Partners or adversaries? The relation between juvenile diversion supervision and parenting practices.

OBJECTIVE: Based on guiding principles such as parens patriae, juvenile probation officers (JPOs) not only supervise youth, but in certain jurisdictions they also decide how control-oriented their conditions will be. JPOs' perceptions of parenting could be related to their decision making. This study examined: (a) whether JPOs' perceptions of the home were associated with the conditions they placed on youth; (b) if JPOs' perceptions of the home aligned with the youths' perceptions; and (c) if JPOs' control-oriented conditions were associated with changes in parenting practices. HYPOTHESES: (H1) JPOs' perceptions of the home should be positively related to youths' perceptions of parenting practices. (H2) JPOs' perceptions of the home should be positively associated with the conditions imposed. (H3) JPOs' control-oriented conditions may be positively associated with increased parental supervision, yet they may also be associated with lessened parental supervision. METHOD: The sample consisted of 265 male youth (mean age = 15.41; 76.6% Latino, 19.25% White, 0.75% Black) who were arrested for the first time and placed on supervised diversion. RESULTS: Latent class analyses indicated that there were three supervision conditions classes: standard, moderate, and high control. JPOs' perceptions of the home did not align with youths' perceptions of parenting practices (e.g., rule setting, curfew setting, and monitoring) yet they were the strongest predictor of receiving the most control-oriented conditions. Surprisingly, parental rule setting, curfew setting, and monitoring declined once youth were placed under supervision, and declines did not differ based on how control-oriented their official conditions were. CONCLUSIONS: Parents are thought to be vital in justice-involved youths' success. Yet within this sample, officers' perceptions of the family did not align with youths' perceptions. Further, parental supervision declined equally regardless of how control-oriented youths' supervision conditions were. Parents must be better integrated into the process to enhance the success of youth on community supervision. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Proximal predictors of gun violence among adolescent males involved in crime.

The growing public health and legal concerns regarding gun violence has led to a call for research that investigates risk factors for gun violence across a variety of domains. Individual and sociocontextual risk factors have been associated with violence more broadly, and in some instances gun-carrying, however no prior research has investigated the role of these factors in explaining gun violence using longitudinal data. The current study utilized a subsample (N = 161) from the Pathways to Desistance Study, which is a longitudinal sample of serious adolescent offenders to evaluate interindividual and intraindividual differences in relevant risk factors of gun violence. Results suggest that there are a few key proximal individual-level and sociocontextual predictors for gun violence, including witnessing nongun violence, future orientation, and perceived personal rewards to crime. Findings demonstrate the salience of exposure to violence in contributing to gun violence and identify levers of action for public policy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Social Risk Factors of Black and White Adolescents' Substance Use: The Differential Role of Siblings and Best Friends.

Efforts to understand peer influence among adolescents have established the robust relationship between having substance using peers and future substance use. Still, research suggests that peer influence affects different types of adolescents in different ways. Black adolescents may be less susceptible to friends compared to white adolescents and possess stronger family-orientation, suggesting that siblings may affect deviance of Black adolescents whereas friends will have a minimal impact. This study used data from the first two waves of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health to evaluate the relative strength of best friend and siblings' influence as risk factors for Black and White adolescents' alcohol and cigarette use. Approximately 182 Black sibling pairs (37 % male) and 657 white sibling pairs (46 % male) that ranged in ages from 11 to 19 were in the longitudinal analyses for the current study. The findings demonstrated that sibling and best friends' substance use explained white adolescents' cigarette and alcohol use, whereas Black adolescents' cigarette and alcohol use was predominantly explained by siblings' substance use. Ultimately, the results indicated the nuanced role that two types of peers have in explaining variation in substance use across Black and White adolescents.