Prior research shows that adolescents with higher levels of legal cynicism are more likely to experience arrest in young adulthood, yet less is known about how different forms of childhood disadvantage shape legal cynicism and later criminal legal system involvement. This study examines whether childhood risks operate through distinct developmental pathways linking early adversity to arrest in young adulthood. Using longitudinal, nationally representative data, we employed path analysis to examine associations between childhood parental incarceration, adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), and race with arrest in young adulthood as mediated through adolescent police stops and legal cynicism. Parental incarceration and identifying as Black/African American directly predicted arrest in young adulthood. Cumulative ACEs and identifying as Black/African American indirectly predicted young adult arrest through increased adolescent police stops and subsequent legal cynicism. Parental incarceration operated through a distinct pathway, directly predicting young adult arrest and shaping adolescent legal cynicism independently of police contact.

Many U.S. schools utilize grade retention (repeating grades when not meeting academic benchmarks) to allow more time for students to learn grade level material. However, some research suggests retention may increase inequalities and not help students progress. We use national data (Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study 2014–2017) and logistic regression to examine what predicts the likelihood of elementary school retention and whether retention is associated with long term outcomes. We find that race and family income did not predict who was most likely to be retained. As expected, boys were more likely to be retained than girls. Most importantly, we show that, of students in major metropolitan areas, retention did not predict long-term academic outcomes (regardless of race, sex, or familial income). Retention did predict long-term exclusionary discipline outcomes for Black students only supporting the School to Prison Pipeline framework.

In 2016, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services issued a statement through the Child Welfare Capacity Building Collaborative (CBCS) calling on state child welfare agencies to affirm/support sexual and gender minority (SGM) youth in the child welfare system - outlining specific "harmful practices" to avoid and "healthy approaches" to implement. Many states have since set health equity goals acknowledging the needs of this population. One such state, Oregon, has invested in the adaptation of KEEP SAFE, an evidence-based parenting intervention, in order to meet health equity goals for SGM youth. The current study reports qualitative findings from focus groups of resource parent participants in KEEP SAFE in order to shed light on past experiences resource parents have had parenting their SGM youth, understand what they found helpful about the adapted parenting intervention, and identify what areas they are lacking additional training and supports. Participants discussed both their hardships/challenges and their successes/joys as resource parents of SGM youth and within the KEEP SAFE group. Though participants mostly engaged in CBCS identified "healthy approaches" when parenting their youth, several shared stories where they unintentionally engaged in "harmful practices." Participants reported that they attended KEEP SAFE to learn more healthy approaches. They reported enjoying the experience and wanting to learn more. Findings suggest more training and support may be necessary for resource parents caring for SGM youth.

Over 2 million people are currently incarcerated - the majority of whom are parents to minor children. The reentry process is often difficult for parents as they navigate reentry challenges such as finding housing and employment while also trying to develop and reestablish relationships with their children. Increased parent-child contact during incarceration is associated with improved incarceration and reentry outcomes for both the parents and their children. Using survey data from 252 parents exiting the prison system, this study uses structural equation modeling to examine predictors of parent-child contact during incarceration. Findings suggest incarcerated parents have higher levels of contact with their children when the parents had less exposure to childhood adversities such as parental incarceration, foster care, and group home placement. Mothers display higher levels of contact with children than fathers; similarly, younger parents display higher levels of contact than older, as do those who had recent contact in the month prior to incarceration compared to those who did not. These findings highlight specific factors and populations for practitioners to target to increase the level of parent-child contact during incarceration.

A variety of factors are associated with the likelihood of reporting guns at school; however, mixed empirical findings hinder our ability to inform policies to reduce school violence. Additionally, many of the established factors are difficult to change over time, and limited attention has been devoted to more malleable factors such as anonymous reporting. To better understand how to improve the likelihood of gun reporting at school, we drew from three waves of survey data from 3,633 students in St. Louis, Missouri. Using a multilevel model, we find that perceived risk of victimization and the availability of anonymous reporting increase the likelihood of gun reporting, while negative peer commitment, self-reported delinquency, and victimization decrease the likelihood of reporting. Additional analyses suggest that independent of known risk factors that inhibit reporting, increases in school climate and improvements in availability of anonymous reporting can increase the likelihood of reporting guns at school.

Prior research indicates that Black students and students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds are more likely to receive exclusionary discipline and are at risk of low academic achievement. However, the association between academic achievement and exclusionary discipline over time is not as well understood. With data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, the study uses structural equation modeling to investigate the relationship between exclusionary discipline and academic achievement over time and the predictive roles of race, socioeconomic status, and sex in these domains. Results indicate that Black children and children from lower socioeconomic backgrounds were more likely to receive exclusionary discipline and to have lower academic achievement when they were nine years old. Academic achievement at age nine was positively associated with academic achievement at age 15 and negatively associated with receiving exclusionary discipline at age 15. Similarly, receiving exclusionary discipline at age nine was predictive of low academic achievement at age 15 and a heightened risk of receiving exclusionary discipline at age 15. This study highlights disparities that exist in exclusionary discipline and academic achievement both in the short and long-term. More research is needed to address opportunity, discipline, and academic achievement gaps experienced by racially and economically marginalized children to ensure all can realize their full potential.

This study uses in-depth, qualitative interviews to examine the facilitators/supports and barriers/challenges faced by parents reentering their communities after incarceration. Findings are framed within the context of Bronfenbrenner’s ecological framework. Parents reentering their communities after incarceration often face a host of challenges related to their reentry experience (e.g. finding housing/employment) and their parenting experience (e.g. navigating familial relationships). Parenting scholars have urged communities to adopt holistic intervention methods at each level of the ecological model—including an individual’s microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, and macrosystem to help families experiencing this trauma thrive. In order to examine which areas within the ecological system families are receiving support (and which areas are still lacking), this study uses qualitative data from 14 semi-structured interviews with parents who recently reentered their communities after incarceration and had a minor child at the time of reentry. Interviews were recorded, transcribed, and coded based on a priori themes. Participants listed both barriers/challenges and facilitators/strengths at reentry that fell into three main categories including 1. Access to children or resources, 2. Social connections, 3. Personal introspection related to parenting. Barriers and supports are described within each level of the ecological model. Findings suggest interventions are needed to buffer, support, and help reentering parents gain parenting skills/knowledge, spend quality time with their children, and access reentry programs to help parents/children develop healthy attachment and promote smoother reintegration into their community. These interventions should be implemented at various levels within the ecological model.

Purpose: The recent rise in homicide has led to ongoing debate on the role of law enforcement due to research that suggests cynicism in the legal system can be criminogenic and lead to violence. Understanding how and why legal cynicism develops is important to improve police-community relationships and to lower crime. Methods: The current study uses a national data set and structural equation modeling to understand how familial factors such as parental incarceration, experiencing adverse childhood experiences, and youth race are predictive of legal cynicism and how this might be mediated through experiencing police stops. Results: Findings suggest race, parental incarceration, and ACEs are all directly predictive of police stops and indirectly predictive of legal cynicism. Only race and parental incarceration directly predict legal cynicism. Conclusions: Given the current concerns over rising violent crime rates in urban cities and the quality and nature of police-citizen interactions, our results provide a timely analysis of risk factors contributing to the development of legal cynicism. Findings suggest that, not only must we be concerned with the well-documented impact of police contact, we should expand our view to include experiences with parental incarceration. Implications for practitioners and criminal justice professionals are discussed.

When individuals reenter their communities after incarceration, they frequently have difficulties in meeting their basic needs. Social support can help buffer some of the challenges reentering individuals face. Research has demonstrated that reentering individuals with close social bonds are more likely to secure employment, experience better mental health, exhibit lower levels of hostility, desist from criminal activity, and avoid recidivating. Although social support is helpful during reentry, incarceration often erodes external social support networks. While research points to the importance of sustaining or building external support during and after incarceration, information is limited regarding what factors may influence social support networks of correction involved individuals. The current study seeks to understand what factors impact the external social support received by individuals while they are in prison. Using structural equation modeling, the study examines the impact of key demographic characteristics, past childhood adversity, mental health diagnoses, and substance misuse on external support individuals receive during incarceration. Participants in the study included 413 adults who were recently released from the Oregon State prison system and were participating in a transitional housing program. Controlling for other covariates, having a mental health diagnosis, having experienced childhood adversity, and being male all predicted lower levels of external social support during incarceration. These may be key populations to target to help bolster their external social support networks prior to their release from prison. Suggestions are made for future research and intervention development.

Individuals reentering the community after prison can face a host of complex challenges. Social support appears to be an important factor in helping recently released men and women by promoting adjustment and success in multiple areas of life. However, social support during the reentry is not well understood in terms of what types of support help individuals, who can best provide this support, how certain aspects of social support might be harmful, and pathways through which support helps individuals. This qualitative study explores four common types of social support that have been identified in the research literature: emotional, instrumental, informational, and companionship. In-depth interviews with 26 adults recently released from prison found variation in the type of support received, the source of the support (primary or secondary groups), and whether the support was primarily positive, negative or harmful, or absent. Exploratory findings surfaced around seven potential pathways through which social support might help individuals who are reentering the community. Suggestions are made for the future work of practitioners and researchers during the reentry period.

The incarceration of a parent is often a continuation of a challenging family situation marked by poverty, unstable housing, trauma, and abuse. These challenges make it difficult for incarcerated parents reentering their communities to raise their children effectively and, thus, increase the likelihood of poor outcomes for their children. Children whose parents are also battling opioid misuse have an even higher risk for long-term problems. This study uses survey data from 48 community service providers to better understand the service needs of parents with histories of problematic opioid use who are reentering their communities after incarceration. Community service providers recommended implementing intervention programs that cover critical information related to basic needs, supportive community resources, drug treatment programs, and parenting to help individuals thrive in their communities and meet their children's needs. The services most frequently identified by providers as important for reentering parents included housing, mentors or peer counselors, mental health support, group therapy and other support programs. Key topics to address in parenting programs included problem-solving techniques, the effect of parent's addiction on children, and strategies for connecting with and meeting children's needs. Suggestions are made for future research and intervention development.

School-based parental involvement is a common practice in the United States, and yet there is an emerging view that parents' involvement in schools may have little if any academic benefit for their children. However, such conclusions are often based on narrowly construed survey questions, such as "Did you attend PTA in the past year?". In our study, we re-examine commonly used measurements of school-based parental involvement using 130 interviews with parents and administrators across three diverse elementary schools. We compare conventional survey measures of school-based parental involvement with our own qualitative assessments of parental efficacy. Notably, we find that highly efficacious parents employed a wide range of involvement strategies, undetected by some traditional metrics of involvement (i.e., attending PTA meetings). As expected, we also find that efficacious parents were largely advantaged themselves and concentrated in advantaged schools. However, school contexts can play a powerful role in shaping the reception of parents' engagement with schools-the presence of a Spanish immersion program transformed how teachers and administrators interpreted the involvement activities of Latinx parents. Our results point to the importance of (1) recasting parental involvement as parental efficacy and (2) integrating school contexts to understand how efficacy can be more effectively encouraged and deployed.

On any given day, millions of U.S. children have at least one parent in jail or in prison. As the number of children facing this situation has increased considerably over the past several decades, interest has intensified regarding the impact of this experience on child adjustment. Although substantial research has focused on the link between parental incarceration and child externalizing behaviors, comparatively little research has examined the impact of parental incarceration on child internalizing problems across time. This leaves a critical gap in understanding child outcomes as a whole, as internalizing problems can have implications for psychopathology and other problematic issues not only across childhood but also across adulthood. To address this gap, the effects of parental incarceration on developmental trajectories of internalizing problems were examined while controlling for key individual, parental and family influences. Using four trajectory groups – Low-Stable, Preadolescent-Limited, Moderate-Increasing, and High-Decreasing – found in previous analyses of data from a longitudinal study of 655 youth, we fit unadjusted and adjusted multinomial logistic regression models. The models included all predictors of interest on the categorical outcome of the specific internalizing problem trajectory using the Low-Stable individuals as the reference group. Study results suggest that when controlling for other family risks, parental incarceration is not a significant risk factor for any of the trajectories in the development of internalizing problems. These findings provide evidence that parental incarceration may be a risk marker, rather than a unique risk factor, for internalizing problems among youth.

Research over the past several decades has documented the effect of parental incarceration on child development. While many findings point to a negative impact of parental incarceration on children, increasingly research demonstrates the heterogeneity of children’s experiences, behavior, and eventual outcomes. Examining this heterogeneity is key to developing effective interventions that enhance protective factors while addressing especially harmful risk factors. In the current study, we used growth mixture modeling to identify distinct trajectories of internalizing problems for youth ( N = 655) from 10 to 16 years of age. We then examined the relations of the identified trajectories with parental incarceration, parent-child relationships, stressful life events, and parenting as well as future substance use, criminality, and suicidality (ideation and attempt). Four trajectory classes were identified: Low-Stable, Pre-Adolescent Limited, Moderate-Increasing, and High-Decreasing. Over half of the children who had experienced parental incarceration were best represented by the low risk trajectory . However, children with incarcerated parents were underrepresented in this trajectory and overrepresented in two of the three problematic trajectories . The trajectory classes differed significantly on many of the pre-adolescent measures as well as on adolescent delinquency, substance use, suicide ideation and suicide attempt. The Pre-Adolescent Limited, Moderate-Increasing, and High-Decreasing showed significantly higher levels of early risk factors and problematic outcomes than the Low-Stable trajectory group. Implications are discussed.

The perspectives of at-risk adolescent clients can play an important role in informing treatment services. The current study examines qualitative interview data from 15 young women with histories of maltreatment. Using a semi-structured qualitative interview approach, we asked the women to think retrospectively about their treatment experiences as adolescent girls. Results highlight the need for providing adolescent girls with reliable and practical information about risky sexual behavior and drug use from relatable and trustworthy helping professionals. We discuss strategies for developing and maintaining trust and delivering specific content.

Adolescent girls with a history of maltreatment are at heightened risk for health-risking behaviors, including unsafe sexual behaviors and drug use. However, few studies have examined the views of this population in regard to sexual partner choice, sexual behaviors, and decisions to use drugs with sexual partners.

Background: Parents of children with Emotional and Behavioral Disorders (EBD) often face barriers to effective communication with schools. They often feel blamed or stigmatized for their children’s behavior and, while advocating, can feel adversarial with the school. Objective: The current study aims to describe current communication for parents and teachers of students with EBD, identify parent–school communication barriers, and identify characteristics of effective parent–school communication. Method: We conducted 15 semi-structured, qualitative interviews with parents and teachers of students with EBD. Interview questions focused on descriptions of the tone of their current communication, perceived barriers to communication, and ideas for effective approaches to communication. All interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim, and coded. Results: Results show that parents’ feelings about their current parent–school communication varied by the type of school students were attending: day-treatment, neighborhood, military charter, or private treatment school. Both parents and teachers brought up complex issues with parent–school communication related to school culture and the impact of parents’ prior negative experiences communicating with schools. Parents and teachers identified barriers to communication and suggestions for effective communication related to technology, institutional issues, time, parents’ and teachers’ lack of interest in communicating, and school proximity to home. Conclusion: Parents and teachers identified parent–school communication as a critical factor to promote children’s school success. Three broad recommendations emerged from the interviews targeting malleable factors to increase effective parent–school communication. We also discuss limitations and implications for practice.

Students with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) too often do not receive adequate services or care in their school settings, particularly during transitions in educational placements. In addition, school support teams often struggle with creating transition plans that honor the needs of students with input from key stakeholders responsible for supporting student success. This article presents findings from the information-gathering phase of an iterative project that aims to develop a support program for students with EBD transitioning from day-treatment schools to district schools. We conducted 5 semistructured, qualitative focus groups with parents and teachers to explore needs during students’ transitions between school settings. Five themes emerged from the focus groups: (a) consistent, behavior-specific feedback and positive reinforcement are vital to sustaining learned prosocial skills; (b) students benefit from regular opportunities to learn and practice social skills; (c) transition programming should emphasize communication between school and home; (d) routines at home and school should be coordinated; and (e) parents need support at school meetings. We will use findings from this study to develop a multifaceted intervention that aims to support students, their caregivers, and their teachers during transitions between the aforementioned types of schools.