Unpacking Age, Co-offending, and Crime Relationships

Joan McCord, Temple University
Kevin P. Conway, Yale University

ABSTRACT
The paper reports a study of crime patterns among juveniles. It will focus on age and the size of co-offending groups to understand crime events and to predict subsequent criminality. The study used a random start of 400 offenders, half of whom were selected for a crime committed alone and half selected for a crime committed with at least one other offender, to generate a snowball sample of offenders whose criminal behavior was traced from a first offense to the age of 18. Both age at that offense and size of co-offending group appear to influence crime trajectories. How they do so, and why, will be considered in this paper.

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Updated 05/20/2006