NCJ Number
178611
Date Published
April 1999
Length
6 pages
Annotation
This paper examines offense specialization among juvenile offenders in New South Wales by addressing the following questions: Do juvenile offenders tend to commit the same type of offense or consistently switch between offenses over the course of their offending careers? Do patterns of juvenile offending remain stable or change over a career?
Abstract
The data used in this study consisted of unit records extracted from the New South Wales Department of Juvenile Justice's Children's Court Information System. Data were available for all finalized appearances for the period from July 1, 1992, to June 30, 1997, amounting to 71,560 records. Data were processed to produce an offender-based file that contains information on all the court appearances for each offender. The results point toward both specialization and versatility in juvenile offending. Although violent and motor vehicle offenders tend to remain specialists over the course of their delinquent careers, the versatility of juveniles sentenced for the remaining offenses tends to increase over time. The results further show that patterns of juvenile offending tend to remain stable over time. This implies that the probabilities of moving from one type of offense to another do not change as juveniles develop their delinquent careers. Properly designed and managed interventions aimed at diverting juvenile offenders at the early stages of their criminal careers from further engagement in crime would be expected to result in declines in the rates of juvenile crime and delinquency. 1 figure and 1 table