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What Predicts Out-of-Home Placement in Juvenile Court Dispositions? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

  • Empirical Research
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Abstract

Research suggests that juvenile court dispositions are influenced by legal factors, such as offense severity and prior record, as well as extralegal factors, such as race/ethnicity, sex, and age. To date, however, no research has reviewed whether legal or extralegal factors are more predictive of juvenile court dispositions across extant research. To address this gap, the present study reports on a systematic review and meta-analysis of predictors of residential placement in the juvenile justice system. A total of 40 independent samples were analyzed from 33 studies that met the criteria for inclusion in the review. Meta-analytic techniques were used to examine the average effects of offense characteristics, prior record, age, preadjudication detention status, race and ethnicity, sex, and contextual factors on odds of placement. The findings suggest that legal factors are more strongly associated with juvenile court dispositions than extralegal or contextual factors. Additionally, the strongest predictor of placement was whether the juvenile defendant had been detained at intake, illustrating the influential role of early case assessment in juvenile court.

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Notes

  1. In the broader criminal justice context, Pratt (1998) reviewed sentencing research and performed a meta-analysis of predictors of sentence length across 47 prior studies. While the main focus was on race—which appears to be the focus of most research on case-level processing in criminal as well as juvenile justice (see Mitchell, 2005; Zane & Pupo, 2021)—Pratt (1998) also ran analyses for prior record and offense severity. Neither prior record nor race were significant predictors of sentence length across studies, with weighted effect sizes of r = 0.07 and r = 0.12, respectively. Severity of offense, however, was significantly associated with sentence length—with a larger weighted effect size of r = 0.36.

  2. It is worth noting that simply transforming the odds ratio into another metric, such a r or d, does not address the underlying issue. Moreover, “these methods are only approximations and do not necessarily provide the exact effect that would have been observed had the outcome been scaled or dichotomized” (Petersen et al., 2022, p. 10). As such, it remains common practice for meta-analysts to use the odds ratio as the summary effect metric for research questions that employ dichotomous outcomes (e.g., Lapsey et al., 2021; Petersen et al., 2022).

  3. Fifteen studies coded female as “1” and male as “0”, and these were converted into effect sizes for male (by reversing the sign of the logged odds).

  4. To assess whether outlier effect sizes influenced the summary effects, separate meta-analyses were conducted with each individual study removed. In no instance did the direction or significance of the summary effect change, indicating no substantial outliers.

  5. For offense characteristics, 95% prediction intervals were as follows: felony [0.55, 8.65]; severity [0.91, 1.12]; violent-binary [0.75, 2.64]; violent-versus-property [0.73, 1.64].

  6. For prior record, 95% prediction intervals were as follows: count adjudications [1.03, 1.86]; binary referrals [1.35, 4.85]; count referrals [1.01, 1.47].

  7. Three studies appeared to use an ordinal measure for age and were included. Sensitivity analysis revealed that removing these studies did not change the direction or significance of the summary effect.

  8. For age, the 95% prediction interval was [0.83, 1.28].

  9. For detention, the 95% prediction interval was [1.62, 6.95].

  10. For race/ethnicity, the 95% prediction intervals were as follows: Black/White [0.48, 3.08]; Hispanic/White [0.42, 2.96]; non-White/White [0.89, 1.59].

  11. For sex, the 95% prediction interval was [0.48, 3.27].

  12. For contextual factors, the 95% prediction intervals were as follows: concentrated disadvantage [0.80, 1.31]; racial composition [0.96, 1.05].

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the Editor and the anonymous reviewers for their valuable feedback and suggestions on an earlier version of this manuscript.

Authors' Contribution

S.Z. conceived of the study, participated in its design and coordination, performed the statistical analyses and interpretation of data, and drafted the manuscript; J.P. participated in the study design and coordination, performed data collection, and helped draft the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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The datasets generalized and analyzed during the current study are not publicly available but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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  1. College of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA

    Steven N. Zane & Jhon A. Pupo

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Zane, S.N., Pupo, J.A. What Predicts Out-of-Home Placement in Juvenile Court Dispositions? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. J Youth Adolescence 52, 229–244 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-022-01686-2

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