Female Delinquents: the Effect of Offense Characteristics on Adult Criminal Careers in the 1958 Philadelphia Birth Cohort

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This paper uses the official juvenile offenses among delinquent girls in the 1958 Philadelphia Birth Cohort to investigate the two overarching questions. This research investigates the nature of delinquency conduct, offense-by-offense, and its relationship to adult crime status. Although it is conve...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Carkin, Danielle Marie (Author)
Contributors: Tracy, Paul E.
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
Published: 2017
In: American journal of criminal justice
Year: 2017, Volume: 42, Issue: 3, Pages: 610-627
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Keywords:
Adult criminal careers
Juvenile court dispositions
Juvenile offense characteristics
Onset of delinquency
Description
Summary:This paper uses the official juvenile offenses among delinquent girls in the 1958 Philadelphia Birth Cohort to investigate the two overarching questions. This research investigates the nature of delinquency conduct, offense-by-offense, and its relationship to adult crime status. Although it is convenient to think of an offender’s delinquency career as a whole, such a career actually consists of one or more specific offenses, and offense conduct can be worth studying in its own right. Thus, it is necessary to determine whether the timing, type, severity, court disposition, and so on, of these juvenile offenses can be used to predict adult career pathways. An extensive review of the literature revealed that investigations of early offense conduct and its connection to adult crime are exceedingly scarce. This study indicates as follows. First, the way a delinquent begins her criminal career is predictive of the adult trajectory that will be followed. Second, we also found that aspects of the first few offenses doe influence whether delinquent girls do continue committing crimes as adult. The strongest predictor of adult crime status was juvenile court dispositions.
ISSN:1936-1351
DOI:10.1007/s12103-016-9370-6