NCJ Number
83224
Journal
Criminology Volume: 20 Issue: 1 Dated: (May 1982) Pages: 5-28
Date Published
1982
Length
24 pages
Annotation
In the treatment of status offenders, the espousal of a medicaltherapeutic 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.
Abstract
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. (Publisher abstract)