Juvenile Justice Annotated Bibliography Research Paper

Annotated bibliography
Name
Institution
Date
Cheely, C. A., Carpenter, L. A., Letourneau, E. J., Nicholas, J. S., Charles, J., & King, L. B. (2012). The prevalence of youth with autism spectrum disorders in the criminal justice system. Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 42(9), 1856-1862.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10803-011-1427-2
The study highlights the differences in crimes committed between the delinquent juveniles with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and those without the condition. There is increased interest on the relationship between ASD and crime rates. The presence of ASD symptoms among delinquent offenders is considered to determine the extent to which the autistic traits influence offending behavior. Increasingly, young people with ASD are in contact with the criminal justice system (CJS), which in turn provides criminal justice records and surveillance on the different type of offences committed by youths with ASD.
The research questions are to determine the frequency and type of offences committed by youth (12-18) with ASD. What are the adjudication outcomes for youth with ASD and those without, when the Department of Juvenile Justice in involved (DJJ)? The other question is what are the features that predict contact between youth with ASD and the Criminal Justice system?
The study participants were young people (12- 18 years) who had been registered on the South Carolina Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Project (SC ADD). There were 609 young people in the study who had ASD, and 32 had direct contact with the Department of Juvenile Justice. The study highlighted that 5% of the youth with ASD were charged with delinquent offences, lower than the general public. This may be the result of the criminal justice system in South Carolina, where officers are less likely to detain such youths. The results of the study showed that the young people with ASD were more likely to commit crimes against people, but less likely to commit property offences when compared to their counterparts without ASD. There were no significant differences in drug crimes and public order offences between the two groups, but the young people with ASD were often involved in school disturbances.
In critiquing the research, the study relied on an unbiased sample of young people with ASD and those without, and analyzed the types of offences committed by each group. However, it is contact with the justice system that provided details of the offenses committed, and the accuracy of the study is based on what the Department provided. The study further focused on the contrasting features in explaining the offending behavior when comparing those with ASD and the general population. However, the researchers did not look at the offending motivations that may explain the differences between the ASD and non ASD young offenders.
Even as the study highlighted, the researchers did not highlight how the co-morbid psychiatric diagnoses are linked with ASD and the risk of committing offences. In other words, identifying the predisposing factors linked to commit crime among youths with ASD and over-representation income of the crimes. Since the young people with ASD were more likely to commit crimes to pe...