The development of delinquency in adolescence: Employment, gender, SES, and ethnicity

Adolescent delinquent behaviour and involvement in crime is a widely known problem in society. Delinquent behaviour comprises several kinds of activities such as theft, vandalism, joyriding and truancy but also violent forms including fighting and weapon carrying. Engagement in these behaviours is not only a burden to society but can also pose restrictions to adolescents' developmental pathways in life. Empirical research has shown that involvement in deljavascript:void(0);inquency does not stay constant over the life course but varies in different stages of life. Age-crime curves show that antisocial behaviour or delinquency increases in early to mid-adolescence and then declines throughout mid-adolescence and emerging adulthood (Moffitt, 1993, Sampson and Laub, 2005). This general pattern can be observed across different samples and has been reported in contemporary as well as past studies. Looking at adolescence in the context of the life course, different developmental pathways of delinquency can be identified. Although two groups with little developmental variation are observable (i.e. stable low delinquent and stable high delinquent), a non-negligible group of young people ‘takes up’ delinquency for the duration of adolescence. In detail, these individuals show delinquency only in adolescence and desist as they transition into adulthood (e.g. Aguilar et al., 2000, Broidy et al., 2003, Nagin et al., 1995, Odgers et al., 2008). Research on adolescent delinquent behaviour has focused on reasons for this increase in engagement in delinquent or antisocial behaviour in early and mid-adolescence (e.g. Moffitt, 1993, Van Lier et al., 2007). However, much less is known about the reasons for desistance from delinquency in late adolescence and emerging adulthood.