Predictors of Juvenile and Adult Offending Patterns－A perspective from School Discipline Practice

Purpose: The current correlational study examined whether specific school discipline practices were associated with students’ subsequent juvenile and adult offending. 

Methodology: The current study used an administrative data set containing educational, juvenile justice, and adult correctional information about 407,800 children enrolled in grades 7-12 in public schools in a state in the Deep South. The overall sample The study sample was drawn from a 10-year cohort (1996-2008) of children in grades 7-12 (N=45,799) who were identified as early starters (juvenile offense record; n=14,346;31.4%), late starters (adult offense record; n=17,105;37.3%), adolescence-limited (juvenile offense record, only; n=10,126;22.1%), and life-course-persistent (juvenile plus adult offense records; n=4,222;9.2%).  Three demographic variables are gender, race, and poverty status. School discipline predictors included out-of-school expulsion, out-of-school suspension, in-school suspension, and in-school expulsion. the rest school predcitors are attendance, truancy risk, dropout status, school transitions, highest grade completed, and ELA standardized test scores.  

Results: Wald statistics showed that in-school and out-of-school suspension and out-of-school expulsion significantly predicted each of the four patterns of offending. Odds ratios, however, for expulsion indicated moderate to large changes in the likelihood of having a juvenile record, an adult record, only a juvenile record, and both juvenile plus adult records; at Exp(B) = 11.2, 4.7, 8.0, and 7.8, respectively. 

Policy recommendation: Results underscore the importance of implementing educational and psychosocial interventions to minimize expulsion from school. Additional longitudinal research is needed to understand how school discipline policies disproportionately affect children from minority groups.