Racial Differences in Juvenile Recidivism Rates for Youth with Low Dynamic Risk: A Test of the Risk-Need-Responsivity Model Using Propensity Score Matching

The Risk-Need-Responsivity (RNR) model is a dominant framework for rehabilitation in the legal system that links intervention intensity to assessed risk, such that higher-risk individuals are expected to require more resources to desist from offending while lower-risk individuals require fewer. This approach to rehabilitation is reinforced by the view that crime can be explained by individual traits and behaviors that are amenable to intervention, with the RNR framework centering these traits as the primary drivers of offending and linking higher assessed risk to more intensive services. . This emphasis can obscure structural conditions that shape justice system outcomes, including differential surveillance, variation in supervision responses, and racialized patterns of policing. To test the RNR assumption that low-risk youth with similar criminogenic profiles should have similar outcomes, the present study uses multivariate regression and an Augmented Inverse Probability Weighting propensity score sensitivity analysis on administrative data from the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice Community Positive Achievement Change Tool (C-PACT). The analysis focuses on Black and White youth classified as low-risk at baseline. It examines subsequent legal system contact, measured as a composite of rearrest, readjudication, or placement within 365 days of the last recorded event. Using a trimmed analytic sample of 1,934 justice-involved youth balanced on observed criminogenic, legal, family, and neighborhood characteristics, the study assesses whether racial disparities persist among youth with comparable measured risk profiles. The findings indicate that low-risk Black youth remain substantially more likely than White youth with the same risk designation to experience subsequent juvenile justice system involvement. This challenges the RNR framework’s assumption that comparable criminogenic risk should yield comparable outcomes. Rather than locating these outcomes solely in individual traits, the findings suggest that racial disparities may be produced by barriers to desistance not captured by risk assessment, including differential surveillance, more punitive supervision responses, and unequal access to resources and opportunities that support successful reentry.