Predicting Adult Crime Status from Delinquency, Age, Frequency, and Court Dispositions

Abstract

The previous chapter established the basic parameters surrounding the prevalence of adult criminality in the 1958 birth cohort. Generally, we found that continuity rather than discontinuity was the more likely type of transition from childhood to adulthood. The prevalence data also clearly established that, as the frequency of delinquency increases, there is a discernible and substantial increase in the percentage of adult offenders, for both males and females and regardless of either race or socioeconomic status level. Further, it was also even more clearly established that, as the frequency of delinquency increases, there is generally a concomitant increase in the level of adult criminality, again regardless of the usual confounding effects of race and socioeconomic status.