Delinquency and Age-at-offense (From Delinquency Careers in Two Birth Cohorts, P 213-244, 1990, by Paul E Tracy, Marvin E. Wolfgang, et al., -- See NCJ-134672)

• NCJ Number: 134678
• Author(s): P E Tracy; M E Wolfgang; R M Figlio
• Date Published: 1990
• Length: 32 pages
• Sale Source: Plenum Press
• Publication Type: Survey
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

Data from 9,945 males born in Philadelphia in 1945 and 13,160 males born in Philadelphia in 1958 provided information about the ages at which offenses were committed and showed a close similarity between the two cohorts.

Abstract

Except for age 10 and under, the proportion of offenses increased with age up to 16 and then declined at age 17. The peak age at which offenses were committed was 16 for both cohorts. In addition, 60 percent of the offenses for the 1945 cohort and 64 percent of the offenses for the 1958 cohort were committed by youths of ages 15, 16, and 17. When race was considered, these patterns held for the earlier cohort but changed for the 1958 cohort in that whites committed 66 percent and nonwhites 55 percent of their offenses in the last 3 years at risk. Nonindex offenses predominated at all ages, especially late in the juvenile career. However, the two cohorts differed in that only crimes of violence showed consistent increases through age 16 in the 1945 cohort, while a clear age effect was evident for all the serious index offenses (violence, robbery, and property) for the 1958 cohort. Finally, delinquents in the later cohort were still active beyond the age when the offenders in the earlier cohort had peaked, with whites in the second cohort active longer than nonwhites. Tables and figures