NCJ Number
108801
Date Published
1987
Length
207 pages
Annotation
A scaling method, variance centroid scaling, was used to derive 4 dimensions of delinquency for a sample of 1,047 New Jersey delinquents.
Abstract
The first arrest in the sample was recorded in 1962, the last in 1984. The career lines of 913 chronic delinquents (those with 6 or more arrests) then were depicted as regression lines and classified on the basis of their fit to the 4 underlying dimensions. These dimensions illustrate how crimes co-occur. For example, the first dimension is characterized by serious crimes against persons on one end and property crimes such as burglary and theft on the end of the dimension. The career line is represented by the points of a plot in which the horizontal axis represents the chronological sequence number of the offense and the vertical axis consists of the scale value for the crime dimension of each crime type. Nine types of stable and developmental career lines occurred frequently, accounting for 66.3 percent of chronic delinquents. Adult record data (average age, 23 years) show that adult robbery, burglary, and auto theft could be predicted using the career-line classification. Results suggest that there may be considerable specialization in criminal career patterns. Additional research material is appended. Figures, tables, and 25 references.