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Published on: September 28, 2018
Identity-based prosocial motivation protects detained youth against institutional infractions
Jennifer Skeem1, Luyi Jian2, Patrick Kennealy3
1Goldman School of Public Policy, School of Social Welfare, University of California, Berkeley.
Objectives:
Emerging theory suggests that prosocial identity motivation (PIM)-youth's drive to disassociate from antisocial lifestyles and forge conventional identities aligned with prosocial values-may be crucial for promoting desistance among justice-involved adolescents. Yet, standardized tools to assess this construct are lacking, as is evidence of its protective value against continued antisocial behavior. We derived a measure of PIM from the Youth Assessment and Screening Instrument and tested whether it protects detained youth from serious and violent institutional infractions-behaviors that increase recidivism risk and deepen system penetration. We also examined whether the youth's overall risk level moderates this relationship.
Hypotheses:
We hypothesized that PIM would inversely predict both infraction types, offer predictive value beyond composite strength and risk scores, and demonstrate stronger protective effects for low- and moderate-risk youth compared to higher risk counterparts.
Method:
Using data on 846 male detained youth (Mage 17) assessed by reliable staff, we integrated Youth Assessment and Screening Instrument scores with official infraction records over an average 6-month period and applied Cox proportional hazard survival analyses to examine the protective effect of PIM.
Results:
PIM significantly protected against serious, hazard ratio (HR) = 0.52, 95% confidence interval (CI) [0.44, 0.60] and violent (HR = 0.53, 95% CI [0.45, 0.63]) infractions and provided incremental predictive utility beyond composite risk or strengths scores. Youth's risk level moderated the protective effect for serious infractions, with benefits observed for low- and moderate-risk youth but not their higher risk counterparts.
Conclusion:
Youth's PIM protects against institutional infractions-an important first step toward desistance. These findings suggest that juvenile justice systems should move beyond solely addressing criminogenic needs among incarcerated youth to recognize identity transformation as a developmentally relevant pathway to behavior change. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).
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