Predictors of Detention Among Juveniles Referred for a Court Clinic Forensic Evaluation

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Figure 1.
Rates of primary Axis I diagnoses given at the time of the court clinic evaluation (n = 337).

Table 1.

Baseline Comparisons of First-Time and Repeat Offending Juveniles

	Repeat (n = 111) n (%)	First Time (n = 287) n (%)	χ²	p
Demographics
Gender (% male)	67 (60)	169 (59)	0.07	79
Out of home (% yes)	17 (15)	18 (6)	8.10	.004
Race/ethnicity (% minority)	39 (35)	102 (36)	0.006	.94
Health insurance (% yes)	91 (82)	249 (87)	1.47	.23
Legal factors
Offense type at evaluation (% criminal)	62 (56)	63 (22)	42.71	<.0001
Psychiatric factors
History of inpatient hospitalization	26 (24)	26 (9)	14.24	<.0001
History of mental health treatment	85 (77)	153 (55)	17.00	<.0001
Any diagnosis (% yes)	97 (87)	254 (89)	0.10	76
Primary externalizing diagnosis	50 (45)	102 (36)	3.06	08
Dual diagnosis	39 (40)	47 (19)	17.87	<.0001

n = 398. This information was missing in the records of six juveniles in the database (N = 404).

Table 2.

Baseline Comparisons of Detained and Nondetained Juveniles

	Detained (n = 82) n (%)	Nondetained (n = 322) n (%)	χ²	p
Demographics
Gender (% male)	63 (77)	178 (55)	12.61	<.0001
Out of home (% yes)	14 (17)	21 (7)	9.07	.003
Race/ethnicity (% minority)	31 (38)	113 (35)	0.21	.65
Health insurance (% yes)	70 (85)	273 (85)	0.02	.90
Legal factors
First time offender (% yes)	39 (48)	248 (78)	29.04	<.0001
Prior status offender (% yes)	27 (34)	50 (16)	12.78	<.0001
Prior criminal offender (% yes)	29 (36)	30 (10)	34.97	<.0001
Psychiatric factors
History of inpatient hospitalization	18 (23)	35 (11)	7.62	.006
History of mental health treatment	54 (68)	187 (60)	1.62	0.20
Any diagnosis (% yes)	69 (84)	284 (88)	0.97	0.32
Primary externalizing diagnosis	33 (40)	121 (38)	0.20	0.66
Dual diagnosis	38 (55)	48 (17)	43.89	<.0001

Table 3.

Prospective Predictors of Juvenile Detention Within 12 Months

Variables	β	S.E.	Wald	Odds Ratio
Demographics
Age	0.04 (0.33)	0.12 (0.09)	0.11 (13.88)	1.04 (1.39^***)
Gender	0.88 (0.99)	0.34 (0.29)	60.61 (12.01)	2.42^ (2.68^*)
Out-of-home	0.31 (1.08)	0.58 (0.37)	0.29 (8.44)	1.37 (2.93^*)
Race and ethnicity	0.27 (0.12)	0.33 (0.26)	0.67 (0.21)	1.31 (1.12)
Legal history
Prior status offender	0.69 (0.99)	0.37 (0.28)	3.44 (12.19)	2.00 (2.68^***)
Prior criminal offender	1.10 (1.67)	0.40 (0.30)	7.70 (3.61)	3.01^ (5.31^*)
Psychiatric factors
Prior inpatient hospitalization	0.68 (0.87)	0.42 (0.32)	2.62 (70.30)	1.98 (2.40^**)
Disruptive behavior disorder	−0.21 (0.11)	0.32 (0.25)	0.42 (0.20)	0.81 (1.12)
Dual diagnosis	1.76 (1.80)	0.49 (0.29)	12.90 (38.57)	5.83^* (6.03^*)
Number of diagnoses	−0.21 (0.31)	0.23 (0.12)	0.79 (6.69)	0.81 (1.36^**)

n = 336; 68 cases were missing due to the listwise deletion inherent in least regression procedures. Data in parentheses represent unadjusted statistics.
↵* p < .05;
↵** p < .01;
↵*** p < .0001.