Linking juvenile and adult patterns of criminal activity in the Providence cohort of the National Collaborative Perinatal Project

The study of criminal careers has generated much needed information about individual patterns of criminal offending. Still, only a handful of studies have explored whether these criminal career dimensions are similar or different across race and sex. To provide further evidence on this topic, data from a prospective cohort of individuals who participated in the Providence sample of the National Collaborative Perinatal Project (NCPP) were examined with regard to patterns of prevalence, frequency, chronicity, and specialization-in-violence for the entire cohort, as well as for samples stratified by race, sex, and race-sex categorizations. In addition, demographic and juvenile offending characteristics were used to predict adult offender status. Implications for future research are also addressed. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.