NCJ Number
93228
Date Published
1983
Length
155 pages
Annotation
The project described in this document conducted additional analyses of data collected in the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development, a longitudinal survey of 4ll English males spanning l96l-80, using modern statistical methods and extending the analyses up through the subjects' 25th birthdays.
Abstract
Unlike any existing American longitudinal survey of crime and delinquency, the Cambridge Study combined seven interviews with the subjects covering l6 years; a reasonably sized sample; and information from multiple sources including the boys, records, parents, peers, and teachers. The sample was drawn from a working class area of London and was overwhelmingly white. Data collection began in l96l-62 when most boys were 8 and ended in 1980 when the youngest was 25 years, 6 months. The peak age for the incidence of most offenses was around l7, although shoplifting and stealing from machines seemed to peak earlier and fraud later. There was some indication that the later offenses, while less frequent, were more serious. There was a close relationship between juvenile and adult offending. Youths convicted at the earliest ages, l0-l2, tended to be the most persistent offenders and have the longest criminal careers. Such youths tended to have been identified as troublesome, daring, dishonest, and aggressive by teachers, peers, and parents at an early age. The most important factors indicating early delinquency were economic deprivation, family criminality, parental mishandling, and school failure, while those in later delinquency were truancy, delinquent friends, antiestablishment attitudes, and unstable job record. In trying to predict offending, it was difficult to identify a group with much more than a 50-percent change of juvenile delinquency. A small proportion of chronic offenders, 5.8 percent, accounted for about half of all recorded offenses. In the English one-track system, young adults were sentenced more severely than older juveniles and young adults with juvenile criminal records more severely than young adults without such records. The document discusses longitudinal research methodology and suggests areas for future research. Tables and over l50 references are supplied.