1 Juvenile Recidivism and Length of Stay

Reducing recidivism is a central goal of the juvenile justice system. The effectiveness of juvenile programs in meeting this goal has been the focus of numerous studies. While many researchers have examined the impact of a broad array of juvenile justice interventions, few have focused exclusively on the effects of lengths of stay or duration of juvenile justice interventions on recidivism. The studies that have included an examination of this relationship have produced mixed and inconclusive results. Neither Saake’s (1972) study of length of time spent in a juvenile probation camp school, nor Fagan’s (1995) study of youths charged with robbery or burglary, found that longer lengths of confinement reduced subsequent recidivism. Myner et al. (1998) argue that incarceration does not serve as a deterrent for juvenile offenders. They base this conclusion on their examination of the relationship between the length of first confinement and number of subsequent convictions among a sample of male juvenile offenders. The researchers discovered that the longer the length of the initial incarceration, the greater the number of subsequent reconvictions. To explain this finding, they hypothesize that youths may learn criminal behavior from other delinquen