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Give Adolescents the Time and Skills to Mature, and Most Offenders Will Stop

"The Pathways to Desistance study is a multi-site, longitudinal study of serious adolescent offenders as they transition from adolescence into early adulthood ... [It] looks at the factors that led these youths to commit serious crimes and to continue or stop offending. Sections of this brief explain that: adolescents, including serious juvenile offenders, naturally mature psychologically, socially, and cognitively over time; 9% of persistent juvenile offenders continue criminal behavior as adults; there is a lot of variation in how juvenile offenders mature; prediction about future offending should be based on maturity patterns not offending severity or frequency; and serious juvenile offenders need help learning the psychosocial skills they need for a law-abiding adult life.