Unpacking Adultification: Institutional Experiences and Misconduct of Adult Court and Juvenile Court Youth Living Under the Same Roof

Abstract

The present study explores the ability of juvenile waiver policy and the resulting adult court status to impact the experiences and behavior of male youth originating from differing jurisdictions but incarcerated together within state-level juvenile correctional facilities. Using official agency data and youth survey data, this research examines how “adult” status influences behavior for waived youth compared with their juvenile court counterparts. Structural equation modeling and multiple group analysis is used to determine the extent to which adult status moderates the measurement structure of models related to individual characteristics, institutional experiences, and institutional misconduct. Results reveal an improvement in model fit to occur when estimated across the two groups of juvenile court and adult court youth, beyond that which occurs when parameters are constrained to be equal for these two groups. This work reveals adult status to be powerful enough to moderate the effects of who a youth is and what that youth experiences, on how that youth behaves during a term of juvenile incarceration.