The transition to adulthood is marked by new roles and responsibilities in such interrelated domains as education, employment, and family formation. This study investigates the capacity of adolescents on the verge of emancipation from the child welfare system to navigate this transition. To explore heterogeneity in adolescents' preparation for independent living, person-oriented methods are applied to a large, representative sample of youth about to exit foster care. The analysis suggests four subpopulations defined by distinctive profiles on indicators reflecting multiple domains of life experience. Identifying the particular needs and challenges of subpopulations has implications for efforts to match adolescents aging out of the child welfare system with appropriate services.During the transition from adolescence to adulthood, increasing maturity comes with expectations that one will take responsibility for oneself, make independent decisions, and become self-sufficient (Arnett 2000). In this period, young people contend with multiple opportunities and challenges that can have important implications over the life course. Individual developmental pathways are determined by decisions regarding education, employment, residential arrangements, marriage, and parenthood (Shanahan 2000;Cohen et al. 2003). Important changes in social roles and responsibilities can generate stress and test an individual's capacity for adaptation, but these changes also present opportunities to overcome earlier difficulties and to begin on a new developmental trajectory (Maughan and Champion 1990;Masten et al. 2004).For each generation, cultural expectations and social opportunity structures influence the timing and patterning of role entries and exits during the transition to adulthood (George 1993;Elder 1998). In recent years, early adulthood has been characterized as a period of volitional identity exploration that involves "trying out various life possibilities and gradually moving toward making enduring decisions" (Arnett 2000, 473). However, the life circumstances of many young people may severely limit their range of options or compel them, out of necessity, to adopt adult roles at an early age. Pathways to adulthood are strongly linked with social class, as well as with the resources and support of one's family of origin (Cohen et al. 2003; Osgood et al. 2005). For example, poverty and family disruption may cause young people to move away from home and support themselves at an early age, perhaps interrupting their education and restricting their future options with respect to career and family formation (Goldscheider and Goldscheider 1998). From a developmental perspective, these early, offtime transitions, for which youth are not well prepared, have the potential to compound NIH Public Access Author ManuscriptSoc Serv Rev. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2010 January 6. NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript environmental adversity, threaten coping capacity, tax social supports, a...

This study examines a sample of foster youth at the onset of the transition to adulthood and explores how social bonds are related to the risk of arrest during adulthood. Drawing from official arrest records, event history models are used to examine the time to arrest. Because individuals may be at risk for different types of crime, competing risk regression models are used to distinguish among arrests for drug-related, nonviolent, or violent crimes. Between the ages of 17–18 and 24, 46% of former foster youth experience an arrest. Arrests were evenly distributed across drug, nonviolent, and violent crimes columns. Although findings fail to support the significance of social bonds to interpersonal domains, bonds to employment and education are associated with a lower risk for arrest. Child welfare policy and practice implications for building connections and protections around foster youth are discussed.

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Sentencing decisions are the product of a group of courtroom actors, primarily judges and district attorneys. Although the structure of the courtroom workgroup and the interdependencies among members are assumed to be important determinants of sentencing decisions, the degree of this importance and the specific mechanisms through which workgroups affect these decisions have not been investigated. This study used data from the Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing (PCS) for the years 1990 to 2000 to examine how three social psychological aspects of courtroom workgroups (similarity, proximity, and stability) affect sentencing decisions. Results indicated (a) that workgroups generally had very high levels of similarity in terms of race, gender, and political party but lower levels of similarity in terms of age, college education, and law school education and (b) that proximity and stability were generally high. Controlling for individual, case, and distal contextual factors, workgroup factors affected the decision to incarcerate, the decision to impose fines, and the decision to impose restitution. In particular, proximity increased the use of economic sanctions relative to incarceration and stability was associated with a decrease in the imposition of economic sanctions. Similarity had inconsistent effects.