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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

From Juvenile Delinquency to Adult Crime : criminal careers,
justice policy, and prevention / edited by Rolf Loeber and David P. Farrington.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-19-982816-6 (hardback : alk. paper)—ISBN 978-0-19-982818-0 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Juvenile delinquency. 2. Juvenile delinquency—Prevention. 3.—Criminal behavior, Prediction of.
4. Criminial justice, Administration of. I. Loeber, Rolf. II. Farrington, David P.
HV9069.T786 2012
364.36—dc23 2011039090

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
CONTENTS

Foreword vii
LAURIE O. ROBINSON
Acknowledgments xi
Contributors xiii

1. Introduction 3
ROLF LOEBER AND DAVID P. FARRINGTON

2. Criminal Career Patterns 14

ALEX R. PIQUERO, J. DAVID HAWKINS, AND LILA KAZEMIAN

3. Explanations for Offending 47

TERENCE P. THORNBERRY, PEGGY C. GIORDANO, CHRISTOPHER
UGGEN, MAURI MATSUDA, ANN S. MASTEN, ERIK BULTEN, AND
ANDREA G. DONKER

4. Contextual Influences 86
JULIE HORNEY, PATRICK TOLAN, AND DAVID WEISBURD

5. Special Categories of Serious and Violent Offenders: Drug Dealers,

Gang Members, Homicide Offenders, and Sex Offenders 118
RICHARD ROSENFELD, HELENE R. WHITE,
AND FINN-AAGE ESBENSEN

6. Prediction and Risk/Needs Assessments 150

ROBERT D. HOGE, GINA M. VINCENT, AND LAURA S. GUY

7. Legal Boundaries Between the Juvenile and Criminal Justice Systems

in the United States 184
PATRICK GRIFFIN

8. Young Offenders and an Effective Justice System Response: What

Happens, What Should Happen, and What We Need to Know 200
JAMES C. HOWELL, BARRY C. FELD, AND DANIEL P. MEARS

9. Promoting Change, Changing Lives: Effective Prevention

and Intervention to Reduce Serious Offending 245
BRANDON C. WELSH, MARK W. LIPSEY, FREDERICK P. RIVARA,
J. DAVID HAWKINS, STEVE AOS, AND MEGHAN E. HOLLIS-PEEL
10. European Perspectives 278
MARTIN KILLIAS, SANTIAGO REDONDO, AND JERZY SARNECKI

11. Overview, Conclusions, and Key Recommendations 315

ROLF LOEBER, DAVID P. FARRINGTON, JAMES C. HOWELL,
AND MACHTELD HOEVE

Index 385
FOREWORD

Policy-makers and practitioners are turning to science with increasing frequency

to answer tough questions about crime and delinquency and to obtain a better
understanding of offender motives. One of the excellent developments in our field
over the last decade is an expanded dialogue—more consistently sophisticated and
mutually more respectful than past conversations—between researchers and those
who apply their discoveries. This development is so important, and so welcome, in
grasping the link between youthful delinquency and later criminal behavior.
Indeed, few public safety issues cry out for a reconciliation of knowledge and
practice more loudly than those relating to the germination, continuation, and
cessation of juvenile offending.
In my four decades of policy and academic experience, I’ve observed in the
field a fervent hope by many that criminal and juvenile justice practitioners would
abandon their reliance on tradition and intuition and turn to research as the foun-
dation for their decisions. I am happy to report that this goal appears closer to
reality than in the past. Getting “smart on crime” has become a cri de cœur of
public safety leaders from the Attorney General of the United States to local elected
officials and law enforcement leaders. When I launched my Evidence Integration
Initiative at the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Justice Programs in 2009,
I envisioned a prominent role for the federal government in helping translate the
evidence derived from research into criminal and juvenile justice practice. After
all, success in applying science, in any field, depends on both developing a solid
base of knowledge and communicating the relevance of that knowledge. It is wel-
come news that practitioners and policy-makers are interested in, and even eager
for, information researchers have to share. The scientific community must be pre-
pared to meet this demand, especially in the complicated and politically fraught
arena of juvenile justice.
The history of our treatment of young offenders in the United States has fol-
lowed a changing path, from the early paternalistic juvenile courts to the break-
throughs of In Re Gault in the 1960s and its demands for greater reliance on due
process to the trend toward harsh sanctions in the 1990s. Over the last 15 years,
breakthroughs in medical and behavioral science, and an understanding of brain
development, have yielded solid empirical evidence that should help reverse this
backward trend in juvenile justice. Research in developmental psychology docu-
mented by the MacArthur Foundation’s Network on Adolescent Development and
Juvenile Justice, among others, suggests that children and youth have difficulty
grasping the consequences and even motives of their own actions, and further,
viii { Foreword

that they are not fully competent to participate in an adult adjudicative process.
This research calls into question the phenomenon of waivers, transfers, exclusions,
and other mechanisms propelling young people into a criminal justice system in
which they receive punishments they do not comprehend and that often exceed
the seriousness of their offending behaviors.
As the contributors to this volume point out, premature exposure to the adult
system carries with it many disadvantages, ranging from proximity to seasoned
adult offenders to long-term consequences of a criminal record. The question
must be asked, is this a wise and cost-effective use of our resources? The Pathways
to Desistance Study, an analysis of serious adolescent offenders led by Edward
Mulvey and sponsored by OJP’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Preven-
tion and National Institute of Justice and several other public and private organi-
zations, found the vast majority of youth who commit felonies reduce their
offending over time.1 Juveniles who offend must be held accountable for their
actions, but this finding leads us to conclude we expend far too many resources on
punishments that yield dubious results and far too few on nurturing positive
behavior to steer young people out of criminal involvement. If we are serious
about being smarter and more efficient in administering our systems of justice, we
must fundamentally re-think our approach to young people who come into
contact with those systems.
A critical point in determining the outcome of a criminal career is the period of
late adolescence, a stage referred to by Terence Thornberry and his colleagues as a
“criminological crossroads.”2 While a growing body of research and programming
centered on childhood and early adolescence, we have not paid enough attention
to the later teenage and early adult years as a discrete period of social and behav-
ioral development. We should bear in mind that, despite the somewhat arbitrary
demarcations of childhood and adulthood affixed by law, cognitive development
and brain maturation very often continue beyond the age of legal majority, which
varies from state to state. We know too little about factors in an older youth’s ca-
pacity for desistance and, conversely, what causes him or her to persist in offend-
ing into adulthood. If we hope to gain a complete understanding of what works to
prevent delinquency from evolving into persistent criminal behavior, we need to
look more closely at this critical stage of life and develop our sense of effective
interventions and categories of appropriate sanctions.
The authors offer several thoughtful recommendations for changes to legis-
lation and policy to improve our response to these offenders. I am personally in-
trigued by the notion of creating special courts for young adult offenders. Research
has shown diversionary alternatives such as drug courts and other problem-
solving specialty approaches can be remarkably successful in curtailing problem
behaviors and reducing recidivism. Young Offender Courts, already being imple-
mented in Great Britain, present an innovative model perhaps worth exploring
here in the United States. The other recommendations, based in current research,
are equally thoughtful and merit consideration.
 Foreword } ix

This volume represents an important effort in determining how we can make

wiser, scientifically-based decisions about our approaches to crime and de-
linquency, particularly, in how to arrest budding criminal careers in a way to
maximize—rather than squander—our limited resources. Rolf Loeber and David
Farrington, the principal investigators for the National Institute of Justice project
of which this book is a product, describe the findings reported herein as “need to
know information” that every judge, prosecutor, state legislator, and criminal and
juvenile justice professional—along with teachers and others who work with at-
risk kids—should find relevant.
My hope is that these chapters will be read and their contents carefully weighed
by everyone who designs policies, enacts laws, and makes decisions affecting the
operation of our juvenile and criminal justice systems and whose actions influence
the lives of our nation’s young people.
Assistant Attorney General Laurie O. Robinson
Washington, D.C., June 2011

Acknowledgment

The author wishes to thank Bill Brantley for his assistance in the preparation of
this foreword.

Notes

1. Mulvey, E.P. (March, 2011). Highlights from pathways to desistance: A longitudinal study
of serious adolescent offenders. U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Office
of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. Washington, D.C.
2. Thornberry, T.P., Giordano, P.C., Uggen, C., Matsuda, M., Masten, A.S., Bulten, E., &
Donker, A.G., Explanations for offending, chapter 3 in this volume.
This page intentionally left blank
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We are extremely grateful to the National Institute of Justice for funding our study
group, and for the great cooperation and advice we received from Carrie Mulford,
Social Science Analyst at NIJ, as well as Margaret Zahn and Bernie Auchter. In
addition, the writing of this volume was supported by grant MH056630 from the
National Institute of Mental Health, and a grant from the Commonwealth of
Pennsylvania. We are also very grateful for the cooperation of many scholars who
worked as authors on this study group report in such a great spirit of collabora-
tion. In Pittsburgh, we have received great administrative support from Jennifer
Wilson, and in Cambridge from Maureen Brown. We also benefitted greatly from
the careful editing by Anne Mullin Burnham. The senior editor is much indebted
to Lucille Stark for her very kind hospitality in her country home during the many
days that he worked there on this volume. Magda Stouthamer-Loeber facilitated
the execution of the study group in many ways by her excellent advice and unfal-
tering support. Maria Ttofi assisted very effectively by taking notes at several of
the meetings.
We received expert advice from many individuals outside of the study group. We
want to particularly mention our advisors: Alfred Blumstein (Chair), Bob Crutch-
field, Candace Kruttschnitt, Ed Mulvey, Peter van der Laan, and James Q. Wilson.
Several of the study group meetings were attended by Janet Chiancone (Office of
Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention), Akiva Liberman (National Institute
of Justice), Jim Mercy (Centers for Disease Control), Richard Morris (Department
of Labor), and Howard Snyder (Bureau of Justice Statistics). We much valued
their input.
Two most helpful meetings of focus groups took place. One in Washington,
DC, included: Debbie Ackerman (Court Service Unit person and Virginia Court
Certified Mediator for Alexandria Circuit Court), Lakeesha Bratcher (Juvenile
Probation Case Manager), Barry Holman (Office of Research and Quality Assur-
ance, Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services), Roger Rice (Juvenile Proba-
tion Case Manager), Tracy Roberts (University of Maryland), Mary Siegfried
(Public Defender for Montgomery County), Penelope Spain (Chief Executive
Officer and Chief Financial Officer for Mentoring Today), and Chuck Wexler (Ex-
ecutive Director for the Police Executive Research Forum). The focus group in
Pittsburgh, PA, included: Judge Donna Joe McDaniel (President Judge), Regina
McDonald (Assistant Pittsburgh Police Chief), Charles Moffat (Superintendent of
Allegheny County Pittsburgh Police), Jim Rieland (Director of the Juvenile Court),
xii { Acknowledgments

and Eric Woltshock (Deputy District Attorney in charge of Allegheny County

Juvenile Unit).
While this book is the product of a great deal of work by many people, we are
responsible for its final form and contents. Points of view or opinions in the vol-
ume are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position
or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Rolf Loeber and David P. Farrington
Pittsburgh, PA, June 2011
CONTRIBUTORS

Steve Aos, Ph.D., is the Director of the Washington State Institute for Public Policy,
the non-partisan research unit of the Washington State Legislature.
Erik Bulten, Ph.D., psychologist, is Head of Assessment, Research and Professional
Development at the Pompe Foundation, Nijmegen, and senior researcher at the
ACSW, Radboud University, Nijmegen.
Andrea Donker, Ph.D. is professor at the University of Applied Sciences, Leiden,
Netherlands, and is senior researcher at the University of Applied Sciences, Utrecht.
Finn-Aage Esbensen, Ph.D., is the E. Desmond Lee Professor of Youth Crime and
Violence and also serves as Chair of the Department of Criminology and Criminal
Justice at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.
David P. Farrington, Ph.D., O.B.E., is Professor of Psychological Criminology at
the Institute of Criminology, Cambridge University, and Adjunct Professor of
Psychiatry at Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic, University of Pittsburgh.
Barry C. Feld, Ph.D., is Centennial Professor of Law, University of Minnesota Law
School.
Peggy C. Giordano, Ph.D., is Distinguished Research Professor of Sociology at
Bowling Green State University.
Patrick Griffin, J.D., is a Program Officer, U.S. Programs, John D. and Catherine T.
MacArthur Foundation, Chicago, IL.
Laura S. Guy, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the Center for Mental Health Ser-
vices Research in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Massachusetts
Medical School (UMMS), Worcester, MA.
J. David Hawkins, Ph.D., is Endowed Professor of Prevention and Founding
Director of the Social Development Research Group at the School of Social Work,
University of Washington.
Machteld Hoeve, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Forensic Child and Youth Care
Sciences at the Research Institute Child Development and Education of the
University of Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Robert D. Hoge, Ph.D., is Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Distinguished Re-
search Professor, Carleton University.
xiv { Contributors

James C. (Buddy) Howell, Ph.D., worked at the federal Office of Juvenile Justice
and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) in the U.S. Department of Justice for 21
years, mostly as Director of Research and Program Development.
Lila Kazemian, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the department of Sociology at
the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
Martin Killias, Ph.D., is professor of criminology and criminal law at the University
of Zurich.
Mark W. Lipsey, Ph.D., is Director of the Peabody Research Institute and a Research
Professor at Vanderbilt University.
Rolf Loeber, Ph.D., is Distinguished University Professor of Psychiatry, and Pro-
fessor of Psychology, and Epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania, U.S.A., and Professor of Juvenile Delinquency and Social Develop-
ment at the Free University, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Ann Masten, Ph.D., is Distinguished McKnight University Professor in the Insti-
tute of Child Development at the University of Minnesota.
Mauri Matsuda is a Ph.D student in the Department of Criminology and Criminal
Justice at the University of Maryland, College Park. Her research interests include
neighborhood dynamics, the life course, macrostructural perspectives, and the
role of race, gender, and class inequality in crime and justice.
Daniel P. Mears, Ph.D., is the Mark C. Stafford Professor of Criminology at Florida
State University’s College of Criminology and Criminal Justice.
Meghan E. Peel, M.Sc., is a doctoral candidate at the School of Criminology and
Criminal Justice at Northeastern University and a Research Associate at the Neth-
erlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement.
Alex R. Piquero, Ph.D., is Professor in the Program in Criminology in the School
of Economic, Political, and Policy Sciences at the University of Texas at Dallas,
Adjunct Professor Key Centre for Ethics, Law, Justice, and Governance, Griffith
University, and Co-Editor of the Journal of Quantitative Criminology.
Santiago Redondo, Ph.D., is Professor of Criminology at the University of Barcelona
(Spain).
Frederick P. Rivara, M.D., M.P.H., is the holder of the Seattle Children’s Guild
Endowed Chair in Pediatrics, Professor of Pediatrics and adjunct Professor of
Epidemiology at the University of Washington.
Richard Rosenfeld, Ph.D., is Curators Professor of Criminology and Criminal
Justice at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.
 Contributors } xv

Jerzy Sarnecki, Ph.D., is Professor of General Criminology at Stockholm University,

Sweden.
Terence P. Thornberry, Ph.D., is Distinguished University Professor at the Depart-
ment of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Maryland and the
Principal Investigator of the Rochester Youth Development Study.
Patrick H. Tolan, Ph.D., is Director, Youth-Nex: The University of Virginia Center
to Promote Effective Youth Development and Professor in the Curry School of
Education and Department of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences.
Christopher Uggen, Ph.D., is Distinguished McKnight Professor and Chair of
Sociology at the University of Minnesota.
Gina M. Vincent, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor and Director of Translational
Law and Psychiatry Research in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of
Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, MA.
David L. Weisburd, Ph.D., is Walter E. Meyer Professor of Law and Criminal
Justice and Director of the Institute of Criminology at the Hebrew University
Law School, Distinguished Professor in the Department of Criminology, Law
and Society, and Director of the Center for Evidence Based Crime Policy at
George Mason University.
Brandon C. Welsh, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the School of Criminology
and Criminal Justice at Northeastern University and a Senior Research Fellow at
the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement.
Helene R. White, Ph.D., is a Professor at the Center of Alcohol Studies and Sociol-
ogy Department at Rutgers—the State University of New Jersey.
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From Juvenile Delinquency to Adult
Crime