“The American Constitution . . . is founded on a creed. America is the only nation in the world that is founded on a creed. That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence; perhaps the only piece of practical politics that is also theoretical politics and also great literature.”
 — G. K. Chesterton, What I Saw in America (1922)

This Memorial Day weekend, it is important to remember that soldiers have died to protect America’s unalienable Rights.  What are these rights?  Paul Ksicinski fights in courts to protect these very rights for you
In deciding what those rights are, I remember these lines by Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Jesus Christ Superstar (1973).   After Jesus is arrested and he is brought before Pontius Pilate and these memorable are given:

(Jesus)
I look for truth
And find that I get damned

(Pilate)
But what is truth? Is truth unchanging law?
We both have truths, Are mine the same as yours?

As Americans, we believe certain truths to be unchanging and self-evident: “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men..”  Declaration of Independence, http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/document/.  Empasis added.  Clearly, therefore, the foundation of American government, that government which soldiers have died for, was founded to secure the natural rights of the American people. 

“To secure these rights,” proclaims the Declaration of Independence, is the reason that “governments are instituted among men.”  John Hancock (in his capacity as president of the Second Continental Congress) and James Madison both considered the Declaration to be, in Madison's words, “the fundamental Act of Union of these States.”  http://www.founding.com/founders_library/pageID.2196/default.asp  Reflecting that view, Congress has referred to the Declaration as one of the “The Organic Laws of the United States of America.” placing it in the Revised Statutes of the United States of America (the predecessor to the United States Code).  Volume 18 Revised Statutes of the United States as enacted by the 43rd Congress (1873-1875) and published by the Government Printing Office in 1878, p. v, https://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llsl&fileName=018/llsl018.db&recNum=5 and vi https://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llsl&fileName=018/llsl018.db&recNum=6 (the four documents that are presented as the cohesive collection of organic laws of the U.S. are (1) The Declaration of Independence; (2) The Article of Confederation; (3) The Northwest Ordinance; and, (4) The Constitution of the United States.)

Similarly, the U.S. Supreme Court has referred to this statement in the Declaration as “evangel of liberty to the people” by which our government secures, but does not grant to us, the unalienable Rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  Buthchers' Union Co. v. Crescent City Co. 111 U.S. 746, 756-57 (1884) (Field, Justice, concurring).  “[N]either the Bill of Rights nor the laws of sovereign States create the liberty which the Due Process Clause protects. The relevant constitutional provisions are limitations on the power of the sovereign to infringe on the liberty of the citizen….it is self-evident that all men were endowed by their Creator with liberty as one of the cardinal unalienable rights. It is that basic freedom which the Due Process Clause protects.”  Meachum v. Fano, 427 U.S. 215, 230 (1976) (Stevens, Justice, dissenting).

Therefore, “[t]he rights of life and personal liberty are natural rights of man.”  United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542, 553 (1875)  The very highest duty our government has to us is to “to protect all persons within their boundaries in the enjoyment of these ‘unalienable rights with which they were endowed by their Creator.’”  Id.  To secure natural rights is, therefore, why the Constitution was enacted, and to secure natural rights is how the Constitution should be interpreted.  

That is the “original intent” of the Founders.  It is what Paul Ksicinski believes in and will fight to protect for you in court.

If a cop stops you because she believes you have been drinking and are now driving, they are going to ask you to submit to a breathalyzer or a blood test. You can choose the breathalyzer or choose not to, so maybe you should understand the consequences of your choice. That’s why Paul Ksicinski wanted to discuss if you should agree to a breathalyzer.

In Wisconsin many motorists get the idea from TV or friends that refusing a breathalyzer or chemical test allows them to avoid a DUI charge.  Drivers mistakenly believe that denying an officer breathalyzer results will prevent them from being charged with a DUI.  False.  Sometimes refusing a breathalyzer or chemical test can result in additional charges and penalties.  Refusing the test does not guarantee that you won’t be convicted – you could be found guilty of a DUI even if your refusal means that the state does not have proof that your BAC was over.08%, the legal limit for those over 21. In fact, the prosecution can use your refusal against you by arguing that you refused the test because you knew that you were intoxicated and guilty of DUI.

Incidentally, Wisconsin’s legal limit is .08 for first, second, and third offense OWI. The legal limit will remain .02 on fourth and subsequent offenses. A .02 level is the functional equivalent of absolute sobriety.  This essentially means that on a fourth offense, a person weighing less than 190 pounds, cannot legally drive after having one drink.  A drink is equivalent to a 12-ounce bottle of beer, a 5-ounce glass of wine, or 1.5 ounces (a standard shot) of 80-proof liquor.

Wisconsin law, Wisconsin Statutes Annotated 343.305, requires you to take a blood, breath, or urine test if you are arrested for a DUI. Wisconsin’s “implied consent” law says that if you are lawfully arrested by an officer who has probable cause to believe that you have been driving under the influence, then you consent to taking one or more chemical tests of your blood, breath, or urine for the purpose of determining your blood alcohol content (BAC).  The test or tests must be taken as soon as possible from when you were last driving and you cannot refuse without penalty. The officer gets to choose how many and which tests you take.  Implied consent laws require motorists to participate in breathalyzer tests if asked by an officer, or their license will be automatically suspended for one year.  You must wait 30 days before applying for an occupational license.

Once you are arrested, the officer must tell you that if you refuse to take a chemical test, then your license will be suspended and evidence of your refusal can be used against you in court. The officer must also warn you that if you choose to take a test and your results are at or above the legal limit, your license will be suspended and you face other penalties once you are convicted of a DUI or OWI. After you submit to the officer’s test, you have the right to additional tests taken by a medical professional of your choice.

This law also applies even if you are not actually driving a car. In Wisconsin, you could be arrested and asked to take a chemical test if you are operating a vehicle while intoxicated (OWI). Generally, operating a vehicle means that the driver has the power to make the car move. For example, a driver realizes he has had too much to drink so he pulls over to sleep it off, but he leaves the motor running and heater on. The officer finds him, wakes him up, smells alcohol on his breath, and arrests him. Although the car was not moving, the law still punishes this behavior because the driver could have woken up and driven away while still drunk. To read more about this, see the case Milwaukee County v. Proegler, 291 N.W. 2d 608 1980.

In this respect, the law does not specifically prohibit driving “drunk”; but more accurately prohibits driving under the influence, which is commonly referred to as “OWI” for operating while impaired or operating while intoxicated. Note that it is not necessary for an officer to actually see a person driving to being able to stop him or her for OWI. It is enough that a person has either turned on the ignition or has left the motor running while the vehicle is in the park position. In fact, the statutory definition of operation is “the physical manipulation or activation of any of the controls of a motor vehicle necessary to put it in motion.” Further, the fact that a vehicle may be immobile due to engine problems or being stuck on a mound of dirt with the wheels spinning does not preclude an officer from arresting the driver for OWI.

You could be asked to take a preliminary breath test even before you have been arrested. This works like a field sobriety test. The officer will use the results to establish probable cause that you were driving under the influence. You do not have to take this preliminary test. Refusing it, however, probably won’t work in your favor if the officer has some other reason to think you had been drinking. Based on that other reason, the officer could still arrest you and then you will be required to take a test under the law described above.

Paul A. Ksicinski can work for you to get the penalties for your OWI conviction in Wisconsin dismissed or lowered.

Unfortunately, when you are sitting on the side of the road, you have to make a split decision about agreeing to a breathalyzer. It’s a hard decision to make and one that depends on several factors. For instance, if your blood alcohol concentration is high; you may be better off with an implied consent charge as opposed to an aggravated DUI depending on your blood alcohol level.

Under some circumstances, it is better to be charged with refusing sobriety tests than to be accused of a DUI. For instance, if you have a very high blood alcohol concentration, you may be better off with an implied consent violation than with a DUI charge. On the other hand, if our BAC was borderline and you could avoid a conviction with a solid defense, you may fare better submitting to a breathalyzer.

Call Paul A. Ksicinski today at 414-530-5214 today so he can listen to you explain what happened to you leading up to the criminal charges and work with you to try to get the best results.
 

The problem is easily illustrated by the numbers

• The number of prisoners age 55 or older sentenced to more than 1 year in state prison increased 400% between 1993 and 2013, from 26,300 (3% of the total state prison population) in 1993 to 131,500 (10% of the total population) in 2013.
  
• Between 1993 and 2003, prisoners ages 45 to 49 grew the fastest, while those age 55 or older grew the fastest between 2003 to 2013.
• In 2013, the median age of state prisoners was 36 years compared to 30 years in 1993 and 34 years in 2003.
• The imprisonment rate for prisoners age 55 or older sentenced to more than 1 year in state prison increased from 49 per 100,000 U.S. residents of the same age in 1993 to 154 per 100,000 in 2013.
• Between 1993 and 2013, more than 65% of prisoners age 55 or older were serving time in state prison for violent offenses, compared to a maximum of 58% for other age groups sentenced for violent offenses.
• More than four times as many prisoners age 55 or older were admitted to state prisons in 2013 (25,700) than in 1993 (6,300).
• The median age at admission increased from 29 years in 1993 to 32 years in 2003 and 2013. „ Forty percent of state prisoners age 55 or older on December 31, 2013, had been imprisoned for at least 10 years, compared to 9% in 1993.
• Forty percent of prisoners age 55 or older on December 31, 2013, had been admitted to prison after they were at least age 55, and 60% turned 55 while in prison.

SOURCE: Aging of the state prison population 1993-2013, Department of Justice (May 2016), http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/aspp9313.pdf
Aging inmates are more costly to incarcerate (aging inmates on average cost 8 percent more per inmate to incarcerate than inmates age 49 and younger) than their younger counterparts due to increased medical needs. Limited institution staff and inadequate staff training affect the Bureau of Prison’s (BOP) ability to address the needs of aging inmates. The physical infrastructure of BOP institutions also limits the availability of appropriate housing for aging inmates. Further, the BOP does not provide programming opportunities designed specifically to meet the needs of aging inmates. Aging inmates engage in fewer misconduct incidents while incarcerated and have a lower rate of re-arrest once released; however, BOP policies limit the number of aging inmates who can be considered for early release and, as a result, few are actually released early.  Office of Inspector General, The Impact of an Aging Inmate Population on the Federal Bureau of Prisons (May 2015) https://oig.justice.gov/reports/2015/e1505.pdf
Perhaps the largest tragedy is that this exponential increase of older adults in prison is not due to a crime surge in that demographic but rather is the result of stricter sentencing laws passed in the midst of the 1980’s tough on crime fervor. Laws such as “Three Strikes You’re Out” and “Truth-In-Sentencing” gave crimes like drug offenses a maximum sentence of 30 years. Before these laws were passed, the maximum had been ten years.  Asst. Prof. Tina Maschi, “The Hidden Costs of Elderly Inmates” Huffpost Crime (March 2012) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tina-maschi/elderly-inmates_b_1372189.html

In his column in the September 19, 1926 edition of the Chicago Daily Tribune, H.L. Mencken wrote an article entitled, “Notes on Journalism.”  There he complained about “tabloid newspapers” that were geared toward uneducated readers, including those Mencken described as “near-illiterates.”  He opined that when a tabloid became successful the owner often tried to make it more respectable and “reach out for customers of a higher sophistication.”  Mencken said that was a mistake and, near the end of column, summed up why by writing the words that were later turned into the shorter famous “quote” about underestimating the intelligence of the American public. His actual words were:
“No one in this world, so far as I know — and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me — has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.”
Despite numerous reports that America is senselessly incarcerating too many people (on a per capita basis, more than even Russia), both Sen. Tom Cotton and Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clark talk about how America is underincarcerating people.  Nick Gass, “Sen. Tom Cotton: U.S. has 'under-incarceration problem'” Politico (May 19, 2016), http://www.politico.com/story/2016/05/tom-cotton-under-incarceration-223371 and Maurice Chammah “American Sheriff David Clarke, the Trump-loving, pro-mass-incarceration, Fox News favorite, is challenging criminal-justice reform—and stereotypes” The Atlantic (May 5, 2016), http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/05/american-sheriff/481131/.  There message is clear:  those whimpy liberals are releasing criminals from prison who are now coming to get you!   OOOOO…scary thought!
Great headlines but is it true that the releasing from custody a certain population the public is less safe and crime rates go up?  Short answer?  NO!
Look at these numbers:

• New York and New Jersey led the nation by reducing their prison populations by 26% between 1999 and 2012, while the nationwide state prison population increased by 10%.
• California downsized its prison population by 23% between 2006 and 2012. During this period, the nationwide state prison population decreased by just 1%.
• During their periods of decarceration, violent crime rates fell at a greater rate in these three states than they did nationwide. Between 1999- 2012, New York and New Jersey’s violent crime rate fell by 31% and 30%, respectively, while the national rate decreased by 26%. Between 2006- 2012, California’s violent crime rate drop of 21% exceeded the national decline of 19%.
• Property crime rates also decreased in New York and New Jersey more than they did nationwide, while California’s reduction was slightly lower than the national average. Between 1999-2012, New York’s property crime rate fell by 29% and New Jersey’s by 31%, compared to the national decline of 24%. Between 2006-2012, California’s property crime drop of 13% was slightly lower than the national reduction of 15%. The Sentencing Project, “Fewer Prisoners, Less Crime: A Tale of Three States” http://sentencingproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Fewer-Prisoners-Less-Crime-A-Tale-of-Three-States.pdf

Specifically, a study examined crime in California, is entitled ““Is Downsizing Prisons Dangerous? The Effect of California’s Realignment Act on Public Safety.” by criminology professors Jody Sundt, Emily J. Salisbury and Mark G. Harmon.  http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1745-9133.12199/abstract
The study found that when considering the patterns of crime nationally and in California between 2010 and 2014, there was little or no deviation in the crime rate after the mass prisoner release.  Further, “[a]n astounding 17 percent reduction in the size of the California prison population,” Sundt’s study concluded, “had no effect on aggregate rates of violent or property crime.” The study said that California’s initial, full-throated embrace of incarceration as a means to fight crime, such as the notorious “Three Strikes” law, “may affect crime, but it does so at a high social, human and economic cost and is far less cost-effective than alternatives. Moreover, there is now evidence that prison populations can be safely reduced without harming the public.”

The danger in selling guns on the internet was detailed in a study, “The Online Gun Marketplace and the Dangerous Loophole in the National Instant Background Check System,” published in the John Marshall Journal of Information Technology and Privacy Law in 2014.  http://repository.jmls.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1749&context=jitpl
The study outlines the legislation that makes up the modern framework of gun control in America, beginning with the Gun Control Act of 1968. The Act identifies categories of people prohibited from purchasing firearms under Section 22—convicted felons, the mentally ill, substance abusers, foreign nationals or people who had renounced American citizenship, and people who had been convicted of domestic violence or were under a restraining order. The Brady Act of 1993 was an amendment to the Gun Control Act and mandated background checks prior to any gun sale by a seller with a federal firearm license. The law only applied to what it defined as “dealers,” however, and did not regulate the activities of private or occasional sellers of firearms. Next, Daniels discusses the online gun marketplace and attempts by Congress at gun legislation reform, beginning in 1999, shortly after the advent of the internet. The study concludes by addressing policy implications of gun control advocates and opponents.
Some key findings:

• Internet classified websites have opened an avenue for the private and anonymous exchange of firearms and ammunition through advertisement posts. Armslist, an internet bulletin board where people can sell firearms, includes some 170,000 listings, 95 percent of which are from private sellers who do not need to comply with the federal background checks required of their federally licensed counterparts.
• In the last few years, gun sellers have begun tapping into social media websites and smartphone applications to advertise their firearms. The popular photo-sharing application Instagram has become the newest platform for firearm advertisements.
• The emergence of the online gun marketplace amplifies the “dangerous loopholes” in current federal gun laws. This includes amendments to Section 922 that would contain the following measures, some of which have already been considered under recent executive action:
  

• • Mandating universal background checks to include all non-licensed dealers.
  • Recognizing the online gun marketplace in the law and adding it to current federal legislation.
  • Including an effective enforcement mechanism through inclusion of a penalty section to federal legislation.
  • Using a “sunset clause” that would force Congress to reconsider laws before they expire and serve as a “democracy alarm clock.”

The study concludes by stating that since the Gun Control Act and the Brady Act were passed, in 1968 and 1993 respectively, the gun market has changed dramatically with the advent of the internet. “The solution” to the trafficking of guns via the vast, unregulated online market, according to the study author, “is as simple as keeping laws up to date with the times.”

The term "debtors' prison" causes one to conjure up images of Charles Dicken’s London but imprisonment for debt has flourished in America as well as Britain well into the nineteenth century.  Richard Ford, Imprisonment for Debt, 25 Mich L Rev 24, 29 (1926) (quoting an estimate by an anti-debtors'-prison association in 1830 that three to five times as many persons in Northern states were incarcerated for debt as for criminal offenses; the practice was less common in the South).  However recently, Americans have witnessed the mass incarceration of debtors for failure to pay monetary obligations owed to the state, usually municipalities and usually stemming from low-level criminal behavior, such as traffic violations, shoplifting, prostitution, and domestic disputes.  See, See, e.g., “Civil Rights Attorneys Sue Ferguson Over “Debtors Prisons” (NPR radio broadcast 2015) (“[W]e’ve seen the rise of modern American debtors’ prisons and nowhere is that phenomenon more stark than in the Ferguson and Jennings municipal courts and municipal jails.”), available at http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2015/02/08/384332798/civil-rights-attorneys-sueferguson over-debtors-prisons; Alec Karakatsanis, Policing, Mass Imprisonment, and the Failure of American Lawyers, 128 HARV. L. REV. F. 253, 262–63 (2015) (“The rise of modern debtors’ prisons is a phenomenon affecting hundreds of thousands of people all over the country, and it is happening almost entirely outside of the public consciousness.”).  Recent research indicates that, if not for the rise in incarceration, the number of people in poverty would fall by as much as 20 percent.  DeFina, R. & Hannon, L. The Impact of Mass Incarceration on Poverty, Crime & Delinquency, 59, 562-586 (2013), http://cad.sagepub.com/content/59/4/562.abstract.  Incarceration contributes to poverty by creating employment barriers; reducing earnings and decreasing economic security through criminal debt, fees and fines; making access to public benefits difficult or impossible; and disrupting communities where formerly incarcerated people reside.
 
In 2015, Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch tried to address the problem of using debt collection in the criminal justice system when she said
 
What is the price of justice?  What is the price of justice?  When bail is set unreasonably high, people are behind bars only because they are poor.  Not because they’re a danger or a flight risk – only because they are poor.  They don’t have money to get out of jail and they certainly don’t have money to flee anywhere.  Other people who do have the means can avoid the system setting inequality in place from the beginning.  And when fines and fees are imposed on top of the jail sentences even after offenders have paid their debt to society – and that’s what we have said.  We have determined as a society, as a country, as a people, that the incarceration and the supervision and the specific fines for a particular crime are that person’s debt to society.  “Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch Delivers Remarks at White House Convening on Incarceration and Poverty,” https://www.justice.gov/opa/speech/attorney-general-loretta-e-lynch-delivers-remarks-white-house-convening-incarceration-and
 
Nevertheless judges “themselves dun residents who have fallen behind in their payments [in criminal cases], but unlike other creditors, they can throw debtors in jail — and they do, by the thousands.”  John Schwartz, “Pinched Courts Push to Collect Fees and Fines,” NY Times (April 6, 2009), http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/07/us/07collection.html?_r=0&pagewanted=all.  “In some jurisdictions, approximately 20 percent of all jail inmates were incarcerated for failure to pay criminal justice debts. Estimates indicate that a third of felony defendants are detained before trial for failure to make bail; and in one city, approximately 20 percent of defendants made bail at amounts less than $500. High debt burdens for poor offenders in turn increase barriers to successful re-entry after an offense.”  White House Council of Economic Advisors, “Fines, Fees, and Bail Payments in the criminal justice system that disproportionately impact the poor,” (Issue Brief December 2015) https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/page/files/1215_cea_fine_fee_bail_issue_brief.pdf.  Such views, by whatever branch of government, is incredibly short sighted and self-defeating.  Using the criminal system to collect debts leads to “a host of negative and unintended consequences.”  Massachusetts Executive Office of Public Safety and Security, “Inmate Fees as a Source of Revenue: Review of Challenges” (July 2011), http://www.mass.gov/eopss/docs/eops/inmate-fee-final-7-1-11.pdf at 4.  For instance, imposing additional fees and debts actually increases costs to taxpayers by creating a cost associated with implementing the fees and would likely increase recidivism rates.  Id.  “Poor to begin with, and often lacking even a high school diploma, it is difficult for people going through the criminal justice system to find the sort of employment that would enable them to re-pay their financial debt. Sociological studies have indicated that criminal justice fees and fines incentivize criminal behaviors as people try to meet payments amounts, and discourage people from contact with authorities, including obtaining necessary medical assistance and reporting to the police when they themselves are victimized.”  Patel and Philip, “Criminal Justice Debt: A toolkit for action (Brennan Center for Justice 2012) p. 2.  https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/legacy/publications/Criminal%20Justice%20Debt%20Background%20for%20web.pdf  At least in Wisconsin, Wis. Stat. section 973.07 expressly limits incarceration as a means of collecting a fine to a period in the county jail not to exceed six months. Therefore, a circuit court errs as a matter of law in making the payment of an old unpaid fine a condition of probation for the new conviction, because a violation of that condition would expose the defendant to incarceration in the county jail for more than six months.  State v. Oakley, 2000 WI 37 (2000).
 
Finally, regarding the cost of representing indigent people being based on to the indigent themselves, “it is defense organizations themselves that often initiate the idea of application fees, generally during a time of budgetary stress for a defender program. The high level administrators who deal with budgets and negotiate with legislators tend to favor the fees from an institutional perspective. The application fees not only hold the promise of increasing revenue, they also purchase good will in the legislature by showing a willingness to contain costs and impose a measure of self-responsibility among the client base. As for the effects of fees on prospective clients, the high-level defense administrators downplay—without any direct empirical support—the burden on indigents.  Resistance to fees inevitably comes from lower in the defense ranks, from attorneys who represent indigents and view matters from an individual client perspective rather than an institutional vantage point. … These objections from the field operators of the defense organizations, however, usually give way to budgetary and political imperatives. The defense establishment, like other bureaucracies, takes its policy direction from the top. Faced with the right combination of budgetary and political woes, a defense organization will bow to necessity (as seen by its leaders) and adopt a policy to collect application fees.”  Ronald F. Wright and Wayne A. Logan, The Political Economy of Application Fees for Indigent Criminal Defense, 47 Wm. & Mary L. Rev. 2045 (2006), http://scholarship.law.wm.edu/wmlr/vol47/iss6/5

More than 1 million children and teenagers were arrested in 2014 on charges ranging from vandalism and drug violations to aggravated assault and murder. While that number represents a sizable reduction over previous years, the problem of youth committing crime still is a serious concern for policymakers, child advocates and the public.
A 2013 report from the National Research Council, “Reforming Juvenile Justice: A Developmental Approach,” http://www.nap.edu/catalog/14685/reforming-juvenile-justice-a-developmental-approach, suggests that legal responses to juvenile crime should take into consideration that an “imbalance in developing brains” is linked to a poorer ability to self-regulate and make decisions. See also, Gately, “Experts: Brain Development Should Play Bigger Role in Determining Treatment of Juvenile Offenders” Juvenile Justice Information Exchange (2013), http://jjie.org/experts-brain-development-should-play-bigger-role-in-determining-treatment-of-juvenile-offenders/105927/
To that end, in 2000, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh led the largest longitudinal study on teenage criminals ever conducted. “The Pathways to Desistance” study followed 1,354 adolescents found guilty of a serious offense, usually a felony, in Phoenix and Philadelphia and researchers conducted 20,000 interviews over seven years.
A 2016 study published in Criminology and authored by three researchers from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and the Truth Initiative, a nonprofit public health organization, builds upon that study. For “Differentiating Serious Adolescent Offenders Who Exit the Justice System From Those Who Do Not,” http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1745-9125.12098/full, the authors used data from the Pathways study to identify a group of adolescents that was able to stay out of the criminal justice system. They wanted to see what, if any, factors contributed to their success. They identified 142 adolescents, or 10 percent of the full sample, then compared the successful group with a matched comparison group to test various psychological, social and environmental theories.
Study findings include:

• The adolescents who were able to stay out of the criminal justice system “showed significantly increased growth in temperance, overall maturity, and belief in the legitimacy of the law.” In other words, they “grew up.”
• The successful group had more engagement in the world of legitimate work instead of earning an income from illegal means such as dealing drugs — even though earnings per hour from legitimate work were substantially lower than earnings from illegal activities.
• Specific life events — for example, getting married, becoming a parent or earning a high-school diploma or GED — did not seem to influence whether or not study participants returned to criminal activity. These events occurred in both the successful group and the comparison group. A strong “turning point” event in the lives of the adolescents did not significantly influence behavior one way or the other.

This study suggests these successful teenagers had a more mature worldview, or “a perspective and increased awareness of what it takes to be an adult who can relate successfully to others and defer to the law/legal authority.” The researchers note that while getting and holding a job kept study group members from being re-arrested, they’re not sure why. It could be because the teens matured and experienced a change of attitude by becoming productive members of society, or because they were occupied and didn’t have time to commit crimes.
The authors also note that the successful group and the control group were very closely matched in terms of socioeconomic status, prior substance abuse and other factors. The fact that the two groups had much in common but that life unfolded very differently for them, with one group returning to crime and the other steering clear of the justice system, indicate that a complex array of psychological and developmental processes are at play in shaping life trajectories. Such factors are nuanced and not easily untangled, but researchers suggest they warrant further study. The challenge ahead, they state, lies in figuring out what type of interventions will accelerate such psychological and social development and in fashioning policies to intervene and rehabilitate young criminals.