The influence of social vulnerability and illicit drug use on recidivism of young offenders

Abstract

This paper analyzes factors related with the behavior of adolescents in Conflict with the Law through the study of the relationship between recidivism in youth detention centers (YDC) and their family context, social and neighborhoods context or atmosphere. More than 2,800 teenagers received a judicial order into YDC from the Juvenile Court for Children and Youth in Porto Alegre, Brazil, between 2002 and 2008. In this paper we identify a negative correlation between a good performance on the Social Vulnerability Index (SVI) calculated in 2004, by districts in Porto Alegre, that means low social vulnerability and recidivism in YDC. Therefore, the lower social vulnerability, the higher the SVI and the lower the probability of recidivism. The information used here was obtained from 138 Medical records (with handwritten templates by Social Workers) at FASE. We propose a logistic regression model to understand explore how risk factors for delinquency in family context and social context correspond with the available statistics of adolescents in detention centers. In this capital city, an important factor to explain the recidivism in delinquency is the drug use of "marijuana-and-solvents" and "crack" when compared with the category of "denies or does not use drugs".