ABSTRACT
Developing offender typologies and testing their empirical validity was one step in the larger task of predicting adult careers from juvenile careers. Each type would represent a constellation of events rather than the sums of events. Inherent in each type of delinquent career, it was hypothesized, would be a combination of events with a varied likelihood of producing continuity into adult crime. In pre-computer days the interrelations of variables making for continuity might be more or less impressionistically discerned but only by lengthy experience with delinquents and criminals. The degree of homogeneity attained was sufficient that continuation of this approach seemed reasonable. The proof is in the pudding, so to speak, and it is a matter of seeing if being placed in a given cluster identifies one as a meaningful type. As in the first computer-generated set of clusters, each police contact by each cohort member appeared as a contact.
