A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of the Language Skills of Youth Offenders.

Purpose: This systematic review and meta-analysis estimates the overall language skills of youth offenders involved with the juvenile justice system. Given the importance of this population, identifying avenues through which we can increase the likelihood of successful interventions is a necessary societal effort.

Method: Eighteen studies, representing data from 3,304 individuals, contributed 82 effect sizes to the current analytic sample. We used random-effects models to estimate the overall mean effect size metric to address each research question and fit meta-regression models for each moderator analysis.

Results: Results yielded that youth offenders presented with significantly lower language skills than their nonoffending peers ( = -1.26). Furthermore, high proportions of the present meta-analytic sample were classified as youth with moderate (50%) and severe (10%) language disorders. In general, differences in language skills did not vary as a function of age, gender, or language measure type. We did detect significant differences as a function of sample country and type of peer comparison group.

Conclusions: This meta-analysis reports on the significantly compromised language skills of youth offenders. We conclude with a discussion of the findings and consideration of the implications for research and practice.