair or Primary Advisor

Jesse Richter

Second Committee Member or Secondary Advisor

Peter Williams

Third Committee Member or Committee Reader

Charles Collyer

Abstract

A high recidivism level, despite attempts by regulatory agencies and various institutions to decrease it, is currently a disturbing problem of the juvenile justice system. Adjudicated youth released from residential treatment centers are often reincarcerated within 3 years after their release. Residential treatment centers provide mandated educational and treatment services for all incarcerated youth. The educational programs offered by residential treatment centers should include academic and career technology programs which support community reintegration. The opportunity for students to receive a high school diploma and industry certifications for career readiness is an important way to decrease recidivism for juveniles. This study sought to establish if there were obvious associations between recidivism, educational tracks, adverse childhood experiences, hometown, and a checklist criterion termed IVALIDATE for students enrolled in a Mid-Atlantic region residential treatment center. A total of 200 randomly sampled treatment center records were analyzed in the study. The research findings confirm that students in vocational education had lower recidivism compared to students in general academics, but only if their adverse childhood experiences scores were low. IVALIDATE completers also showed lower recidivism than noncompleters if their childhood experiences scores were low. If the score was high, students from Baltimore showed higher recidivism than students from other hometowns. These results warrant further study by policymakers and criminal specialists who must improve and execute programs to help juveniles develop into positive, independent contributors to the labor force and civilization.

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Recommended Citation

Gammage, Catherine, "Relationships Between Education Track, Adverse Childhood Experience, and Recidivism Among Juveniles" (2020). Digital Commons @ ACU, Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 188.
https://digitalcommons.acu.edu/etd/188