Female Delinquency From Childhood To Young Adulthood

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-x

   PDF

2. Introduction to Female vs. Male Criminal Careers

   • Rolf Loeber, Wesley G. Jennings, Lia Ahonen, Alex R. Piquero, David P. Farrington

   Pages 1-4

3. The Pittsburgh Girls Study and the Prevalence of Self-Reported Delinquency

   • Rolf Loeber, Wesley G. Jennings, Lia Ahonen, Alex R. Piquero, David P. Farrington

   Pages 5-11

4. Frequency, Persistence/Continuity, Onset, Desistance, Career Duration, Recidivism, and Chronic Offending

   • Rolf Loeber, Wesley G. Jennings, Lia Ahonen, Alex R. Piquero, David P. Farrington

   Pages 13-21

5. Trajectories of Offending

   • Rolf Loeber, Wesley G. Jennings, Lia Ahonen, Alex R. Piquero, David P. Farrington

   Pages 23-28

6. Gender Differences: Comparisons with Males in the Pittsburgh Youth Study

   • Rolf Loeber, Wesley G. Jennings, Lia Ahonen, Alex R. Piquero, David P. Farrington

   Pages 29-35

7. Conclusions

   • Rolf Loeber, Wesley G. Jennings, Lia Ahonen, Alex R. Piquero, David P. Farrington

   Pages 37-49

8. Back Matter

   Pages 51-73

   PDF

This Brief fills a gap in criminological literature, as there are few empirically-based studies on delinquency of adolescent girls. It provides results of a longitudinal study, The Pittsburgh Girls Study (PGS), which includes 2,451 girls, followed annually from age 10-19, the ages when criminal behavior tends to emerge. This study provides the most extensive and comprehensive investigation into the criminal offending and self-reported trajectories of offending of PGS participants, along with an in-depth examination of other criminal career dimensions.

In five chapters, this short volume reviews the limited extent of girls' delinquency literature, presents data on girls' offending patterns (onset, persistence, specialization, and desistence), provides insights on gender differences by comparison with the Pittsburgh Youth Study, which focused on male offenders, and explores the theoretical and practical implications of the results.

By understanding the origins and onset of criminal behavior in girls, researchers can begin to understand effective interventions and crime prevention. This Brief will be of interest to researchers in criminology and criminal justice, as well as related fields such as sociology, public policy, and psychology. 

• Juvenile Delinquency
• Developmental and Life-Course Criminology
• Longitudinal Studies
• Gender and Crime
• Crime Prevention and Intervention
• Crime Desistance
• Age-Crime Curve

• Department of Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, USA

  Rolf Loeber

• Department of Criminology, University of South Florida, Tampa, USA

  Wesley G. Jennings

• Örebro University, Örebro, Sweden

  Lia Ahonen

• University of Texas at Dallas Criminology Program, Richardson, USA

  Alex R. Piquero

• Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom

  David P. Farrington

Rolf Loeber, Ph.D., is Distinguished University Professor of Psychiatry, and Professor of Psychology, and Epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is the initiator of two large longitudinal studies, the Pittsburgh Youth Study, and the Pittsburgh Girls Study. He has published widely in the fields of juvenile antisocial behavior and delinquency, substance use, and mental health problems. He is an elected member of the Koninklijke Academie van Wetenschappen (Royal Academy of Sciences) in the Netherlands, and the Royal Irish Academy in Ireland. He is fellow of the American Society of Criminology and the American Psychological Association.

Wesley G. Jennings, Ph.D, is Associate Professor, Associate Chair, and Undergraduate Director in the Department of Criminology, has a Courtesy Appointment in the Department of Mental Health Law and Policy, and is a Faculty Affiliate of the Florida Mental Health Institute in the College of Behavioraland Community Sciences at the University of South Florida. In addition, he also has a Courtesy Appointment in the Department of Health Outcomes & Policy and is a Faculty Affiliate of the Institute for Child Health Policy in the College of Medicine at the University of Florida. He received his doctorate degree in criminology from the University of Florida. He has over 200 publications, his h-index is 32 (i-index of 88), and he has over 3,500 citations to his published work. He is the author of two recently published, academic press books with Springer: Offending from childhood to late middle age: Recent results from the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development (with David Farrington & Alex Piquero) and Offending from childhood to young adulthood: Recent results from the Pittsburgh Youth Study (with Rolf Loeber, Dustin Pardini, Alex Piquero, and David Farrington). In addition, he is the author (with Jennifer Reingle) of Criminological and Criminal Justice Research Methods, andan author (with Ronald Akers & Christine Sellers) of the 7th edition of Criminological Theories: Introduction, Evaluation, and Application. 

Lia Ahonen, Ph.D. studied at Örebro University, Sweden and is currently a Visiting Research Fellow at the Department of Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh, PA, USA, and Assistant Professor in Criminology at Örebro University, Sweden. She is the former department chair of the Psychology Department, Örebro University, Sweden. Her research interests are juvenile delinquency and serious antisocial behavior, serious and lethal violence, mental health problems, gun violence and policy, juvenile justice organizations, corrections and general justice related policy issues. After her graduation Dr. Ahonen has received three grants to pursue post-doctoral research on longitudinal data from the Pittsburgh Girls study and the Pittsburgh Youth Study. Dr. Ahonen received the Early Career Award, American Society of Criminology, Division of Developmental and Life Course Criminology.

Alex R. Piquero, Ph.D., is the Ashbel Smith Professor of Criminology and Associate Dean for Graduate Programs in the School of Economic, Political, and Policy Sciences at the University of Texas at Dallas and Adjunct Professor with the Key Centre for Ethics, Law, Justice, and Governance at Griffith University. From 2008 until 2013 he was Co-Editor of the Journal of Quantitative Criminology. He has published over 350 peer-reviewed articles in the areas of criminal careers, criminological theory, and quantitative research methods, and has collaborated on several books including Key Issues in Criminal Careers Research: New Analyses from the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development (co-authored with David P. Farrington and Alfred Blumstein), Handbook of Quantitative Criminology (co-edited by David Weisburd), Offending from Childhood to Late Middle Age: Recent Results from the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development (co-authored with David P. Farrington and Wesley G. Jennings), The Handbook of Criminological Theory, and Offending from Childhood to Young Adulthood: Recent Results from the Pittsburgh Youth Study (co-authored with Wesley G. Jennings, Rolf Loeber, Dustin A. Pardini, and David P. Farrington). He is also Fellow of both the American Society of Criminology and the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences and in 2014 he received The University of Texas System Regents' Outstanding Teaching Award. Dr. Piquero received his Ph.D. in criminology and criminal justice from the University of Maryland at College Park. 

David P. Farrington is Emeritus Professor of Psychological Criminology in the Institute of Criminology, Cambridge University. He received the Stockholm Prize in Criminology in 2013. He is Chair of the American Society of Criminology Division of Developmental and Life-Course Criminology. His major research interest is in developmental criminology, and he is Director of the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development, a prospective longitudinal survey of over 400 London males from age 8 to age 56. In addition to over 650 published journal articles and book chapters on criminological and psychological topics, he has published nearly 100 books, monographs and government reports.

Policies and ethics