Group Offending and Criminal Careers: Violence Among Juvenile Delinquents and Adult Offenders, Final Report

• NCJ Number: 172228
• Author(s): P Tontodonato
• Date Published: 1996
• Length: 95 pages
• Grant Number(s): 92-IJ-CX-0007
• Agencies: NIJ-Sponsored
• Publication Type: Survey

Annotation

Conducted to characterize group offending and criminal careers of juvenile and adult offenders, this study found that juvenile offenses more often involved co-offenders than adult offenses and that criminal careers typically involved a mix of lone and group offending.

Abstract

Data were obtained from the Philadelphia birth cohort study, a longitudinal study that followed all persons born in 1958 who resided in Philadelphia between 10 and 26 years of age, on juvenile and adult offenses. Offense data were gathered using police records on 13,339 juvenile offenses and 9,057 adult offenses. Offenders were classified in terms of whether they engaged in lone offending, group offending, or a mix of lone and group offending. Findings revealed robbery and burglary were the most commonly committed crimes with others among males. Index offenses were more likely than non-index offenses to be committed by multiple offenders. Of adult offenses, a greater proportion of violent and property index offenses involved lone offenders, compared with juvenile offenses. Juvenile offenders were more likely than adult offenders to commit a mix of offenses and to have criminal careers characterized by group offending. Among recidivists, those who committed a mix of lone and group offenses during their criminal careers committed more offenses in total and more index offenses than those who engaged in either lone or group offending. Those with a gang affiliation engaged in more criminal behavior than those who did not, self-reported violence was correlated with delinquent peer affiliations, and the relationship between gang membership and co-offending depended on sex. Policy implications of the findings are discussed, and the offense scale classification scheme is appended. 38 references, 25 notes, 13 tables, and 23 figures