This collaborative effort between Florida State University (FSU), the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice (FDJJ), and the Oregon Youth Authority (OYA) examined measurement strategies for juvenile recidivism.
This project was a three-year effort to (1) describe states’ current practices regarding the measurement of juvenile recidivism, (2) compare the rates and predictors of different measures of recidivism that varied in terms of marker events, follow-up lengths, and inclusion of adult system information, (3) compare the amount of program- and community-level variation in recidivism across different measures of recidivism, and (4) assist the state of Oregon in exploring potential changes to its current measure of juvenile recidivism. The study was a collaborative effort between Florida State University (FSU), the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice (FDJJ), and the Oregon Youth Authority (OYA). Archival data from FDJJ and OYA offered an opportunity to do what researchers had previously been unable to: analyze several different permutations of a reoffending measure based on the same sets of youth, and assess the robustness of findings across those permutations. The extent and prediction of juvenile reoffending are of considerable research and policy importance.