Recidivism in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997

The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) is interested in expanding its program of youth and young adult recidivism and reentry research and to address substantive and methodological gaps in knowledge.

There is a need to enhance the array of public-use data that are available for research purposes to facilitate examination of developmental patterns and correlates of recidivism for these populations.

To augment its traditional use of administrative data from criminal justice agencies, BJS intends to use the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97) as a key data resource to develop relevant research questions on the topic of recidivism and reentry. The NLSY97 is a longitudinal, nationally representative survey of nearly 9,000 individuals born during the years 1980 through 1984. The respondents were ages 12 to 17 when first interviewed in 1997, and ages 22 to 28 when interviewed for the eleventh time in 2007-08.

Under this award, the recipient of funds and BJS will create a public-use database and establish a research agenda to understand the social, economic and educational factors that influence recidivism rates and successful reentry. Specifically, BJS seeks to understand the complexity of the recidivism process by uncovering the patterns of crime initiation, continuation and desistance, and the correlates of these behaviors over the critical period from adolescence through young adulthood using the NLSY97 data, as well as patterns of successful reentry.

The project will investigate the developmental patterns and correlates of recidivism using the data collected by the NLSY97.

Ultimately, the goal of this effort is to develop a better understanding of the legal, social, economic and educational factors that influence juvenile and criminal recidivism and successful reentry.

CA/NCF