How and why do many serious adolescent offenders stop offending while others continue to commit crimes? The Pathways to Desistance study, a multidisciplinary investigation that attempts to answer this question, followed more than 1,300 serious juvenile offenders for 7 years after their conviction. In this bulletin, the authors investigate the link…

The perpetration of bullying is a significant issue among researchers, policymakers, and the general public. Although researchers have examined the link between bullying and subsequent antisocial behavior, data and methodological limitations have hampered firm conclusions. This study uses longitudinal data from 411 males in the Cambridge Study in…

The present study investigates the relation between moral disengagement--one's willingness to conditionally endorse transgressive behavior--and ongoing offending in a sample of adolescent male felony offenders (N = 1,169). In addition, the study attempts to rule out callous-unemotional traits as a third variable responsible for observed…

Researchers have hypothesized that over the life course, criminal offending varies with problems in other domains, including life failure and physical and mental health. To examine this issue, the authors use data from the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development, a prospective longitudinal survey of 411 South London males first studied at age 8…

Although individuals low in self-control are more likely to engage in antisocial and criminal behavior, few studies have investigated its sources. Gottfredson and Hirschi argue that primary caregivers are largely responsible, whereas Wikstrom and Sampson contend that self-control is partially a function of neighborhood context. Using data from the…

Moffitt's developmental taxonomy of adolescence-limited and life-course-persistent offenders has received much empirical attention, with researchers focusing on the etiology and trajectory of offending between the two groups. Recently, Moffitt articulated a new hypothesis that has yet to be empirically assessed--that life-course-persistent…

An established finding in criminology is that most adolescents engage in delinquency. Still, studies continue to identify a small group of individuals who refrain from delinquency even when it is normative for their same-age peers. Moffitt's developmental taxonomy provides some reasons for delinquency abstention, but research has been slow to…