ABSTRACT
According to the United States Office of Juvenile Justice Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), juvenile courts handled approximately 1.6 million delinquency cases in 2002 (Snyder and Sickmund 2006). About 58 percent of these cases were formally processed and two-thirds of these formally processed cases were adjudicated delinquent. Adjudication is recognition by the juvenile court that there is sufficient evidence to determine that the juvenile committed a delinquent act. Of those adjudicated delinquent, four of every ten will return to court on a subsequent charge; of those age 14 and younger with at least one prior referral, about 75 percent will return to court (ibid.). As the above statistics indicate, many youth who enter the juvenile justice system will
continue offending during the adolescent years and, often, into young adulthood. This chapter reviews the literature and empirical evidence on juveniles’ pathways out of crime and their desistance from criminal behavior. Because many researchers consider minor or low-level delinquency to be normative during adolescence, we concentrate our attention on juveniles who are more frequent or serious offenders (Moffitt 1994; Laub and Sampson 2001). To explore the processes and mechanisms involved in desistance from juvenile delin-
quency, this chapter will proceed as follows. First, we review literature on trajectories of juvenile offending to establish the difference between general and more persistent offenders. Second, we briefly review maturational, developmental, and life-course theories of desistance, then highlight the evidence bearing on each theory. Third, we discuss criticisms and gaps in the current state of knowledge regarding juvenile desistance. Finally, we summarize the factors that are positively linked to successful routes out of crime.
