Patterns of Juvenile Delinquency and Co-Offending in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1976-1994 (ICPSR 3598)
Version Date: Feb 24, 2004 View help for published
Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s)
Joan McCord, Temple University
https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR03598.v1
Version V1
Summary View help for Summary
In an attempt to inform and advance the literature on co-offending, this study tracked through time the patterns of criminal behavior among a sample of offenders and their accomplices. This study consists of a random sample of 400 offenders selected from all official records of arrest (N=60,821) for offenders under age 18 in Philadelphia in 1987. Half of the offenders selected committed a crime alone and half committed a crime with an accomplice. Criminal history data from January 1976 to December 1994 were gathered for all offenders in the sample and their accomplices.
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Subject Terms View help for Subject Terms
Geographic Coverage View help for Geographic Coverage
Smallest Geographic Unit View help for Smallest Geographic Unit
district
Restrictions View help for Restrictions
Access to these data is restricted. Users interested in obtaining these data must complete a Restricted Data Use Agreement, specify the reasons for the request, and obtain IRB approval or notice of exemption for their research.
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Date of Collection View help for Date of Collection
Study Purpose View help for Study Purpose
Juveniles who commit crimes typically commit them in the company of their peers. Although this basic fact has been regularly reported in the literature, research focuses almost exclusively on juvenile delinquents as individual actors. In an attempt to inform and advance the literature on co-offending, this study tracked through time the patterns of criminal behavior among a sample of offenders and their accomplices. This study sought to answer three main research questions: (1) How is co-offending related to the age of offenders? (2) How is co-offending related to recidivism? and (3) How is co-offending related to violence?
Study Design View help for Study Design
This study consists of a random sample of 400 offenders selected from all official records of arrest (N=60,821) for offenders under age 18 in Philadelphia in 1987. Half of the offenders selected committed a crime alone and half committed a crime with an accomplice. Criminal history data were gathered for all offenders in the sample and their accomplices. Relying on the 1987 crime as a point of reference, all crimes committed by offenders between January 1976 and December 1994 were reviewed to assure complete coverage of juvenile records. In addition, accomplices were traced for the 353 randomly selected offenders who had committed at least one co-offense. The principal investigator planned to use police tapes to match offenders to offenses, but the tapes were missing too much data. Instead, data were collected from court folders, which contained witness, complainant, police, and co-offender reports. A second source of data was rap sheets, which provided information about crimes processed by the adult court system.
Sample View help for Sample
This study consists of a random sample of offenders selected from all official records of arrest (N=60,821) for offenders under age 18 in Philadelphia in 1987. A random number generator was used to select names of arrested juveniles until 200 offenders who committed a crime alone and 200 offenders who committed a crime with an accomplice had been identified. If an offender's court record could not be found for the listed offense or if the offender had been previously selected, another crime was drawn from the appropriate list, again using a random number generator, and that offender became part of the random sample. The first drawing of a person made that person ineligible for another selection. Thus, no person entered the pool through selection for both a crime committed alone and one committed with an accomplice.
Universe View help for Universe
All juvenile offenders in Philadelphia in 1987.
Unit(s) of Observation View help for Unit(s) of Observation
Data Source View help for Data Source
Data were collected from court records and rap sheets.
Data Type(s) View help for Data Type(s)
Description of Variables View help for Description of Variables
Variables include the birth date of the offender, date of crime, most severe charge, number of offenders, offender's age at each crime, whether a violent crime was committed, dispositions, number of victims, demographic characteristics of oldest and youngest victims, criminal history of accomplices, number of juvenile and adult crimes committed after first co-offending crime, types of crimes committed after first co-offending crime, and the district in which the crime occurred. Demographic variables include the gender, race, and age of the offenders.
Response Rates View help for Response Rates
Not applicable.
Presence of Common Scales View help for Presence of Common Scales
None.
HideOriginal Release Date View help for Original Release Date
2004-02-24
Version History View help for Version History
- McCord, Joan. Patterns of Juvenile Delinquency and Co-Offending in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1976-1994 . ICPSR03598-v1. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2004. http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR03598.v1
2004-02-24 ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:
- Standardized missing values.
- Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.
Notes
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