Megan C Kurlychek
Biographic Data
| ID | 289852 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Megan C Kurlychek |
| GIVEN NAMES | Megan C |
| FAMILY NAME | Kurlychek |
| SIGNATURE | KURLYCHEK M C |
| AFFILIATIONS | University at Albany, State University of New York |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3791-3391 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 213 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 20 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2004 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Sentencing for Youthful Offenders
Long held legal distinctions treat individuals under the age of 18 years differently than those over 18. However, neuroscience indicates that an individual’s brain may not be fully mature until 25 years. This brain immaturity suggests emerging adults may be more risk-seeking, impulsive, and less likely to appreciate the consequences of their acts. Because culpability for one’s actions is a key component of sentencing decisions, we hypothesize you…
The sentencing of emerging adult offenders
The Long-Term Consequences of Imprisoning Our Youth
We explore the possible deleterious lifelong impacts for youth who serve stints of incarceration in adult jails or prisons. Our study uses a sample of all youth ages 16 and 17 arrested in New York State in 1987 and follows their criminal careers for 24 years. New York was selected as the state processed, not just some, but all youth of this age as adults, allowing us to overcome issues of selection bias and to use natural variation to create a pr…
Cumulative Disadvantage in the American Criminal Justice System
Research on inequality in punishment has a long and storied history, yet the overwhelming focus has been on episodic disparity in isolated stages of criminal case processing (e.g., arrest, prosecution, or sentencing). Although theories of cumulative disadvantage exist in criminology, they are seldom adapted to account for treatment in the criminal justice system. We provide an overview of the concept of cumulative disadvantage in the life course …
Defensible decisions
Purpose Employers using criminal background checks to make hiring determinations must carefully balance the need to protect themselves and their clients against legal mandates designed to protect the rights of individuals with criminal records. Yet, surprisingly little research examines this balancing act. The purpose of this paper is to examine how one large agency, the New York Department of Health (DOH), navigates a myriad of mandates to conve…
Redeemed Compared to Whom
Research Summary By using data on provisional employees with and without criminal records, we find that existing standards of a “reasonable amount of [arrest] risk” (derived from “time to redemption” research) for an employer to incur in hiring individuals with criminal histories prove too onerous for many employees without records to meet, let alone those with records. We then propose an alternative method of assessing arrest risk across these p…
Mitigation for minors
New York State is one of only two states in the nation that processes all 16- and 17-year-old defendants as adults. Contrary to this seemingly punitive stance, the state also maintains a Youthful Offender Statute that requires mitigated punishments for youths up to their 19th birthday upon court designation of youthful offender status. This study empirically examines the individual and combined impact of the social status of being a “minor” and t…
Effectiveness of Juvenile Transfer to Adult Court
The color of juvenile justice
Long‐term Crime Desistance and Recidivism Patterns—evidence From the Essex County Convicted Felon Study
Two conflicting definitions of desistance exist in the criminology literature. The first definition is instantaneous desistance in which an offender simply chooses to end a criminal career instantaneously moving to a zero rate of offending ( ). The second definition views desistance as a process by which the offending rate declines steadily over time to zero or to a point close to zero ( ; ; ). In this article, we capitalize on the underlying ass…
Transferred Juveniles in the Era of Sentencing Guidelines
This study contributes to contemporary research on the punishment of juvenile offenders in adult court by analyzing the use of guidelines departures for transferred juveniles in two states, one with presumptive sentencing guidelines (Pennsylvania) and one with voluntary guidelines (Maryland). Propensity score matching is first used to create more comparable samples of juvenile and young adult offenders, and then Tobit regressions are employed to …
What is my left hand doing
Sex, Drugs, and Body Counts
Transforming attitudinal change into behavioral change
A partial assessment of South Carolina's Project Safe Neighborhoods strategy
Juvenility and Punishment
The study outlined in this article addressed a key limitation of prior research on the punishment of juveniles transferred to adult court by employing propensity score matching techniques to create more comparable samples of juvenile and young adult offenders. Using recent data from the Maryland State Commission on Criminal Sentencing Policy, it tested competing theoretical propositions about the salience of juvenile status in adult court. Findin…
Prosecutorial Discretion and the Imposition of Mandatory Minimum Sentences
In Pennsylvania, the imposition of mandatory minimum sentences presents an important opportunity to examine relatively “pure” prosecutorial discretion over sentencing outcomes. The authors present a multilevel analysis of the prosecutorial decision to apply a mandatory minimum among mandatory-eligible offenders sentenced for drug crimes or as repeat, “three-strikes” offenders. They find that prosecutors' decisions to apply the mandatory minimum a…
Beyond Boot Camp
Research Summary: This study is an outcome evaluation of a residential aftercare component provided to offenders graduating from the Quehanna Motivational Boot Camp in Quehanna, Pennsylvania. Capitalizing on a policy change that set up a natural experimental design, we use survival analysis to compare recidivism outcomes of a control group of 383 offenders, who graduated before the mandatory 90-day residential aftercare component was added, to an…
Scarlet Letters and Recidivism
Research Summary: This research explores the issue of old prior records and their ability to predict future offending. In particular, we are interested in the question of whether, after a given period of time, the risk of recidivism for a person who has been arrested in the distant past is ever indistinguishable from that of a population of persons with no prior arrests. Two well‐documented empirical facts guide our investigation: (1) Individuals…
The Juvenile Penalty
This study uses criminal court data from the Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing (PCS) to investigate the sentencing of juvenile offenders processed in adult criminal court by comparing their sentencing outcomes to those of young adult offenders in similar situations. Because the expanded juvenile exclusion and transfer policies of the 1990s have led to an increase in the number of juveniles convicted in adult courts, we argue that it is critic…
Cumulative Disadvantage in the American Criminal Justice System
Research on inequality in punishment has a long and storied history, yet the overwhelming focus has been on episodic disparity in isolated stages of criminal case processing (e.g., arrest, prosecution, or sentencing). Although theories of cumulative disadvantage exist in criminology, they are seldom adapted to account for treatment in the criminal justice system. We provide an overview of the concept of cumulative disadvantage in the life course …
Scarlet Letters and Recidivism
Research Summary: This research explores the issue of old prior records and their ability to predict future offending. In particular, we are interested in the question of whether, after a given period of time, the risk of recidivism for a person who has been arrested in the distant past is ever indistinguishable from that of a population of persons with no prior arrests. Two well‐documented empirical facts guide our investigation: (1) Individuals…
The Juvenile Penalty
This study uses criminal court data from the Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing (PCS) to investigate the sentencing of juvenile offenders processed in adult criminal court by comparing their sentencing outcomes to those of young adult offenders in similar situations. Because the expanded juvenile exclusion and transfer policies of the 1990s have led to an increase in the number of juveniles convicted in adult courts, we argue that it is critic…
The color of juvenile justice
Juvenility and Punishment
The study outlined in this article addressed a key limitation of prior research on the punishment of juveniles transferred to adult court by employing propensity score matching techniques to create more comparable samples of juvenile and young adult offenders. Using recent data from the Maryland State Commission on Criminal Sentencing Policy, it tested competing theoretical propositions about the salience of juvenile status in adult court. Findin…
Long‐term Crime Desistance and Recidivism Patterns—evidence From the Essex County Convicted Felon Study
Two conflicting definitions of desistance exist in the criminology literature. The first definition is instantaneous desistance in which an offender simply chooses to end a criminal career instantaneously moving to a zero rate of offending ( ). The second definition views desistance as a process by which the offending rate declines steadily over time to zero or to a point close to zero ( ; ; ). In this article, we capitalize on the underlying ass…
Transferred Juveniles in the Era of Sentencing Guidelines
This study contributes to contemporary research on the punishment of juvenile offenders in adult court by analyzing the use of guidelines departures for transferred juveniles in two states, one with presumptive sentencing guidelines (Pennsylvania) and one with voluntary guidelines (Maryland). Propensity score matching is first used to create more comparable samples of juvenile and young adult offenders, and then Tobit regressions are employed to …
Beyond Boot Camp
Research Summary: This study is an outcome evaluation of a residential aftercare component provided to offenders graduating from the Quehanna Motivational Boot Camp in Quehanna, Pennsylvania. Capitalizing on a policy change that set up a natural experimental design, we use survival analysis to compare recidivism outcomes of a control group of 383 offenders, who graduated before the mandatory 90-day residential aftercare component was added, to an…
Redeemed Compared to Whom
Research Summary By using data on provisional employees with and without criminal records, we find that existing standards of a “reasonable amount of [arrest] risk” (derived from “time to redemption” research) for an employer to incur in hiring individuals with criminal histories prove too onerous for many employees without records to meet, let alone those with records. We then propose an alternative method of assessing arrest risk across these p…
Transforming attitudinal change into behavioral change
The Long-Term Consequences of Imprisoning Our Youth
We explore the possible deleterious lifelong impacts for youth who serve stints of incarceration in adult jails or prisons. Our study uses a sample of all youth ages 16 and 17 arrested in New York State in 1987 and follows their criminal careers for 24 years. New York was selected as the state processed, not just some, but all youth of this age as adults, allowing us to overcome issues of selection bias and to use natural variation to create a pr…
Defensible decisions
Purpose Employers using criminal background checks to make hiring determinations must carefully balance the need to protect themselves and their clients against legal mandates designed to protect the rights of individuals with criminal records. Yet, surprisingly little research examines this balancing act. The purpose of this paper is to examine how one large agency, the New York Department of Health (DOH), navigates a myriad of mandates to conve…
Mitigation for minors
New York State is one of only two states in the nation that processes all 16- and 17-year-old defendants as adults. Contrary to this seemingly punitive stance, the state also maintains a Youthful Offender Statute that requires mitigated punishments for youths up to their 19th birthday upon court designation of youthful offender status. This study empirically examines the individual and combined impact of the social status of being a “minor” and t…
Effectiveness of Juvenile Transfer to Adult Court
A partial assessment of South Carolina's Project Safe Neighborhoods strategy
The Juvenile Penalty
This study uses criminal court data from the Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing (PCS) to investigate the sentencing of juvenile offenders processed in adult criminal court by comparing their sentencing outcomes to those of young adult offenders in similar situations. Because the expanded juvenile exclusion and transfer policies of the 1990s have led to an increase in the number of juveniles convicted in adult courts, we argue that it is critic…
Beyond Boot Camp
Research Summary: This study is an outcome evaluation of a residential aftercare component provided to offenders graduating from the Quehanna Motivational Boot Camp in Quehanna, Pennsylvania. Capitalizing on a policy change that set up a natural experimental design, we use survival analysis to compare recidivism outcomes of a control group of 383 offenders, who graduated before the mandatory 90-day residential aftercare component was added, to an…
Scarlet Letters and Recidivism
Research Summary: This research explores the issue of old prior records and their ability to predict future offending. In particular, we are interested in the question of whether, after a given period of time, the risk of recidivism for a person who has been arrested in the distant past is ever indistinguishable from that of a population of persons with no prior arrests. Two well‐documented empirical facts guide our investigation: (1) Individuals…
Prosecutorial Discretion and the Imposition of Mandatory Minimum Sentences
In Pennsylvania, the imposition of mandatory minimum sentences presents an important opportunity to examine relatively “pure” prosecutorial discretion over sentencing outcomes. The authors present a multilevel analysis of the prosecutorial decision to apply a mandatory minimum among mandatory-eligible offenders sentenced for drug crimes or as repeat, “three-strikes” offenders. They find that prosecutors' decisions to apply the mandatory minimum a…
Transforming attitudinal change into behavioral change
A partial assessment of South Carolina's Project Safe Neighborhoods strategy
Juvenility and Punishment
The study outlined in this article addressed a key limitation of prior research on the punishment of juveniles transferred to adult court by employing propensity score matching techniques to create more comparable samples of juvenile and young adult offenders. Using recent data from the Maryland State Commission on Criminal Sentencing Policy, it tested competing theoretical propositions about the salience of juvenile status in adult court. Findin…
What is my left hand doing
Sex, Drugs, and Body Counts
Long‐term Crime Desistance and Recidivism Patterns—evidence From the Essex County Convicted Felon Study
Two conflicting definitions of desistance exist in the criminology literature. The first definition is instantaneous desistance in which an offender simply chooses to end a criminal career instantaneously moving to a zero rate of offending ( ). The second definition views desistance as a process by which the offending rate declines steadily over time to zero or to a point close to zero ( ; ; ). In this article, we capitalize on the underlying ass…
Transferred Juveniles in the Era of Sentencing Guidelines
This study contributes to contemporary research on the punishment of juvenile offenders in adult court by analyzing the use of guidelines departures for transferred juveniles in two states, one with presumptive sentencing guidelines (Pennsylvania) and one with voluntary guidelines (Maryland). Propensity score matching is first used to create more comparable samples of juvenile and young adult offenders, and then Tobit regressions are employed to …
The color of juvenile justice
Effectiveness of Juvenile Transfer to Adult Court
Redeemed Compared to Whom
Research Summary By using data on provisional employees with and without criminal records, we find that existing standards of a “reasonable amount of [arrest] risk” (derived from “time to redemption” research) for an employer to incur in hiring individuals with criminal histories prove too onerous for many employees without records to meet, let alone those with records. We then propose an alternative method of assessing arrest risk across these p…
Mitigation for minors
New York State is one of only two states in the nation that processes all 16- and 17-year-old defendants as adults. Contrary to this seemingly punitive stance, the state also maintains a Youthful Offender Statute that requires mitigated punishments for youths up to their 19th birthday upon court designation of youthful offender status. This study empirically examines the individual and combined impact of the social status of being a “minor” and t…
Cumulative Disadvantage in the American Criminal Justice System
Research on inequality in punishment has a long and storied history, yet the overwhelming focus has been on episodic disparity in isolated stages of criminal case processing (e.g., arrest, prosecution, or sentencing). Although theories of cumulative disadvantage exist in criminology, they are seldom adapted to account for treatment in the criminal justice system. We provide an overview of the concept of cumulative disadvantage in the life course …
Defensible decisions
Purpose Employers using criminal background checks to make hiring determinations must carefully balance the need to protect themselves and their clients against legal mandates designed to protect the rights of individuals with criminal records. Yet, surprisingly little research examines this balancing act. The purpose of this paper is to examine how one large agency, the New York Department of Health (DOH), navigates a myriad of mandates to conve…
The Long-Term Consequences of Imprisoning Our Youth
We explore the possible deleterious lifelong impacts for youth who serve stints of incarceration in adult jails or prisons. Our study uses a sample of all youth ages 16 and 17 arrested in New York State in 1987 and follows their criminal careers for 24 years. New York was selected as the state processed, not just some, but all youth of this age as adults, allowing us to overcome issues of selection bias and to use natural variation to create a pr…
Sentencing for Youthful Offenders
Long held legal distinctions treat individuals under the age of 18 years differently than those over 18. However, neuroscience indicates that an individual’s brain may not be fully mature until 25 years. This brain immaturity suggests emerging adults may be more risk-seeking, impulsive, and less likely to appreciate the consequences of their acts. Because culpability for one’s actions is a key component of sentencing decisions, we hypothesize you…
The sentencing of emerging adult offenders
Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis (19 works) · Crime Patterns and Interventions (18 works) · Criminology (18 works) · Psychology (18 works) · Political science (13 works) · Law (10 works) · Psychopathy, Forensic Psychiatry, Sexual Offending (10 works) · Social Psychology (8 works) · Computer Science (7 works) · Law (7 works)