The Crossroads Study follows 1,216 young male juvenile offenders (ages 13-17) of different degrees of justice system involvement over the course of 36 months following an arrest.
Youths were sampled from three sites: Philadelphia, PA; Jefferson Parish, LA; and Orange County, CA. Three sites are necessary in order to reduce the possibility that findings would actually reflect (or be construed by the field as reflecting) idiosyncrasies of local practices or offenders. In addition, the sites selected represent three culturally distinct regions of the country (East, South, and West) and contribute to demographic diversity in the study sample. Sample size differs by site, reflecting the rate of eligible offenders in each region. Specifically, we recruited about 530 participants each from Philadelphia and Orange County, and 150 from Jefferson Parish, which has a much smaller population.
We have elected to include youth with no prior offenses to (a) restrict variability in past offending, in order to facilitate the matching of youth on important characteristics that could influence their justice system experience, and (b) ensure sufficient variability in justice system involvement following arrest. Charges associated with a .35 to .65 probability of formal versus informal processing of first time offenders were selected as eligible offenses.