This study for Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), as part of the National Mentoring Resource Center, examines naturally-occurring mentoring relationships and criminal justice outcomes.
Prepared for Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) as part of the National Mentoring Resource Center, this report uses data from the public use data set of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) to investigate the relationship between youth reports of having a mentor and subsequent criminal justice-related outcomes. The dataset consists of a nationally representative sample of adolescents who were in grades 7 through 12 when beginning participation in the study during the 1994-1995 school year. Youth reports of having a mentor and juvenile arrests were collected at Wave III in 2000 when study participants were between the ages of 17 and 26. Criminal justice-related outcomes included in this report were collected at Wave IV in 2008 when participants were between the ages of 25 and 34; these outcomes included victimization as well as mental health experiences that have been associated with victimization. All analyses are limited to the public use portion of the dataset (N = 4,177). The report concludes with a brief overview of how the findings can inform future directions in the youth mentoring field. All data are based on the self-reports of youth and thus should be interpreted accordingly, although for sake of ease of presentation this qualifier is not included consistently throughout this brief.