Report on Juvenile Recidivism in Allegheny County

In Allegheny County a juvenile is considered a recidivist if he/she reoffends while they are still under court supervision or within 2 years of their original case closure date. Therefore
although it is now 2014, the most complete data with information on juvenile recidivism in the county was based on cases closed in 2009.

In the year 2009, when including cases that were dismissed not substantiated, given accelerated rehabilitative disposition (ARD) or granted a consent decree there were 1746 juvenile cases closed in Allegheny County. When those specific cases are not taken into consideration there were 1473 juvenile cases closed in Allegheny County.

In order to cut back the number of cases and clients studied, several parameters were set.  First, since recidivism implies that the youth have had more than one run in with the juvenile justice system, youth who were age 14 when their cases were closed were used. Since their involvement with juvenile probation began when they were eligible to enter the system, there is generally more information regarding their lives, probation experience and court history in  the probation databases. Second, when determining parameters for narrowing down the number of cases to examine the services that Allegheny County Juvenile Probation offers were  taken into consideration. While Allegheny County Juvenile Probation does serve both males and females there are more services, programs and facilities for males, therefore solely males were studied. Using these two parameters, the base file containing 1746 cases was dramatically reduced to only 58 cases.

When the caseload was reduced to 58, I chose a several variables to guide my study. In looking for trends and differences between 14-year-old recidivists and non-recidivists, I decided to look at their residential neighborhood via zip code, race, age at first written allegation, offense committed, court ordered Allegheny County Juvenile Probation service and detention history.

The findings of this report were produced using statistical data  collected by Allegheny County Juvenile Probation in addition to notes from each youth’s respective probation officer. Unfortunately, it was not possible to get in contact with any of the  study participants to gain firsthand insight about their experiences with juvenile probation.

In the following pages you will find background information on Allegheny County Juvenile  probation including but not limited to their mission, services and some information on what the organization looked like in 2009. Next you will find the specific data on Juvenile Recidivism in Allegheny County broken down by each study variable and lastly a conclusions section.