Abstract
Objective: This study presents a prospective evaluation of the contribution of criminogenic factors, psychiatric symptomatology, and neighborhood-level factors to risk for gun violence by adolescents with criminal justice involvement. Hypotheses: We hypothesized (a) elevated psychiatric symptom clusters would be associated with increased risk for gun violence after accounting for criminogenic factors; and (b) neighborhood contextual variables would contribute independently to gun violence risk controlling for criminogenic and psychiatric factors. Method: Data were drawn from the Pathways to Desistance study (Mulvey et al., 2004), a previously collected, longitudinal evaluation of 1,354 adolescents with felony or weapons-based misdemeanor convictions. Participants were located in Arizona and Pennsylvania and aged 14–18 at baseline. The majority identified as male (86.4%) and Black (41.4%) or Hispanic (33.5%). Participants completed interviews at baseline and follow-up over 7 years. This study drew indicators of criminogenic factors, psychiatric factors, ratings of neighborhood context, and self-reported offending verified with criminal justice records. We used discrete time survival analysis to prospectively evaluate the contribution of independent variables to time to gun violence. Results: The presence of self-reported threat control override symptoms represented a 56% increase in risk controlling for demographic and criminogenic factors, odds ratio (OR) = 1.56, 95% CI [1.11, 2.18]. Ratings of higher neighborhood gun accessibility represented almost 2.5 times increased risk for gun violence controlling for demographic, criminogenic, and psychiatric factors, OR = 2.48, 95% CI [1.60, 3.85]. Conclusions: Results suggest that consideration of environmental and individual-level factors hold importance for management of community risk and public safety for adolescents with criminal justice involvement.