Girls Study Group

“[R]esearchers from two long-term longitudinal studies of delinquency- the Denver Youth Survey and the Fast Track Project-collaborated to establish common delinquency measures, conduct analyses, and integrate findings on developmental patterns of girls’ offending from childhood through adolescence ” (p. 1-2).

This bulletin presents some of their major results. These are: prevalence and frequency of offending-ever-prevalence, prevalence by age and/or grade, and frequency of offending behavior among girls reporting delinquency; initiation and desistance patterns-girls’ first offenses, age of first offense, and delinquency patterns by grade, transitions between delinquency patterns over time, temporal patterns of delinquency (persisters, desisters, intermittent, and late bloomers); and developmental pathways in girls’ delinquency-developmental sequences, delinquency patterns by grade, transitions between delinquency patterns over time for the Fast Track (multi-state) and the Denver studies.

Some of the conclusions from this report include: most of the girls were delinquent in their childhood or adolescent years; a wide range of offending behaviors was reported; offenses were not frequent; the majority of girls did not have the same single beginning offense; and girls began and stopped offending at different ages.