NCJ Number
93920
Journal
Crime and Delinquency Volume: 30 Issue: 2 Dated: (April 1984) Pages: 293-308
Date Published
1984
Length
16 pages
Annotation
The juvenile and criminal justice systems respond to youthful misbehavior at the onset of continued delinquency and increasing risk to society. Support for this assumption is far from clear.
Abstract
Existing career research fails to adequately consider the patterns and persistance of juvenile activity. The present study develops police contact histories for three birth cohorts of individuals. The analysis reveals that most careers concentrate in status and victimless offenses and roughly two-thirds of all juveniles desist before a fourth offense. The present results closely resemble many of Wolfgang et al.'s (1972) findings and some of the same conclusions are reached in the two studies. (Author abstract)