U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government, Department of Justice.

NCJRS Virtual Library

The Virtual Library houses over 235,000 criminal justice resources, including all known OJP works.
Click here to search the NCJRS Virtual Library

Classifying Offenders: An Application of Latent Class Analysis to Needs Assessment in Juvenile Justice

NCJ Number
223492
Journal
Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice Volume: 6 Issue: 3 Dated: July 2008 Pages: 279-294
Author(s)
Craig S. Schwalbe; Rebecca J. Macy; Steven H. Day; Mark W. Fraser
Date Published
July 2008
Length
16 pages
Annotation
This study used latent class analysis to classify juvenile offenders into categories or types based on need profiles.
Abstract
The analysis identified five distinct profiles (low-need, serious school problems, hostility-inattention, high-risk and family-history, and substance abuse and peer delinquency) in a sample of court-involved youths based on divergent patterns of need. The profiles that emerged suggest that a limited number of specialized intervention packages may respond to the needs of the majority of youths seen by juvenile courts. To date, few studies have aggregated data from needs assessments with the purpose of developing findings to inform program planning and resource allocation. This article demonstrates the utility of a person-centered analytic approach, specifically, latent class analysis (LCA), to the classification of juveniles into discrete need profiles. In applying this approach to needs assessment data from juvenile offenders, an innovative way of using needs data to inform juvenile justice policy and practice is presented. Using a sample of 542 youthful offenders and LCA, this study classifies offenders into common profiles and describes the characteristics of these profiles. Tables, appendix and references