DOI: 10.3886/icpsr02312
title: Early Identification of the Serious Habitual Juvenile Offender Using a Birth Cohort in Philadelphia, 1958-1984
title: Archival Version

description: Beginning in the mid-1980s, the Office of Juvenile Justice
and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) funded the creation of Habitual
Offender Units (HOUs) in 13 cities. HOUs were created to prosecute
habitual juvenile offenders by deploying the most experienced
attorneys to handle these cases from start to finish. By targeting the
earliest points in the career sequence of the juvenile offenders, the
greatest number of serious offenses can potentially be averted.
Selection criteria to qualify for priority prosecution by an HOU
usually encompassed one or more generic components relating to aspects
of a juvenile's present and prior offense record. In Philadelphia, to
be designated a serious habitual offender and to qualify for priority
prosecution by the HOU, a youth had to have two or more prior
adjudications or open cases for specific felonies, as well as a
current arrest for a specified felony. The first three police contacts
in a Philadelphia juvenile offender's record were of special interest
because they included the earliest point (i.e., the third contact) at
which a youth could be prosecuted in the Philadelphia HOU, under their
selection criteria. The main objectives of this study were to
determine how well the selection criteria identified serious habitual
offenders and which variables, reflecting HOU selection criteria,
criminal histories, and personal characteristics, were most strongly
and consistently related to the frequency and seriousness of future
juvenile and young adult offending. To accomplish this, an assessment
was conducted using a group of juveniles born in 1958 whose criminal
career outcomes were already known. Applying the HOU selection
criteria to this group made it possible to determine the extent to
which the criteria identified future habitual offending. Data for the
analyses were obtained from a birth cohort of Black and white males
born in 1958 who resided in Philadelphia from their 10th through their
18th birthdays. Criminal careers represent police contacts for the
juvenile years and arrests for the young adult years, for which police
contacts and arrests are synonymous. The 40 dependent variables were
computed using 5 different criminal career aspects for 4 crime type
groups for 2 age intervals. The data also contain various dummy
variables related to prior offenses, including type of offense, number
of prior offenses, disposition of the offenses, age at first prior
offense, seriousness of first prior offense, weapon used, and whether
it was a gang-related offense. Dummy variables pertaining to the
current offenses include type of offense, number of crime categories,
number of charges, number of offenders, gender, race, and age of
offenders, type of intimidation used, weapons used, number of crime
victims, gender, race, and age of victims, type of injury to victim,
type of victimization, characteristics of offense site, type of
complainant, and police response. Percentile of the offender's
socioeconomic status is also provided. Continuous variables include
age at first prior offense, age at most recent prior offense, age at
current offense, and average age of victims.
description: Beginning in the mid-1980s, the Office of
 Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) funded the
 creation of Habitual Offender Units (HOUs) in 13 cities. HOUs were
 created to prosecute habitual juvenile offenders by deploying the most
 experienced attorneys to handle these cases from start to finish. By
 targeting the earliest points in the career sequence of the juvenile
 offenders, the greatest number of serious offenses can potentially be
 averted. Selection criteria to qualify for priority prosecution by an
 HOU usually encompassed one or more generic components relating to
 aspects of a juvenile's present and prior offense record. In
 Philadelphia, to be designated a serious habitual offender and to
 qualify for priority prosecution by the Philadelphia HOU, a youth had
 to have two or more prior adjudications or open cases for specific
 felonies and a current arrest for a specified felony. Specific
 felonies included criminal homicide and first degree felonies, such as
 rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, arson, involuntary
 deviate sexual intercourse, and drug offenses (delivery or possession
 with intent to deliver). In other words, an accumulation of a
 prespecified number of serious delinquent acts would trigger a
 specialized prosecutorial response. Each city's HOU adopted its own
 selection criteria based also on a combination of legal and
 administrative considerations. Legal considerations centered on the
 seriousness of the specified charges and the mounting criminal
 liability engendered by multiple arrests or
 adjudications. Administrative considerations centered on the number of
 cases generated by the selection criteria. However, none of the cities
 adopted selection criteria on the basis of systematic research and
 almost no research was conducted on how well these HOUs' selection
 criteria identified serious habitual offenders. The following
 questions arose about the Philadelphia selection criteria: (1) The
 specified crime charges were for serious offenses, but should other
 crime charges have been adopted? (2) Some of the specified crime
 charges could be related to the more repetitive types of criminal
 behavior (e.g., robbery, burglary), but was a single charge better
 than a combination of charge types for identifying serious habitual
 offending if a relationship between charge type and future offending
 exists? (3) Two prior adjudications or pending cases represent a
 mounting criminal record and appear to reflect a commitment to
 continued criminal activity, but is there a reason to adopt another
 threshold, preferably one case rather than two? and (4) Should the
 prosecutors consider other information, such as unofficial
 information, to identify the serious habitual offender? The main
 objective of the study was to determine which variables, reflecting
 current selection criteria, criminal histories, and personal
 characteristics, were most strongly and consistently related to
 selected aspects of a juvenile's future criminal career. With the
 capacity to identify accurately serious habitual offenders,
 prosecutors would be in a better position to allocate limited staff,
 money, and technology to those cases that are most likely to yield the
 greatest payoff. Intervention programs, whether based on
 incapacitation, deterrence, and/or rehabilitation, would also work
 best if the right group of juveniles were selected for priority
prosecution.
description: This study attempted to identify variables,
 reflecting HOU selection criteria, criminal histories, and personal
 characteristics, at each of a juvenile's felony police contacts to
 determine which were most strongly and consistently related to the
 frequency and seriousness of future juvenile and young adult
 offending. The first three police contacts in a Philadelphia juvenile
 offender's record were of special interest because they included the
 earliest point (i.e., the third contact) at which a youth could be
 prosecuted in the Philadelphia HOU, under their selection
 criteria. Analyses were conducted separately on the first, second, and
 third police contacts to (1) assess Philadelphia's current selection
 criteria, which were triggered at the third felony police contact, (2)
 establish whether there were variables that were consistently related
 to a juvenile's future criminal career across the first three felony
 transitions, and (3) determine whether there were grounds for
 prosecutors to select juveniles for prosecution by the HOU at the
 first or second felony police contacts rather than waiting for the
 third. To accomplish this, an assessment was conducted using a group
 of juveniles born in 1958 whose criminal career outcomes were already
 known. Applying the HOU selection criteria to this group made it
 possible to determine the extent to which the criteria identified
 future habitual offending. Data for the analyses were obtained from a
 birth cohort of Black and white males born in 1958 who resided in
 Philadelphia from their 10th through their 18th birthdays. For each
 birth cohort member with at least one felony police contact during the
 juvenile years, spanning the 10th through 18th birthdays, a juvenile
 felony sequence was created starting with the juvenile's first felony
 and ending with the juvenile's last felony. Then arrest and judicial
 histories for the juvenile and young adult periods were merged to form
 a continuous sequence, spanning ages 10 through 26. This sequence was
 the basis for computing the dependent variables. At each of the
 sequential points, or transitions, data were provided for the Black
 and white youngsters separately and for both races together. The
 pooled data files retained only up to three police contacts. In order
 to assess the sensitivity of the findings to sampling error,
 statistical analyses were first conducted on a randomly partitioned
 construction sample comprising 70 percent of the subjects. The final
 statistical results at each felony transition based on the
 construction sample were then reexamined at the corresponding felony
 transition in a validation sample comprised of the remaining 30
 percent. In response to the prosecutors' interest in narrowing the
 scope of eligible juveniles to just the "high" group (i.e., most
 frequent/serious), the researchers noted that percentages assigned by
 the prosecutors to identify the "high" group converged on the top
 quartile. Therefore, from an operational standpoint, juveniles with
 one or more specified felonies who fell into the top 25 percent with
 respect to future repetitive serious offending would be included
 "in" the HOU. Juveniles who fell below that point would be directed
 "out" of the HOU. To reflect this in-out decision format, dependent
 variables were dichotomized, using the 75th percentile to split the
 variables into a top 25 percent and a bottom 75 percent. To get some
 idea of the robustness of findings and to investigate how alternative
 definitions of the "high" and "low" group would affect the
 selection criteria used to make the in-out decision, final results
 based on the 25/75 percentile split were reanalyzed using a 10/90
split.
description: Dependent variables represent aspects of a
 juvenile's future criminal career (i.e., aspects that occurred
 subsequent to the point in the felony sequence under
 analysis). Criminal careers represent police contacts for the juvenile
 years and arrests for the young adult years for which police contacts
 and arrests are synonymous. Dependent variables were computed in five
 ways, reflecting different criminal career aspects: (1) the rate per
 year of police contacts, (2) the average seriousness per police
 contact, (3) the average seriousness per year of police contacts, (4)
 the average number of criminal charges per police contact, and (5) the
 average number of criminal charges per year. These five dependent
 variables were computed for four crime type groups, in increasing
 order of restrictiveness: (1) all offenses (i.e., crime events), (2)
 specified felonies (i.e., serious crimes), (3) Uniform Crime Reports
 (UCR) index crimes, and (4) UCR violent index crimes (i.e., dangerous
 crimes). The five criminal career aspects and four crime type groups
 were computed for two age intervals: (1) the remaining juvenile years
 (through the youth's 18th birthday) and (2) the remaining juvenile
 years and the young adult years (through the youth's 27th
 birthday). This resulted in a total of 40 dependent variables. The
 data also contain various dummy variables related to prior offenses,
 including type of offense, number of prior offenses, disposition of
 the offenses, weapon used, whether the offense was gang-related, age
 at first prior offense, and seriousness of first prior offense. Dummy
 variables pertaining to the current offenses include type of offense,
 type of injury to victim, number of crime categories, number of
 charges, weapons used, number of offenders, gender, race, and age of
 offenders, type of intimidation used, number of crime victims, gender,
 race, and age of victims, type of victimization, characteristics of
 offense site, type of complainant, and police response. Other
 variables include offender's socioeconomic status, age at first prior
 offense, age at most recent prior offense, age at current offense, and
average age of victims.
description: Response Rates: Not applicable.
description: Presence of Common Scales: None.
description: The study used a cohort of 13,160 males born in
 1958 who resided in Philadelphia from their 10th through their
 18th birthdays. Cohort members were restricted to those who had
lived in Philadelphia without interruption from age 10 to 17.
description: Datasets: 
DS0: Study-Level Files
DS1: Felony Police Contacts with Black Juveniles, Validation Sample, 25/75 Percentile Data
DS2: Felony Police Contacts with Black Juveniles, Validation Sample, 10/90 Percentile Data
DS3: Felony Police Contacts with Black Juveniles, Construction Sample, 25/75 Percentile Data
DS4: Felony Police Contacts with Black Juveniles, Construction Sample, 10/90 Percentile Data
DS5: Felony Police Contacts with White Juveniles, Validation Sample, 25/75 Percentile Data
DS6: Felony Police Contacts with White Juveniles, Validation Sample, 10/90 Percentile Data
DS7: Felony Police Contacts with White Juveniles, Construction Sample, 25/75 Percentile Data
DS8: Felony Police Contacts with White Juveniles, Construction Sample, 10/90 Percentile Data
DS9: Pooled Felony Police Contacts, Validation Sample, 25/75 Percentile Data
DS10: Pooled Felony Police Contacts, Validation Sample, 10/90 Percentile Data
DS11: Pooled Felony Police Contacts, Construction Sample, 25/75 Percentile Data
DS12: Pooled Felony Police Contacts, Construction Sample, 10/90 Percentile Data
description: All juvenile offenders in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
description: Users are encouraged to obtain a copy of the final
report for more information on the methodology and analyses associated
with this study.The user guide and codebook are provided as a
Portable Document Format (PDF) file. The PDF file format was developed
by Adobe Systems Incorporated and can be accessed using PDF reader
software, such as the Adobe Acrobat Reader. Information on how to
obtain a copy of the Acrobat Reader is provided through the ICPSR
Website on the Internet.