Due to the limited research on prison populations, needed changes in the treatment and reformation of incarcerated individuals do not often seem to occur. Therefore, research on these populations needs to be substantial in order to elicit these changes. This study explored the relationship between ethnicity, age at incarceration, level of substance abuse, length of sentence and depression among incarcerated male African-American and Hispanic youth in the California Youth Authority.

It was hypothesized that there would not be a statistically significant relationship between ethnicity and level of depression (hypothesis 1), nor between age at incarceration and level of depression (hypothesis 2). However, it was hypothesized that there would be a statistically significant relationship between level of substance abuse and level of depression (hypothesis 3), as well as between length of sentence and level of depression (hypothesis 4). Hypothesis 1 was tested using an independent samples t-test to measure the difference between the mean scores on level of depression found for both ethnicities. Hypotheses 2 and 4 were tested using hierarchical multiple regression analyses in order to examine the relationships between the respective independent variables (age at incarceration and length of sentence) with the dependent variable (level of depression) while controlling for potential confounding variables. Finally, hypothesis 3 was tested using the Pearson Product Moment Correlation analysis in order to examine the relationship between level of substance abuse and level of depression.

The results of the study supported all hypotheses as stated. Moreover, an interesting result from the post-hoc analyses was that only the older Hispanic wards had a significant relationship between length of sentence and level of depression.