Youth with Disabilities in Juvenile Corrections: A National Survey‪.‬

More than 134,000 youth are incarcerated in public and private juvenile correctional facilities in the United States (Sickmund, 2002). Many of these youth enter juvenile correctional facilities with intense educational, mental health, medical, and social needs. Large numbers of incarcerated juveniles are marginally literate or illiterate and have experienced school failure and retention (Center on Crime, Communities, and Culture, 1997). These youth are also disproportionately male, poor, Black, Native American, or Latino and many have significant learning or behavioral problems that entitle them to special education and related services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Professionals have been aware of high rates of learning and behavioral disorders among incarcerated youth for some time (Moffitt, 1990). The prevalence of such disorders among the juvenile justice population (Otto, Greenstein, Johnson, & Friedman, 1992; Teplin, Abram, McClelland, Dulcan, & Mericle, 2002), has led some professionals to characterize juvenile justice as a "default system" for youth who can't read or write well, who have mental health problems, and who drop out or are forced out of school (Nelson, 2000). The extent of this overrepresentation and the mechanisms associated with it are not well understood. The estimated prevalence of children and adolescents with disabilities in juvenile corrections ranges from 30% to 70% (Casey & Keilitz, 1990; Murphy, 1986; Rutherford, Nelson, & Wolford, 1985). However, most of the existing research in this area has been limited geographically and has been compromised by methodological problems (Casey & Keilitz). Several theories have emerged to explain the overrepresentation of youth with disabilities in correctional and detention facilities (Fink, 1990; Leone & Meisel, 1997). These include school failure, susceptibility, differential treatment, and metacognitive deficits. The school failure theory (Osher, Woodruff, & Sims, 2002; Post, 1981) asserts that learning, emotional/behavioral, and intellectual disabilities lead either directly to school failure or transactionally to school problems and failure causing negative self-image, which in turn leads to school dropout, suspension, and delinquency. The susceptibility theory holds that individuals with disabilities have personality and cognitive deficits that predispose them to criminal or delinquent behavior. These characteristics include (a) poorly developed impulse control, (b) irritability, (c) suggestibility, (d) an inability to anticipate consequences, and (e) inadequate perception of social cues (Keilitz & Dunivant, 1987). The differential treatment explanation asserts that although disabled and nondisabled delinquents engage in comparable behaviors, the police, courts, and juvenile corrections respond very differently to delinquent youth with disabilities (Keilitz & Dunivant). The metacognitive deficits hypothesis (Larson, 1988) suggests that delinquent youths' problem-solving strategies are less well developed than those of socially competent adolescents. Thus, inadequate social-cognitive development, common among youth with disabilities, increases the risk of delinquent and criminal behavior.