An Examination of Developmental Patterns of Chronic Offending from Self-report Records and Official Data: Evidence from the Pittsburgh Girls Study

• In Event: Chronic and Serious Offending: Two Sides of the Same Coin?

Abstract

With recognition that much of the prior research assessing chronic offending has been focused on males, the current study provides an examination of offending trajectories in general, and chronic offending in particular, among 2,450 participants from the Pittsburgh Girls Study. Results indicate that there is some degree of concordance between self-reported and official offending trajectories, and there is evidence of an overlap among those identified as chronic offenders from a variety of operationalizations of chronic offending. Study limitations and directions for future research are also discussed

Authors

• Wesley Jennings, University of South Florida

• Rolf Loeber, University of Pittsburgh

• Lia Ahonen, University of Pittsburgh

• Alex R. Piquero, University of Texas at Dallas

• David Farrington, Cambridge University