come to despair at the problems of misbehavior in the schools, their inability
to achieve conformity to conventional standards of behavior by their students,
their inability to achieve the discipline that they see as necessary if all
students are to have a traditional learning experience, and, even more
important, the high dropout rate.

But, central to the findings of this study is the necessity of avoiding the
labeling of students as delinquent or headed for a career in crime on a basis

of their involvement in classroom or school misbehavior. The data from
Racine, however analyzed, show that while most persons are troublesome at some
time during their youth, few go on to careers in crime, To place youth in the
"troublemaker" category early in their school careers may only result in
treatment which maximizes the fulfillment of the prophesy. Even if we take
the position that the acquisition of a history of being difficult at an early
age places some students in a high-risk category, should action be taken which
maximizes the probability that, rather than being integrated into the larger
group, they will be even more likely to have as their friends and associates
persons who are also in trouble? Rather, is it not a matter of determining
how to channel students into activities that they will find more rewarding
than their disruptive behavior or activities that remove them from the
realities of life?

It is also difficult for adults in and out of the school system (who have
already reaped the rewards of secondary and higher education) to realize that
the rewards for conformity and diligence in school are not clearly defined and
may be perceived by students as unevenly distributed in school and in the
world of work. Completion of high school or college does not have the same
payoff for all, no matter that there are relationships between years of educa-
tion, income, and various other valued goals in the larger society. The
inequities in rewards may be more visible that the overall relationships
between education and success.

The fact that school dropout does not invariably lead to continued misbehavior
and is sometimes symptomatic of more than the inability to achieve
academically does not mean that we should be unconcerned about this basic
problem. The entire community, not just those in the school system, should be
concerned about why large segments of school-age youth fail to see education
as at least a partial solution to their problems, as a necessary if not suf-
ficient step toward their life goals.

The question, of course, is what, if anything, can be done to change the
school and the students? Young people should have educational opportunities
that they deem appropriate to their needs rather than limited alternatives
based on either the vested interests of educators or commonly accepted per-
ceptions of youth which may or may not be derived from an understanding of the
long-term life situations that they will encounter.

Most recently, although not a new idea, there has been considerable interest
in alternative education programs which will serve to keep young people in
school. Whether the current concern about this approach has its roots in a
new appreciation of the fact that neither the traditional college preparatory
track nor a strictly vocational track provide viable experiences for all
students or in the realization that there is an overabundance of youthful

ye 13

20



race/ethnic differentials became less consistent. Black males, however, were
still disproportionately referred beyond their contribution to the most
serious categories of contacts. When referrals were for nonfelonies or
felonies, that proportion of persons referred also increased in each race/
ethnic group with frequency of contact, particularly among black males with
five or more contacts. In other words, a larger proportion of the chronic
offenders had had at least one of their contacts referred (a massing of con-
tributions to the official records) regardless of what they had done. A\ll of
this indicates that minorities make up a disproportionate number of those
referred because they have more police contacts, more contacts for more
serious offenses, and because-a disproportionate number are referred beyond
what would be expected considering the categories of behavior into which their
reasons for police contact fall.

Continuity in Referrals--The next question was whether or not referrals
through a given age were highly associated with the number of referrals after
that age. In each cohort we found relatively high correiations between the
number of referrals through an age, such as ages 17 through the early 20's ,
and referrals after that age, but the ability to increase predictive
efficiency over that obtained from the marginals was limited.

The problem is best described by presenting an example based on the 633
persons in the 1942 cohort. At the age of 18 only 17 percent of those who had
no referrals through that age would have .a referral after that age, while 91
percent of those who had five or more referrals thorugh that age would have at
least one referral after that age. However, while 10 of the 11 persons in the
cohort who had five or more referrals before the age of 18 had referrals in
the future, there were 82 people who had no referrals at all through the age
of 18 but who did have at least one later referral. Although persons who are
frequently referred through a given age will continue to have referrals, many
who have not been referred frequently or have not been referred at all will
have referrals in the future. In short, one can predict that a large propor-
tion of those who have frequent contacts and a large proportion of those who
have frequent referrals will continue to be referred, but there are numerous
others who will have contacts and referrals after their teens who have not had
them to that time.

Although it is apparent that many of those who have frequent contacts and
numerous referrals as juveniles will continue to have them, we are still faced
with the question as to whether this is characteristic of the persons or
characteristic of responses by authorities to prior behavior--resulting in ful-
fillment of the prophecy regardless of how the individual behaves in the
future. Does early identification and intervention effectively deter juve--
niles from further misbehavior. or does it insure that they will continuously
be identified as miscreants? This led to the question of the effectiveness of
sanctions and the necessity of deciding if persons with equal or similar
careers who are severely sanctioned, mildly sanctioned, or not sanctioned at
all have similar or different rates of continuity. Theoretically, one would
expect if sanctions are effective, all other things being equal, sanctioned
persons would have less continuity than unsanctioned persons.



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manpower is irrelevant; What will work or what works best is a matter of
question (which will take extensive research and some years to answer).

Coupled with this is the necessity of developing opportunities for all persons
that are commensurate with their abilities. Formal education must have a
payoff, whther it is in terms of occupational level, income, or increased
opportunities for satisfying social participation. While the school can
provide education, it is up to the community to provide opportunity. This
suggests that there should be closer linkages between the school and the
community. What can be done to redefine the school as a center for juveniles
and adults? The problem will persist as long as school is a place of work for
teachers and administrators and a“place of "detention" for youth. Should it
not be a place to which adults go for more than an occasional evening class,
athletic event, or some other social event? Exactly which functions could be
decentralized to the school would vary depending upon its location and whether
it is an elementary school, a junior high school, or a senior high school.
The development of the school as a place for functions for persons of all ages
may well be the first step toward its redefinition by youth. Perhaps the
solution to keeping some youth in school is an alternative education program
tied in with the world of work, one in which opportunities for the acquisition
of adult status are provided along with formal education.

The Police--No matter how the data are analyzed, police contacts and more
serious police contact scores as juveniles are related to continuity in police
contacts and more serious police contact scores as adults. Although we have
shown that high-risk categories of juveniles develop and provide dispropor-
tionateiy move adult offenders than do low-risk categories, little increase in
predictive efficiency over the modal category of the marginals was obtained by
utilizing past records as the predictor Cor most groups the best prediction
is that no further contacts or no further serious misbehavior will take
place). Taking area of socialization, sex, and other variables into con-
sideration resulted in some increase in predictive efficiency but even with
the addition of data obtained by interview it was clear that only part of the
variance in adult careers had been explained and much of that by prior record,
including not only police contacts but referrals and sanctions (although the
latter contributed less than seriousness scores and referrals).

All of this raises the quéstion of intervention. Diversion programs have
become popular but their effectiveness is questionable, diversion itself being
another form of intervention which, if available to the police, may take the
place of counseling and release. At this point it is not possible to select
one program over another and one is led to believe that radical noninterven-
tion in noncriminal cases has considerable merit. Considering the facts that:
(1) small percentages of each cohort accounted for large percentages of each
cohort's contacts, (2) that felonies and major misdemeanors made up 14.0
percent, 17.7 percent, and 29.0 percent of the police contacts of each cohort
in succession, and (3) that while the proportion of males who were referred
during the age period 6-17 was somewhat higher (decreasing from cohort to
cohort) than the proportion of these more serious reasons for police contact,
continuation and expansion of street-level dispositions (counseling and
release by the officer) is probably a wise policy because fewer youth are
brought into the justice system, a step for which we see little evidence of
positive results.

4, 21



One of the aims of any court procedure is the protection of society. In the
juvenile case there is a major concern with what may be done to change
behavior because it is assumed that the die has not been cast, that the juve-
nile is plastic rather than nonmalleable iron. Court effectiveness involves
an understanding of the life experiences that have brought the juvenile to
court. While removal from the community may be satisfying to some person in
the community, the record shows that both juveniles and adults will be back,
So, the ultimate question is not one of how to most expeditiously remove mis-
creants from the community but how to integrate them into the larger social
system so that their talents will be employed in socially constructive ways.
This should be a major concern to the community, for if it is not the cost
will become increasingly higher.

16 23



MULTIVARIATE ANALYSES OF THE CORRELATES OF FREQUENCY AND
SERIOUSNESS .

When path analysis was used to determine the direct and indirect effects of
background and intervening variables on official and self-report seriousness
scores for the age period 6-17 it was found that having friends in trouble
with the police had a significant effect on official seriousness in every case
except for the 1942 cohort females. Extensive use of the automobile while in
high school had a significant effect on self-report seriousness for both sexes
of both cohorts. Failure to graduate from high school was significant for the
males of both cohorts and having family and/or friends whom they believed had
a negative influence on them was significant for females of both cohorts.

Not unexpectedly, these background and intervening variables had no consistent
pattern of effects on either sex's or cohort's official seriousness score for
the ages 18 and older and official seriousness ages 6-17 was the only variable
that had a significant effect on both sexes of both cohorts! official serious-
ness scores for the later age period. Two school variables did, however, have
significant effects, attitude toward school for the 1942 cohort males and
failure to receive a diploma for the 1949 cohort males. While the background
and intervening variables were not consistently related to adult self-report

: seriousness, juvenile official seriousness scores were for both cohorts.

It has become almost traditional (since Wolfgang et al.) to think of people as
nonoffenders, one-time offenders, nonchronic offenders (2-4 contacts), and
chronic offenders (5 or more contacts). ‘Although we found little cross-cohort
agreement when the data were analyzed according to these categories, there
were differences between the extremes of groups, those who had no contact or
those who had 5 or more contacts. Some of the variables characteristic of
those with 5 or more contacts during the juvenile period were attitudes toward
the police, frequency of auto use, having friends in trouble with the police,
and socioeconomic status of place of residence during the period prior to age
2i.

When multiple discriminant function was conducted utilizing all possible
cutting points between high frequency and low frequency of contacts, felony
vs. nonfelony contacts, and Part I offenders vs. non-Part I offenders, inner-
city and interstitial residence and negative attitudes toward the police were
characteristics of persons with more frequent and more seriousness reasons for
contact in each cohort. But in no case did these and all other variables
account for more than 20 percent of the variance. Perhaps the most important
conclusion reached as a result of this analysis was that results will vary
depending on the tyoology utilized and the cutting points selected.

That inner-city and interstitial places of residence during socialization
appeared often as a characteristic of those who fall into the serious offender
categories and that persons with group ties during the period 14 through 17
fell so often in the less serious categories indicates that integration into
the larger society does much to explain differences in the persistence and
continuity of delinquent and criminal behavior among members of each cohort.
This, coupled with the community's perception of the sources of delinquency
and crime and the functioning of the juvenile and adult justice systems, makes



police contacts (the inner city and interstitial areas) expanied from cohort
to ‘cohort no matter how delinquency and crime were measured.

Although blacks were more concentrated by subarea of residence and of contact
than whites, police contacts by whites became more concentrated (from cohort
to cohort) by subarea of residence and more dispersed by subarea of contact.
It is apparent that the whites have become more involved in crime and
delinquency in areas of the city other than those in which they reside and
that even those who live on the periphery have contributed to the high rates
of delinquency and crime in the inner city and its interstitial areas.

When we look at the race/ethnic proportions in the various residential area
in Racine we find that the proportions who have ever had a contact by race/
ethnicity are not greatly different from the proportion of each race/ethnic
group in each area. The consistency with which the race/ethnicity of persons
with contacts parallels the race/ethnic composition of each area of the com-
munity reinforces the position that delinquent and criminal behavior is
generated in a social milieu which provides for contacts with the police.

CONCENTRATION AMONG MULTIPLE OFFENDERS

While police contacts for delinquent and criminal behavior were highly con-
centrated among some individuals in each cohort, they were also widely
dispersed--60 percent to 70 percent of the males in each cohort had at least
one contact for an offense other than a traffic violation. A small portion of
each cohort had continuing police contacts but most of the people did not.
For example, less than 25 percent of each cohort's males have had five or more
nontraffic contacts but these chronic offenders accounted for from 77 percent
to 83 percent of all contacts by the males in their cohort.

F.om 5 percent to 7 percent of the persons in each cohort was responsible for
over half of the nontraffic police contacts and roughly 20 percent of each
cohort's members were responsible for 80 percent of the nontraffic police
contacts generated by that cohort. An even smaller percent (from 8 percent to
14 percent of each cohort) was responsible for all of the cohort's felonies.
The concentration of contacts for more serious offenses was greater among
females than males, from 2 percent to 7 percent of the females in each cohort
having generated 100 percent of the felonies by females in their cohorts. If
one wished to identify the persons who were responsible for about 75 percent
of the felonies (and much of the other crime), then approximately 5 percent of
each cohort, the persons with two or three felony contacts, would be the
target population.

CONTINUATION AND DISCONTINUATION

Contact Sequences--Although the probability of having an initial police
contact was very large (more than 80 percent of the males in the 194Z and 1949
cohort and over 70 percent in the 1955 cohort had at least one contact as did
48 percent of the females in the 1942 cohort, 52 percent in the 1949 cohort,
and 45 percent in the 1955 cohort) and the probability of continuing contacts
for males was at least 80 percent after the fourth contact, over half the

10



there is also a high degree of dispersion in that people scattered throughout
the community who either had no juvenile record or only had intermittent
contacts for minor offenses ultimately are charged with serious offenses by
law enforcement agencies. Because they do not have extensive records as
juveniles there is no basis for Predicting their later criminal behavior.
Knowing that a high percent of those from a high risk group will have serious
offenses as adults is not the same as predicting who in a total cohort will
have serious offenses as an adult.

Although it is apparent that many persons who have frequent contacts and
numerous referrals as juveniles will continue to have them, is this a charac-
teristic of the persons or a matter of responses by authorities to prior
behavior--resulting in fulfillment of the prophecy regardiess of how the
individual behaves in the future? Does early identification and intervention
effectively deter juveniles from further misbehavior or does it insure that
they will continuously be identified as miscreants?

What we found, in a variety of analyses and with considerable regularity, was
an increase in frequency and seriousness of misbehavior in the periods fol-
lowing those in which sanctions were administered. This was more the case for
males than females but the best that could be said is that sanctions have a
benign effect on the females. The extent to which continued police contacts
are a response to sanctions and not an extension of a pattern of misbehavior
is yet to be determined, but the data made us wonder. With few exceptions,
intervention by the agencies of social control do not play even a moderate
role in decreasing the seriousness of adult controls.

Interviews with persons from the 1942 and 1949 cohorts were valuable in
enabling us to see how persons from these cohorts viewed themselves and how
their reports of their own misbehavior related to their official records.
When official contact records and self-report measures were combined, well
over 90.percent of each cohort's males had engaged in youthful misbehavior,
followed by 65 percent to 70 percent of the females. Of those who had been
both stopped by the police and done things for which they could have been
caught but were not, only 5.3 percent of the 1942 cohort and 8.1 percent of
the 1949 cohort had a felony-level police contact after that age. Further-
more, most of those who were not caught stated that they had appraised their
behavior and ceased to engage in the acts which either got them or could have
gotten them into trouble--less than 8 percent.stopped because they feared
getting caught.

The juvenile court will deal with a certain proportion of these juveniles and
court effectiveness involves an understanding of the life experiences that
have brought them to court. While removal from the community may appear to be
the solution, the record shows that most juveniles and adults will return.
So, the ultimate question is not one of how to most expeditiously remove
miscreants from the community but how to integrate them into the larger social
system so that their talents will be employed in socially constructive ways.
This should be our major concern, for if it is not the cost will become in-
creasingly higher, postponed only to future generations.

vi



EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Much of the concern about juvenile delinquency has been based on the premise
that it leads to adult crime. Although a variety of analytical techniques and
measures of continuity and seriousness of careers have generated and con-
clusion that there is some relationship between juvenile delinquency and adult
criminality, the relationship is not ,sufficient to permit prediction from
juvenile misbehavior of who will become adult criminals. Furthermore, to the
extent that a relationship exists it may be explained by the operation of the
juvenile and adult justice systems as well as by continuities in the
behavior of juveniles.

Most of the findings described or referred to in this summary are unique only
in that they are based on an analysis of police and court records of three
birth cohorts comprised of 6,127 persons, male and female. Of these, 4,079
persons had essentially continuous residence in Racine from at least the age
of 6 through the age of 32 for those born in 1942, through 25 for those born
in 1949, and through 21 for those born in 1955.

The most prevalent pattern of delinquent behavior is one of declining serious-
ness and discontinuation after the teen-age period. The few who continue to
have police contacts with an increase in seriousness (and finally a decline)
are those who become well known to the adult justice system and thus create
the impression of continuity and increasing seriousness in delinquent and
Criminal careers. It is this relatively small group of "hard core" continuers
on whom attention should be focused by the juvenile and adult justice
systems.

In a high risk group composed of that 11.7 percent of the 1942 cohort who were
socialized in the inner city and its interstitial areas and had continuous
careers before 18, 53.3 percent had high seriousness scores after 18. No
other area and no other continuity type had even close to 50 percent with high
seriousness scores after 18. Findings were similar for the 1949 and 1955
cohorts. As promising as this sounds, one must look at the total picture.
While 43.8 percent of the inner city group with continous career contacts
before 18 and high later seriousness scores committed at least one felony
after 18, they comprise only 25 percent of the persons in the 1942 cohort with
felony contacts and only 29 percent and 22 percent of these persons in the
1949 and 1955 cohorts. Other felony offenders are spread throughout the
community, some of whom never had a police contact before the age of 18.

In every other manner in which the data have been examined there is a high
degree of concentration, i.e., there are certain categories of persons who
have a high probability of having serious careers that include felonies, but



differential rates of continuity and seriousness in an urban/industrial com-
munity with a growing minority group population normal rather than a
phenomenon which is startling and inexplicable.

ONE LAST WARNING

At this point we can only say that it is one thing to describe delinquency and
crime as they are distributed in an urban/ industrial community and changes in
tates during different stages in the life cycle, historical changes, changes
by sex, changes in spatial distribution, particularly for more serious types
of delinquent and criminal behavior, but it is quite another to predict from
juvenile police contact records and experiences with the juvenile justice
system who will have numerous contacts or contacts for serious violations of
the. law as adults. Indeed, the greatest error that has been made by
sociologists and others with an interest in the relationship of early mis-
behavior to later misbehavior is the assumption that statistically significant
relationships and reasonably high correlations translate into the ability to
predict continuity in behavior. There are many fraudulent claims in the
literature stemming from a lack of statistical sophistication. For this
reason we have made a distinct effort to critically evaluate the Racine data
and findings.

Whether they permit improvement in prediction or not, these data contribute to
the understanding of the nature of delinquent and criminal careers and how
they both are generated in the community. They lead to the conclusion that if
we wish to decrease delinquency rates and reduce such continuities as do
exist, steps must be taken to modify the operation of the community's insti-
tutions commencing with the school system, the manner in which police forces
have traditionally functioned, and the system under which sanctions are
applied. The next section of this paper describes some of the procedural or
institutional changes that are suggested by the findings that have just been
summarized.

APPROACHES TO THE REDUCTION OF JUVENILE DELINQUENCY AND
YOUTHFUL CRIME

It is apparent that a proportion of the youth who are socialized in the inner
city and its interstitial areas and in other areas as well have not seen the
existing organization of society as one into which they can fit and through it
progress toward life goals that are acceptable in the larger adult society.

The School--Perhaps the best indicators of this negative attitude are the
two closely related findings that attitude toward school and leaving school
before graduation are related to both juvenile and adult police contact
seriousness scores and self-report seriousness scores (intertwined is years of
education), Much has been written in recent years on the trials and tribula-
tions of school administrators, teachers, and counselors. The media have
dramatized the problem of drugs and delinquency, sometimes in such a way as to
create the impression that the only solution is to turn the school over to
police control. There is an excellent literature from the perspective of
educators which reveals that even the most dedicated school personnel have

2 19



period considered. White males accounted for 77 percent of all police con-
tacts in the 1942 cohort, 66 percent of the 1949 cohort, and even 52 percent
in the 1955 cohort (where the Proportion of contacts by females of each race
or ethnic group had markedly increased),

INCREASING INVOLVEMENT AND SERIOUSNESS FROM COHORT TO COHORT

Comparison of the three cohorts revealed that overall rates of contact with
the police did not increase from tehort to cohort as much as did rates of
police contact for the more serious offenses such as assault, burglary, theft,
and robbery. The proportion of contacts which involved these and other
serious offenses (Part I offenses) more than doubled between the 1942 and 1955
cohorts for the age period 6-17 and more than tripled for the age period 18-
20. And delinquency among females increased from cohort to cohort even more
than it did among males regardless of the measure of frequency of seriousness
employed. :

At the same time that frequency and seriousness of police contacts were in-
creasing from cohort to cohort, rates of police contacts, particularly for
Part I offenses, were increasing for Racine as a whole over the years covered
by the research. Although this period was one in which the number of police
officers patrolling the community rose from 89 to 169, this increase did not
begin to match the increase in arrest rates in the community. It could not be
said that increases in police contacts, seriousness of offenses, or increases
in arrest rates for the city were merely a function of an increasing probabil-
ity of contact with police officers. The Probability is, however, that what-
ever the increases in frequency and seriousness of reasons for contacts or
arrests, only part of the increase in rates from cohort to cohort and the city
as a whole should be attributed to increasing misbehavior of the residents of
Racine or member of the cohorts.

THE SPATIAL DISTRIBUTION OF DELINQUENCY AND CRIME

No matter how delinquency and crime rates were computed (by place of contact
or place of residence) for the 26 statistical areas which were developed for
the city of Racine it was apparent that police contacts and more serious
contacts had their highest incidence in the inner city and its interstitial
areas. At the same time, police patrolling is more intensive in areas which
have a high incidence of delinquency and‘crime. As a result, residents of
these areas as well as those who frequent them have a greater probability of
police contacts than do persons who do not reside there and who seldom go
there.

The high concentration of Racine's black population in the inner city and its
interstitial areas and a similar but different pattern of concentration of
Chicanos plays a part in explaining why they have more frequent contacts with
the police than do whites. Although there was a decline in thx: proportion of
white males with police contacts from the center of the city outward in most
age periods, at least half of the white males in high socioeconomic status
areas had at least one nontraffic police contact during their lives. It is
Consonant with the growth of Racine to find that areas with high rates of

9



* DOCUMENT RESUME
ED 222 834 CG 016 302

AUTHOR Shannon, Lyle W.

TITLE Assessing the Relationship of Adult Criminal Careers
to Juvenile Careers: A Summary.

INSTITUTION Iowa Univ., Iowa City.

SPONS AGENCY National Inst. for Juvenile Justice and Delinquency

someones Prevention (Dept. of Justice/LEAA), Washington,

D.C.

PUB DATE Jun 82
79-JN-AX-0010
23p.

PUB TYPE Reports - Research/Technical (143)

EDRS PRICE MFO1/PCO1 Plus Postage.

DESCRIPTORS Adults; Behavior Change; *Behavior Patterns; Cohort
Analysis; *Crime; *Delinquent Behavior; Delinquent
Rehabilitation; *High Risk Persons; Juvenile Courts;
Predictive Validity; *Predictor Variables; School
Role .

ABSTRACT

Much of the concern with juvenile delinquency has
been based on the premise that delinquent behavior leads to adult
Crime. Police and court records of three cohorts comprised of 6,127
persons were analyzed. The most prevalent pattern of delinquent
behavior was one of declining seriousness and discontinuation after
the teenage period. With few exceptions, intervention by the agencies
of social control did not play even a moderate role in decreasing the
seriousness of adult controls. It was apparent that police contacts
and more serious contacts had their highest incidence in the inner
city. While removal from the community may appear to be a solution,
the records show that most juveniles and adults will return and must
be integrated into the community. (JAC)

FIG II IOI III TOI IITA TT IIR IAI III AISA III AISI III III IIA

* Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made *
*

from the original document. _  *
PPP rrrrrrrrrTrTrTTTeTiTiT Titi irrtititiit irre rie et E TE hh ll



white males from the age of 6 through 17 and their number of contacts from the
age of 18 and on.

Inner-City Continuity --Construction of continuity types and use of controls
for place of socialization permitted selection of a relatively small per-
centage of offenders who were most likely to have criminal careers after the
age of 18, careers which included a large number of felonies. For example, in
a high risk group composed of that 11.7 percent of the 1942 cohort who were
socialized in the inner city and its interstitial areas and had continuous
careers before 18, 53.3 percent had high seriousness scores after 18. No
other area and no other continuity type had even close to 50 percent with high
seriousness scores after 18,-....Persons from the immer city and interstitial
areas with continuous careers before 18 produced the largest proportion with
high seriousness scores for the 1949 and 1955 cohorts.

As promising as this sounds, one must look at the total picture. While 43.8
percent of the inner city group with continuous contact careers before 18 and
high later seriousness scores committed at least one felony after 18, they
comprise only 26 percent of the persons in the 1942 cohort and 29 percent and
22 percent of the persons with felony contacts in the 1949 and 1955 cohorts.

Felony offenders are spread throughout the community and, of these, some never
had a police contact before the age of 18.

As in every other manner in which the data have been examined, it is found
that there is a high degree of concentration, i.e., there are certain
categories of persons who have. a high probability of having serious careers
that include felonies, but there is also a high degree of dispersion in that
people scattered throughout the community who either had no juvenile record or
only had intermittent contacts for minor offenses ultimately are charged with
serious offenses by law enforcement agencies. Because they do not have
extensive records as juveniles there is no basis for prediction of their later
criminal behavior. Knowing that a high percent of those from a high risk
group will have serious offenses as adults is not the same as predicting who
in a total cohort will have serious offenses as an adult, but it is the latter
with which we are most concerned.

PREDICTING FROM ACCUMULATED EXPERIENCE

Several other approaches were explored. When a series of prediction tables
was constructed based on the number of police contacts a juvenile had had
through each age, it was found that in the 1942 cohort over 90 percent of
those who had one contact through age 15 had at least one subsequent contact
and 100 percent of those who had two or more contacts through the age of 15
had at least one more contact after that age. But 60 percent of those with no
contacts through age 15 had at least one contact after that age. By the age
of 18 only 43 percent of those who had no contacts through that age had a
contact sometime in the future, and 72 percent of those who had had two or
more contacts had at least one more contact in the future. Similar findings
were present for the 1949 and 1955 cohorts. Tables were also constructed with
the criterion of five or more contacts after any given age. The differences
were even sharper in that at the age of 18, for example, only 5 percent of
those who had had no contacts previously would have five or more contacts

*
on
v

12



males with a first contact discontinued having police contacts before their
fifth contact and half the females before their second contact. By their 10th
contact 80 percent of the males in each cohort had discontinued having any
sort of police contact. They discontinue even sooner in the felony sequences.
Approximately 80 percent of the males in each cohort did not have a felony
contact after their third contact. Discontinuation rates for females were
even more abrupt for every sequence. The existence of a "hard core" group of
continuers suggests again that there is a relatively small group on whom
attention should be focused by the juvenile and adult justice systems.
Continuation probabilities for the Racine cohort, with controls inserted to
make the Racine data comparable to the Philadelphia data, produced quite
similar results.

Increasing Seriousness --Although a variety of analyses were conducted to
test the hypothesis that offenders proceed to more serious offenses, little
evidence of systematic progression in seriousnéss was found. In no case do
the data generate what might be called a smooth curve, but seriousness does
gradually increase from contact to contact among males, reaches an initial
peak (for most persons in their teens), then declines, only to rise again
among those who continue to have frequent contact with the police. This is
especially true among persons with 40 or more contacts. The most prevalent
pattern, however, is one of declining seriousness and discontinuation after
the teen-age period. The few who continue te have police contacts into their
late 20's with an increase in seriousness (and finally a decline) are those
who become well known to the adult justice system and thus create the impres-
sion of continuity and increasing seriousness in delinquent and criminal
careers. The careers of these persons are atypical of all who have had con-
tacts with the juvenile and adult justice systems.

Age Period Continuity --When continuities in police contacts were examined by
age periods it was found that there was a variety of patterns based on
combinations of the juvenile period (age 6-17), the intermediate period (age
18-20), and the 21 and over age period. “Most persons who had contacts in more
than one period commenced in the juvenile period but, if traffic offenses are
excluded, no more than !5 percent of the males and 4 percent of the females in
any cohort had contacts in each age period. While there is variation based on
the place of socialization and race/ethnicity, not even among blacks who were
socialized in the inner city do we find more than a third with contacts in
each age period. _
Nevertheless, it has been established that some individuals have police con-
tacts during the juvenile period, continue to have them as young adults, and
even beyond the age of 21 while others do not. This raises the question of
the probability of continuity between age periods and the correlation between
number and seriousness of contacts in one period and subsequent periods.

There is some probability of continuation, but the correlations and measures
of proportional reduction of error for either frequency or seriousness of
contacts between adjacent age periods were too low to permit prediction sf the
extent and seriousness of a person's career in a following age period from his
or her record in a prior age period. Interestingly enough, “he highest
association (0.696) was between the number of police con.acts by inner-city

4 11



INTRODUCTION

Much of the concern with juvenile delijquency in the United States and other
parts of the world has been based on’ the premise that it leads to adult crime.

Although a variety of analytical techniques and measures of continuity and
seriousness of careers have generated the conclusion that there is some
relationship between juvenile delinquency and adult criminality, the rela-
tionship is not sufficient to permit prediction of adult criminality from
juvenile delinquency. Furthermore, to the extent that a relationship exists
it may be explained by the operation of the juvenile and adult justice systems
as well as by continuities in the behavior of persons. While those who are
involved in the expenditure of vast sums of money for intervention find this
difficult to accept, it is unrealistic to posit juvenile delinquency as the
precursor to adult crime and continue to intervene as though the facts were
different from what they are.

Most of the findings described or referred to in this paper are consistent
with those which have been. published by other sociologists. They are unique
only in that they ‘are based on an analysis of three birth cohorts.

THE DATA AND SOME INITIAL CONCERNS

The three birth cohorts (1942, 1949, and 1955) are comprised of 6,127 persons,
male and female, of whom 4,079 persons had essentially continuous residence in
Racine from at least the age of 6 until the cut-off date for data collection
(1974 for the first two cohorts and 1976 for the third cohort). In addition
to the data on police contacts, referrals, and court dispositions for persons
in the three cohorts, we have interviewed 889 persons from the 1942 and 1949
cohorts.

Neither sex nor race/ethnicity was conceptualized as an explanatory variable.
Both are statuses which may fave some predictive value but in themselves they
do not explain delinquent and criminal behavior. On the other hand, the
community's perception of these statuses must be taken into consideration if
we desire to understand how recorded contacts with the police, contacts for
more serious forms of misbehavior, referrals, and dispositions eventuate in
the incarceration of the disproportionate numbers of people with specific
race/ethnic and sex characteristics. No matter which measure of frequency or
seriousness of police contacts was utilized, white females generally had the
fewest contacts and the least serious involvement with the police and black
males had the most contacts and most serious involvement with the police. But ,
even though minorities had disproportional involvement, three-quarters of the
black males having had a police contact between the ages of 6 and {7 in
comparison with half of the white males of each cohort, the great bulk of the
police contacts in Racine has been with white males, regardless of the age

8



It may also be that the effectiveness of a policy of street-level dispositions
could be enhanced by police training program which provides officers with a
better understanding of human behavior and juvenile behavior in particular.
Only by providing police officers with a better basis for decisionmaking than
that which they may informally acquire through encounters with juveniles over
a long period of time can we expect them to employ the kind of discretion that
will limit referral to only those whose behavior would be criminal (by intent
if they were an adult) and those whose condition is so’ serious that court-
imposed resources are required.

But again, we must emphasize that only a small proportion of those who have
police contacts as juveniles commit serious offenses as adults and there are
as many, if not more, persons who have thei: first contacts with the police
for serious offenses as adults. Even the most judicious decisions by the
police in their encounters with juveniles cannot be expected to eliminate
adult crime. To charge the police with this responsibility by instituting a
policy of dealing more severely with juveniles in their early encounters fails
to accept the facts.

The Juvenile Court and Probation--Although the data on court dispositions
and the application of sanctions have failed to show evidence of corrective
effects, they do indicate that to the extent that the juvenile court judges
believed that they could, they followed a policy of judicious nonintervention.
This is possible to only a limited extent, however. Consistent with the
conclusion that street-level handling by well-trained officers is a desirable
policy, we would also take the position that judicial nonintervention is
equally wise. As long as police referrals and court sanctions are followed by
more: contacts, more referrals, and more severe sanctions it cannot be said
that the system is accomplishing its purpose. This is not to deny ‘that
persons who have police contacts, who are referred, and who are sanctioned
have done something to bring about their involvement in the justice system.
But is is apparent that the consequences of processing have been continuing
misbehavior and continuing involvement while similar persons who have not
become so heavily involved in the system are less likely to continue to engage
in behavior which results in their names appearing in the public records.

Since the juvenile court will deal with a certain proportion of the juveniles
in the community (20.4 percent of the 1955 cohort had a court disposition
through the age of 17 and 58.7 percent of these had received court sanctions )
and the court has not shown evidence of effectiveness with the limited
alternatives available to it, the question is raised as to what, if anything,
can be done. Since the juvenile court does not punish, it cannot be said that
making the punishment fit the crime would lead to greater effectiveness. On
the other hand, increasing the variety of alternatives available to the judge
should be considered as an approach to greater effectiveness. In the case of
the alleged juvenile delinquent the decision as to what course of action to
take should involve not only consideration of the past experiences of the
person in court but other information that assists in explaining the social
genesis of the juvenile's misbehavior (this invplves cooperation with the
juvenile bureau of the police department and appropriate persons in the school
system). .



TABLE OF CONTENTS
Executive SUMTAFY.. sce cree e cece eee e cere cee eeesetetenceccaceresee seen sees
Introduction.....++ cece cece e teen eee e eens nsec nee neeeeeeseessseeeees

The Data and Same Initial Concerns... .ssseececseeeeercscereceencrrrrsececcee®

Increasing Involvement and Seriousness Fran Cohort to Cohort..sereeeeceeere

The Spatial Distribution of Delinquency and Crimes. csceececeeeeeeeaceeeeece
Concentration Among Multiple Offenders.....scseeseeseeeceenereersreecceeees
Continuation and Discontinuation. ....sseeecseecseeeerereecetecsserecseseees
Predicting Fran Accumulated Experience. ...eseseeseeercsreesererceeecestc ees
The Disposition of Police ContactS...cssssesecesesrseecnereceerersseeeesess

The Effectiveness of SanctionS....seeeeessrecsecnceteesseceseesteescetesees

What the Interviews Told US...sseeeeececeeeeceeeeereeesererees eaeeeees
Official Records vs. Self-Report Data...ceceseeeeceescsccseccctrereccercees 10
Multivariate Analysis of the Correlates of Frequency and Seriousness....... Ll

seeveceeee 12

One Last Warning...seceescerceceenenereeesecesseseesssneeeee

Approaches to the Reduction of Juvenile Delinquency and Youthful Crime..... 12

mM

iii



THE EFFECTIVENESS OF SANCTIONS

What we found, in a variety of analyses and with considerable regularity, was
an increase in frequency and seriousness of misbehavior in the periods fol-
lowing those in which sanctions were administered. This was more the case for
males than females but the best that could be said is that sanctions have a
benign effect on the females. The extent to which continued police contacts
are a response to sanctions and not an extension of a pattern of misbehavior
is yet to be determined, but the data made one wonder. We have not meant to
imply that sanctions in themselves generate continuity in careers from
delinquency to adult crime but, all other things being relatively equal, the
imposition of sanctions is not followed by a decline in frequency and
seriousness of contacts. That there have been some instances of décline in
future police contacts upon the application of sanctions cannot be denied, but
that may be for the same reason that there is a general decline in contact
among persons who have not been sanctioned. It may be that the factors which
make for effectiveness in sanctioning are so complex and this coupled with the
complexity of people makes it difficult, if not impossible, to impose
sanctions (within statutory limits) in an effective manner.

We concluded from a variety “of multivariate analyses that the significant
effect of juvenile seriousness on adult seriousness persists even when the
intervening effects of juvenile referrals and sanctions are held constant.
With few exceptions, intervention by the agencies of social contro! does not
play even a moderate role in decreasing the seriousness of adult contacts.
Overall, neither referrals nor sanctions had an impact on later seriousness
comparable to juvenile seriousness. But, at best, only one-third of the
variation in adult seriousness was explained by juvenile seriousness, refer-
rals, and sanctions.

WHAT THE INTERVIEWS TOLD US

Family, Work, and School--Interviews with persons from the 1942 and 1949
cohorts were valuable in enabling us to see how persons from these cohorts
viewed themselves and how their reports of their own misbehavior related to
their official records. And some long-cherished notions about the causes of
delinquency receive little support from longitudinal cohort data. For
example, the marital status of parents had little relationship to the delin-
quent behavior of juveniles.

Although police contact rates for persons in the 1942 and 1949 cohorts
declined after they were married, the introduction of appropriate controls for
years of exposure before and after marriage produced neither simple nor con-
sistent effects for both sexes or cohorts. Similarly, age of leaving home
failed to have a consistent impact on the number and seriousness of contacts
for both cohorts of either sex. There was little relationship when occupa-
tional level and regularity of employment of heads of families were con~
sidered, except for blacks. And, contrary to the notion that employment while
in high school deterred delinquency, those who were employed during both the
summer and the school year, particularly the males, had somewhat more police
contacts and higher seriousness scores than did others. Furthermore, there
were significant increases in the number of police contacts and seriousness

15

are



negative attitudes toward the police were related to high seriousness scores
before and after the age of 18 it is difficult to say whether negative atti-
tudes generate serious trouble with the police or serious trouble generates
negative attitudes. Most important, however, is the fact that relatively few
of each cohort had negative attitudes toward the police--those few who did
were likely to have higher juvenile and adult seriousness scores than those
who did not.

Coupled with what appeared to be considerable police understanding of the
juveniles was the failure of persons close to them (with the exception of some
sympathy from peers) to condone their delinquent behavior. And over two-
thirds of each cohort stated that their parents had a positive influence on
their lives. Only 7 percent of the 1942 cohort and less than 11 percent. of
the 1949 cohort stated that students at school had a negative impact on their
lives.

Going further, while having friends in trouble with the police as juveniles or
adults was correlated with seriousness scores as juveniles and adults, rela-
tively few had friends in trouble with the police during both periods (2.4
percent in the 1942 cohort and 9.8 percent in the 1949 cohort). While- this
associational variable has considerable value in explaining the continuity in
careers for a portion of each cohort, the fact that so few members of each
cohort had delinquent and/or criminal friends helps explain why so few had
continuing trouble with the police.

The conclusion that most misbehavior ceased as a consequence of the process of
socialization into adult roles was bolstered by the fact that most juveniles
had ceased the type of misbehavior for which they could have been caught but
were not by the age of 18. And their responses to the question, "What caused
you to stop?" revealed that most had ceased for positive reasons rather thar
the fear of getting caught (less than 8 percent stopped because they feared
getting caught).

OFFICIAL RECORDS VS. SELF-REPORT DATA

We were concerned with respondents!’ accounts of their police encounters and
how they compared with official reports, with their self-reports on delinquent
and criminal behavior and how they compared with their official records, and
last, how their self-concept compared with official records and self-reports.
While 80 percent of the whites in each cohort either reported their number of
police contacts consistently with police records or over-estimated them, only
half the blacks reported the number of contacts consistently with the records
and the other half reported fewer contacts in comparison with ‘official re-
cords. There were some differences between what respondents said they were
doing at the time of a police contact and what they reported police said they
were doing at the time of the contact (38 percent disagreement for the 1942
cohort..and 32 percent disagreement for the 1949 cohort), but the reasons for
the discrepancies appear to be differences in perception related to the police
officer's interpretation of. an event and a juvenile's interpretation of the
same event. 7

10 17



Prepared under Grant No. 79-JN-AX-0010 to the University of lowa from the National Institute
for Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency
Prevention, U.S, Department of Justice. Points of view or opinions stated in this document are
those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official positions or policies of the U.S.

Department of Justice.

oe



U.S. Department of Justice
Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention
National Institute for Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention

Assessing the Relationship
of Adult Criminal Careers
to Juvenile Careers:

A Summary

Lyle W. Shannon

Director

Sune 1982

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION
EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION
CENTER (ERIC)

(2 This document has been reproduced 2
received from the person or organization
originating It

(Minor changes have been made to improve
reproduction quality.

°

of view or opinions stated in this docu-
ment do not necessarily represent official NIE
position or policy.

C6 016302



after that age, while 65 percent of those who had five or more contacts
through the age of 18 would have five or more after that age. Prediction
tables based on seriousness scores in which the criterion was a seriousness
score of six or more after any given age produced similar results.

However, when the data for any given age were used in prediction, it was fcund
that the combined errors of omission and commission were greater than or only
slightly less than those which would be made by a prediction from the modal
category of the marginals. In other words, at any given age, for example 18
for the 1942 cohort, if one were to predict that no one would have five or
more contacts one would only make marginal errors of 18 percent. By utilizing
past police contacts of four or more contacts as the basis for predicting who
would have five or more contacts in the future, these errors would be reduced
to 14 percent but we would have falsely predicted that 35 persons would have
five or more contacts who did not (5.5 percent) and that 54 persons would not
have five or more contacts when they did. Whatever would be done to those
whom we predicted would have five or more contacts would be done to 97 persons
(35 of whom did not need it) and 54 who should have received special attention
would not have had it. This illustrates the nature of the problem faced by
persons on the firing line if they are expected to deal effectively with the
problem of crime prevention. The 1949 and 1955 cohorts produced similar
findings.

We concluded that although there is a relationship between frequent and more
serious contacts in the early years and continuity of careers, it alone does
not enable us to improve our predictive efficiency over that based on the
marginals because toc many errors of omission and commission are made if we
act on these data alone.

THE DISPOSITION OF POLICE CONTACTS

The Decision to Refer--Although the high proportion of minority group
members in juvenile and adult institutions has often been attributed to step-
by-step discrimination in the chain of events between the commission of an act
and institutionalization, most cross-sectional studies have produced con-
tradictory and/or inconclusive evidence of significant race/ethnic or socio-
economic discrimination at any decisionmaking point. These contradictory
findings suggested that longitudinal data are required to test the proposition
that as an individual proceeds through the system the decision to take the
next formal step is more likely to be made if the miscreant is nonwhite or of
lower"Sacioeconomic status than if he/she is white or of high socioeconomic
status. Each step adds an increment of nonwhites and/or persons of lower
socioeconomic status to those who will be formally brought closer to insti-
tutionalization. In the end, a significantly large proportion of the insti-
tutionalized population is nonwhite or from lower socioeconomic status
groups.

The initial screening process, the decision to refer or not to refer, is often
the first step in a chain of events that sends a few percent more of minority
or low socioeconomic status persons on to the next stage of the process.
Although a higher percentage of black and Chicano than white males were
referred from each cohort, when controls for seriousness were introduced,

6 13



scores after full-time employment for those who commenced their first full-
time employment at the age of 17 or earlier.

It may also be that commitment to work at an early age reduced commitment to
school and is thus tied in with leaving school before obtaining a diploma.
Leaving school without a diploma and reasons for doing so turned out to be
related to seriousness of official police contact records, both of which had a
complex relationship to attitude toward school.

The Normalcy of Juvenile Misbehavior --At the outset we stated that it was
just as important to understand why so few juveniles went on to careers in
adult crime as to explain the continuity of a few. To understand this we must
know more about how juveniles perceived their police contacts and their mis-
behavior which did not result in police contacts. Almost 70 percent of each
cohort admitted that they had been stopped by the police once or twice before
18, about 60 percent of them around the age of 16 or 17. Most had not been
stopped for anything serious, even as the police saw it. About two-thirds of
each cohort also admitted doing things for which they were not caught. When
official contact records and self-report measures were combined, well over 90
percent of each cohort's males appeared to have engaged in youthful mis-
behavior, followed by 65 percent to 70 percent of the females. Nevertheless,
few continued to get into trouble after age 18 and even fewer were involved in
serious trouble after 18. Of those who had been both stopped by the police
and done things for which they could have been caught (the group that would be
most likely to continue their misbehavior into adulthood) only 10.6 percent of
the 1942 cohort and 13.9 percent of the 1949 cohort had a major misdemeanor or
felony police contact after the age of 18. Only 5.3 percent and 8.1! percent
had a felony-level police contact after that age. Furthermore, most of those
who were caught and most of those who were not caught reappraised their
behavior and ceased to engage in the acts which either got them or could have
gotten them into trouble.

Looking at it even more carefully we saw how frequently the automobile got
juveniles into trouble with the police and how other behaviors were related to
it. It was not an early driver's license per se that resulted in police
contacts but simply having access to the automobile, just as early employment
may have exposed some juveniles to greater contact risk and also given them
funds to be spent in a trouble-producing way during the years of socializa-
tion. Both males and females had more police contacts after receiving their
driver's licenses but we must remember that most were receiving their licenses
just at the time that they were eager to have the tights and privileges of
adults--to engage in unfettered fun and to enjoy the freedom of adults, with-
out perhaps knowing how to be as careful as adults.

Tae \
When asked why they were doing the things that got them or could have gotten
them in trouble from 30 percent to almost 50 percent of the incidents
described by members of each cohort were seen as "just for fun." And those
activities which resulted in a police contact were done with someone else in
four out of five cases, usually with the persons that they ran around with.

Responses to Community Disapproval --Most juveniles were not dealt with by

referral, those who were were generally not severely sanctioned, and few
stated that they reacted to the situation with hostility and rebellion. While

16