Dr. Cavanagh gave a webinar for the Society for Community Research and Action (SCRA) Criminal Justice Interest Group. The full webinar is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiogxtKMf-I#action=share
Description: Adolescence is a period of increased risk-taking, which, for an estimated 1.5 million adolescents annually, may result in contact with the justice system. Although most youth begin and end their criminal careers during adolescence, the consequences of justice system contact can affect youths’ lives well beyond the adolescent years, and inflict high costs on individual youth, their families, and taxpayers. Several multi-method, multi-site studies will be presented, all of which use a developmental psychological perspective to examine how the family context contributes to the etiology of, and desistance from, juvenile offending. Specifically, discussion will center on two aspects of the role of family in juvenile delinquency. First, a series of studies will demonstrate how parents’ attitudes toward the justice system, knowledge of, and effort in, the legal process, and familial factors are associated with legal decision making and youth re-offending. Second, studies will illustrate how juvenile recidivism reciprocally affects the parenting context.