|
in Different Pathways It is useful to know whether boys in certain pathways have a high rate of committing delinquent acts. The researchers hypothesized:
These hypotheses were tested against the data for the boys' average annual rates of court petitions and self-reported delinquency (Loeber et al., 1993; Loeber et al., in press). To increase the number of valid cases, subjects were classified into single or multiple pathways, regardless of the temporal order of their behaviors. Boys who previously were characterized as not fitting any pathway sequence were included if they met the general criteria of exhibiting serious pathway behaviors typical of stage 2 or stage 3. To control for possible confounding of higher rates of delinquency among boys in multiple pathways (who by definition had engaged in more than one incident of serious delinquent behavior), researchers subtracted the number of self-reported delinquent acts required for placement in each specific pathway. Figure 12 presents self-report data for the oldest boys. Boys in the triple pathway reported an average of 65 delinquent offenses a year, with the highest rates of both violent and nonviolent offenses. Boys in the dual pathway of covert/overt behavior ranked second in the number of offenses, those in the dual pathway of covert/authority conflict ranked third, and those in the single pathway of covert behavior ranked fourth. These results reflect the more common occurrence of property (covert) than personal (overt) or status (authority avoidance) offenses in the general juvenile population. It is important to note that boys who never progressed beyond stage 1 of any pathway reported very low offense rates during the prime delinquency ages of 13 to 16. The results, with some minor variations, were replicated in the youngest and middle samples. The findings indicate that as boys start to develop the disruptive and delinquent behavior characteristic of several pathways, their serious offense rate increases. The findings on court records of delinquent involvement, not reported here in detail, reinforce the notion that boys in multiple pathways are at increased risk of being processed by the juvenile court for delinquent acts.  Accounting for High-Rate Delinquents To what extent does the classification of experimenters and persisters according to less and more serious behaviors identify the majority of self-reported high-rate nonviolent and violent offenders? For this analysis, the researchers included all boys who reported that they had engaged in any of the developmental pathway behaviors. Because high-rate offending was most prominent in the middle and oldest samples, analyses focused on these groups. Four groups of boys who demonstrated disruptive/delinquent behavior were identified: nonfitters in the prescribed pathway sequences, experimenters, persisters at stage 1 only, and persisters who had advanced to stages 2 or 3. Further, the researchers established four categories of high-rate offenders: the top 25% (in terms of offending rate) of boys who self-reported nonviolent offenses, the top 20% (in terms of offending rate) of the boys who self-reported violent offenses, all 22% of the boys who had a court petition filed for a nonviolent offense, and all 7% of the boys who had a court petition filed for a violent offense (oldest sample only). The researchers included the categories of nonfitters, experimenters, persisters at stage 1, and persisters at stage 2 or 3 to examine how well the developmental pathways accounted for the high-rate offenders. As shown in figure 13, nonfitters, experimenters, and those who persisted in only stage 1 behaviors produced fewer of all four types of high-rate offenders than any of the boys in the persistent stage 2 or 3 category.  Approximately three-fourths of the high-rate offenders were boys who persisted in seriously disruptive behavior. Among the middle boys, nonfitters accounted for a small portion of the high-rate offenders. Youth who persisted in the advanced stages of the triple pathways were most likely to be high-rate offenders in self-reported nonviolence, self-reported violence, and court petitions for nonviolence. Persisters in the advanced stages of the overt/covert pathway were most likely to be involved in court petitions for violence. However, the dual pathway of covert/authority conflict was not significantly associated with self-reported violence. The developmental pathways model with classifications of persistence, variety, and severity proved useful in the analysis of violent and nonviolent delinquency rates and in the identification of high-rate violent and nonviolent offenders.
|