Delinquent Careers and Criminal Policy

This article critically examines the prevailing judicial waiver statutes that require juvenile court judges to make individualized determinations as to a youth amenability to treatment and danger to society. It concludes that such decisions cannot be made with an acceptable degree of accuracy using current methods of clinical diagnosis or prediction, and that the broad discretion given judges in making transfer decisions results in inconsistent and discriminatory applications that undermine the fairness and predictability of the process. In light of the expanding research on the development of delinquent careers, it contends that a legislative redefinition of juvenile court jurisdiction that automatically excludes certain youths from the juvenile court on the basis of their present offenses and past records not only identifies more accurately those youth who should be prosecuted as adults, but also increases the fairness, rationality, and predictability of the adulthood determination. It suggests that an application of "just deserts" principles to the juvenile court waiver decision could have salutary consequences for youths, the juvenile and criminal justice systems, and social control.     

Gender and Race Differences in Delinquent Careers

Abstract Studies of delinquent careers have often tracked only male offenders, and have almost always failed to explore the interaction of race and gender in delinquency. This study tracks a cohort of youth whose first referral to juvenile court was in 1980, and explores the role played by both race and gender in official delinquent careers. Findings reveal that both race and gender play a significant role in official delinquency. Looking first at female delinquency, this research finds that white and nonwhite females do not differ significantly in the types of offenses they commit. Moreover, if girls are “chronic” delinquents, their offenses are most often trivial rather than serious. With males, racial differences emerge in both seriousness and chronic nature of delinquency. Nonwhite males in this cohort are more likely to be referred for personal offenses and less likely to be referred for public order and victimless offenses. Nonwhite males are also significantly more likely to become recidivists, and to have more seriously delinquent careers. This article discusses the implications of these findings, particularly with reference to the “convergence theory” of delinquency, which suggests that race plays a stronger role than gender in female delinquency. Finally, the article considers the policy implications of the current range of definitions of “chronic” delinquency.     

Delinquent Careers A Test of the Career Escalation Model

In the treatment of status offenders, the espousal of a medical therapeutic model has led to the development of diversion programs designed to offset a progressive career escalation from petty to serious delinquent acts. Using the offense histories of 1200 juveniles, transition probabilities were created to test for offense specialization and offense escalation. Controlling for age, sex, and race or ethnicity, the career transition configurations were reflective of homogeneous, number-independent Markov processes. The implications of these findings run counter to many popular assumptions of delinquency causation and treatment and challenge the basic tenets of many status offender programs.     

Sex Differences in Age Patterns of Delinquent/Criminal Careers: Results from Poisson Latent Class Analyses of the Philadelphia Cohort Study

Applications of latent class analyses to the study of criminal careers have yielded results with implications for criminological theory. Distinct latent classes of individuals within various samples have been identified based upon the similarity of individuals with respect to their rate of offending across the teen and adult years, net of the effects of other regressors. In previous research on samples of males taken from the cities of London and Philadelphia, four and five such categories have been identified respectively, ranging from a group of nonoffenders to a group of chronic offenders. However, the question of whether similar findings hold for females has not been adequately addressed, in part due to the scarcity of longitudinal samples with sizable female populations. Data from the Second Philadelphia Cohort are used to address this and related questions. First, are there latent classes of female offenders? Second, if such categories do exist, how do they compare? Third, how do classes of male and female offenders compare on key measures of criminal careers? Analyses of the samples yield differing numbers of classes for males and females. Gender invariances as well as differences in patterns of offending are also found and are discussed.     

Delinquent networks in Sweden

This study covers all persons under the age of 20 who were suspected of having committed a crime in the Swedish city of Borlänge (approx. 50,000 inhabitants) during the years of 1975–1977. The juveniles (575 in all) were followed up during a total of 10 years. A sociometric method based on police data was developed for studying co-offending patterns. The method was validated through a smaller number of interviews with the juveniles. This study shows that a large majority of the most delinquency active juveniles was associated with a large network of delinquent relations. The stronger the connection to this network, the more substantial, serious, and long-lasting were the delinquency and other asociality. This network also seemed to be very important with regard to the reproduction of juvenile delinquency in the municipality. At the end of the follow-up period juvenile delinquency in Borlänge had basically the same character as at the beginning, even though the juveniles included in the network were, to a large extent, new. The young offenders who were central figures in the new network had successively learned their roles from the network's old members.This paper is based on results published initially in a report entitledDelinquent Networks (Sarnecki, 1986).     

Detecting Spatial Movement of Intra-Region Crime Patterns Over Time

Many of the traditional measures of the degree to which crime patterns change over space and time have limitations. In particular most are unable to determine any change in spatial crime pattern within an areal unit. Usually studies measure the change in crime levels in contiguous areas (expressed as discrete sub-divisions of a study area), but this can become problematic due to difficulties such as the Modifiable Areal Unit Problem (MAUP). This paper describes a technique developed to allow researchers to examine intra-study region changes in crime patterns between two time periods without the need to aggregate crime counts to within-city areal boundaries. The method presented uses a random point nearest neighbor test combined with a Monte Carlo simulation. The process resolves problems of patterning and the MAUP that are common with a number of spatial displacement and pattern movement studies. This technique is demonstrated with example data from a city-wide police burglary crackdown in the Australian capital.     

Changes in Legislative Support for the Governor's Program Over Time

Abstract This study examines changes in legislative support for the governor's legislative agenda in Georgia during the governor's first term in office (1991–94). I analyze the factors that led legislators to support the governor's agenda, as well as how the level of support changed between election years and off‐years. I use multivariate OLS models of gubernatorial support to determine how support varied (1) between the parties, (2) between factions within parties, and (3) over time. I find that there was wide variation in support among factions in the majority party and that support varied widely between election years and off‐years.     

A Statistical Analysis of Palestinian Terrorism and Israeli Counter-Terrorism Over Time

The idea of a world criminology specialty emerged in response to the increasing magnitude of global social disorder—wars, revolutions, terrorist activities, riots, crimes, delinquency, deviancy. These problems, together with our increasing problems of ecology, overpopulation, starvation, energy, tyranny and injustice, disease, and arms build-up, threaten to produce social disorder the magnitude of which the world has not yet seen. Many scientists have predicted that the next two decades will find the human species submerged under a barrage of severe catastrophes as these unchecked forces repeatedly reach crises proportions.

It is here suggested that criminologists and criminal justice practitioners begin scholarly and applied efforts toward development of a world criminology. This world criminology would take a global approach to the problems of social disorder and attempt to identify universal causative elements as well as universal principles and strategies relevant to the achievement of world order and the advancement of a world civilization. This paper presents and discusses seven assumptions which are held to be vital to the advancement of this new discipline. Further, a series of objectives and questions are posed, which are suggested as a means of encouraging initial exploratory work in world criminology.     

未成年罪犯与被害人的和解

对未成年人刑事案件,一贯以来,我们都重视了被告人权利的保护,强调刑事诉讼是未成年人案件最后的付诸手段。即使启动了未成年人刑事诉讼程序,主流的思想也是认为应当从保护未成年人的角度,尽量不适用刑罚措施,让他们能够尽快地回归社会。笔者认为,这些思想具有正当性的基础。但是,未成年人犯罪并不仅仅是未成年人罪犯单方面的行为,而往往具有相对方,也就是被害人,或者是未成年人被害人,也可能是成年被害人。如果我们一味地强调对未成年人罪犯的保护,那么势必会冷落被害人。未成年人刑事诉讼在强调对未成年被告人保护的同时,同样也应当强调对被害人权利的保护。鉴于此,应当确立未成年被告人与被害人的和解制度,以使得未成年被告人与被害人的权利同时得到保护。     

The Family of the Juvenile Delinquent

Juvenile delinquency has historically been responded to by “de-familization” of the young offender; that is, removal to a training school or other institutional setting. The trend over the past two decades toward deinstitutionalization has meant that delinquent youngsters, who are now remaining in the context of their own communities and families, have been “re-familized.” This poses a major challenge for the juvenile justice system and community, who are stuck with the family but are not sure what to do about it. Little objective and systematic information is available concerning families of delinquents, either as an aggregate group or in individual cases. It is hypothesized that the families are as heterogeneous as are delinquent youngsters, but the juvenile justice system tends to scapegoat families and assumes they are all necessarily dysfunctional. A 10-point continuum of family functioning is proposed. It is suggested that families of delinquent youngsters are found at various points on this continuum: from the extremely impaired or criminogenic family, through the family that has serious problems but has something to offer its youngster if it receives effective help with those problems, to the family of average functioning that can serve as a major rehabilitative resource for the youngster.     

Midterm Elections and Economic Fluctuations: The Response of Voters Over Time

Abstract: Recent empirical work (Alesina and Rosenthal 1995; Erikson 1990) has shown that economic conditions may not have influenced House midterm elections since 1915. I argue that economic conditions may have influenced House midterms in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when Congress dominated economic policy‐making, parties offered starker positions on economic issues, and national issues dominated House elections. As the 20th century progressed, congressional power over the economy declined, the parties converged over certain economic policies, and district‐level forces grew more important in elections. I test the stability of the relationship between the economy and House midterms over time, using F‐tests to show how the impact of macroeconomic conditions has changed in House midterm elections from 1872 to 1994. The results indicate that the gross national product (GNP) influenced House races before 1913 but, as the 20th century continued, the importance of the economy on House midterms declined.     

Developing an Empirically Based Typology of Delinquent Youths

A number of personality-based typologies have been developed to differentiatejuvenile delinquents. Some of these typologies have been faulted for theirmethod of construction, for their failure to provide outcome measures, orbecause they are dated and have not been retested with more recent delinquentpopulations. This paper describes efforts to develop an empirically derived,inductive typology of juvenile delinquents that can be used in appliedsettings to facilitate a better understanding of program outcomes and enableplacement authorities better to predict program effectiveness. The dataemployed in the analysis come from an outcome-based informationsystem—ProDES—that has been operational for more than4 years in Philadelphia. Unlike many such databases, ProDES was jointlydesigned by researchers and practitioners to serve a large system ofcommunity and institutional programs. Included among the outcome measuresare four standardized, self-reported personality scales that comprise 14subscales and form the basis of the typology. This paper describes themethods used to construct the typology, the substance of the classificationsystem, and its potential utility for program evaluation.     

Delinquent and Self-Destructive Behaviors Among High School Youth

Abstract

Analysis of responses of 10,112 high school students surveyed in the 1997 National School-Based Youth Risk Survey indicated that Black youths engaged more often in delinquent and self-destructive behaviors than White youths. However, controls for the mothers' or fathers' educational attainment eliminated this ethnic difference. The pattern of involvement in delinquent and self-destructive behavior was different for Black and White youths and was mediated by gender.     

Stochastic models for analyzing Criminal Careers

The recent National Research Counci! Panel on Research on Criminal Careers (Blumsteinet al., 1986) identified the following as one of its items for future research: ... changes in the model [for analyzing criminal careers] are needed to reflect the consequences of the considerable heterogeneity in the values of A. This paper discusses the range of stochastic models available that take account of variations in A that occur during an individual offender's career, variations in A between different types of offenders, and both forms of variation simultaneously. Together these models are a flexible and powerful tool for studying criminal careers. For completeness, failure rate regression models are also briefly described.