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Delinquency in a Birth Cohort

"Delinquency in a Birth Cohort is a turning point in criminological research in the United States," writes Norval Morris in his foreword. "What has been completely lacking until this book is an analysis of delinquency in a substantial cohort of youths, the cohort being defined other than by their contact with any part of the criminal justice system."

This study of a birth cohort was not originally meant to be etiological or predictive. Yet the data bearing on this cohort of nearly ten thousand boys born in 1945 and living in Philadelphia gave rise to a model for prediction of delinquency, and thus to the possibility for more efficient planning of programs for intervention. It is expert research yielding significant applications and, though largely statistical, the analysis is accessible to readers without mathematical training.

"No serious scholar of the methods of preventing and treating juvenile delinquency can properly ignore this book."—LeRoy L. Lamborn, Law Library Journal

"The magnitude of [this] study is awesome. . . . It should be a useful guide for anyone interested in the intricacies of cohort analysis."—Gary F. Jensen, American Journal of Sociology

"A book the student of juvenile delinquency will find invaluable."—Criminologist

Table of Contents

Foreword
Preface
1. The Project
2. Capturing the Cohort
3. The Availability of Data
4. Delinquents and Nondelinquents: School and Social Background Variables
5. The Delinquency Status
6. Chronic Offenders
7. Age and Delinquency
8. Age of Onset
9. Static and Contingent Probabilities: Introduction
10. Static Offense Probabilities
11. Contingent Probabilities
12. Contingent Probabilities: Age Base
13. Disposition
14. Summary
Appendixes
Index

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