Many scholars suggest that young people follow one of several pathways to increasingly violent and antisocial behavior. As the child grows, the behavior progresses into truancy, staying out late at night, and running away.
Some scholars argue that the three pathways are so closely intertwined as to be inseparable.
This report describes research to determine the developmental sequences that lead some children to engage in antisocial behavior. This research is a component of the multifaceted Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods sponsored by NIJ with support from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the U.S. Department of Education, and the National Institute of Mental Health. During the past 3 years, the research team has surveyed cohorts of youngsters in selected Chicago communities to explore the pathways to delinquent, criminal, and violent behavior and to understand why some children's antisocial behavior begins early in life and persists throughout much of their lives, while other children go through a short-lived period of delinquent behavior that begins in early adolescence. Because the forces that drive a youngster to delinquency are complex, the researchers examine multiple levels of informal and formal controls exerted on a youngster's individual and family life, as well as such personal factors as impulse control, temperament, and reading skill. It is rare to find neighborhoods with high collective efficacy surrounded by communities with low collective efficacy, suggesting that there are spatial effects that extend beyond the geographic boundaries of a single neighborhood.