Gang membership has long been understood to have a disruptive influence on adolescent development and to contribute disproportionately to the rate of delinquent crime. The nature of the impact, and the long-term effects on individuals, have not been well understood. This book uses longitudinal data to examine the developmental consequences of gang membership, and its longer term influence on the life course. This longitudinal approach is made possible by data from a study of antisocial behavior, The Rochester Youth Development Study, which followed one thousand adolescents through their early adult years. The subjects include delinquents who were gang members and others who were not, allowing the authors to compare motives, patterns of behavior, and recurring problems with caregivers and the law, education, peer relations, and career paths. The findings indicate that multiple developmental deficits lead to gang membership and that membership leads to an increase in delinquency.

Recent research suggests a link between childhood maltreatment and later involvement in delinquency. This study examines this issue using official and self‐report data from the Rochester Youth Development Study. The analysis addresses three central issues: the magnitude of the relationship between early child maltreatment and later delinquency, official and self‐reported; the possibility of spuriousness in this relationship; and the impact of more extensive measurement of maltreatment on later delinquency. A significant relationship between child maltreatment and self‐reported and official delinquency is found and this relationship, especially for more serious forms of delinquency, remains when controlling for other factors. The results also suggest that more extensive maltreatment is related to higher rates of delinquency. Implications and suggestions for further research are discussed.

A substantial body of literature suggests that childhood maltreatment is related to negative outcomes during adolescence, including delinquency, drug use, teenage pregnancy, and school failure. There has been relatively little research examining the impact that variation in the developmental stage during which the maltreatment occurs has on these relationships, however. In this paper, we reassess the impact of maltreatment on a number of adverse outcomes when developmentally specific measures of maltreatment—maltreatment that occurs only in childhood, only in adolescence, or in both childhood and adolescence—are considered. Data are drawn from the Rochester Youth Development Study, a broad-based longitudinal study of adolescent development. The analysis examines how maltreatment affects delinquency, drug use, alcohol-related problems, depressive symptoms, teen pregnancy, school dropout, and internalizing and externalizing problems during adolescence. We also examine whether the type of maltreatment experienced at various developmental stages influences the outcomes. Overall, our results suggest that adolescent and persistent maltreatment have stronger and more consistent negative consequences during adolescence than does maltreatment experienced only in childhood.

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Developmental psychopathology emphasizes the impact that early childhood maltreatment has on adolescent and early adult development. The life‐course perspective, however, emphasizes more proximal events—adolescent maltreatment, for example—as developmentally disruptive. Prior research suggests that childhood maltreatment is a risk factor for adolescent delinquency and drug use. However, the results appear to depend on a loose definition of childhood. This study utilizes a four‐category maltreatment classification—never, childhood‐only, adolescence‐only, and persistent—to re‐examine the maltreatment‐delinquency relationship. Using data from the Rochester Youth Development Study, we find no relationship between childhood‐only maltreatment and adolescent delinquency or drug use; yet, we do find a consistent impact of adolescence‐only and persistent maltreatment on these outcomes.

Purpose We use full-matching propensity score models to test whether developmentally specific measures of maltreatment, in particular childhood-limited maltreatment versus adolescent maltreatment, are causally related to involvement in crime, substance use, health-risking sex behaviors, and internalizing problems during early adulthood. Methods Our design includes 907 participants (72% male) in the Rochester Youth Development Study, a community sample followed from age 14 to age 31 with 14 assessments, including complete maltreatment histories from Child Protective Services records. Results After balancing the data sets, childhood-limited maltreatment is significantly related to drug use, problem drug use, depressive symptoms, and suicidal thoughts. Maltreatment during adolescence has a significant effect on a broader range of outcomes: official arrest/incarceration, self-reported criminal offending, violent crime, alcohol use, problem alcohol use, drug use, problem drug use, risky sex behaviors, self-reported STD diagnosis, and suicidal thoughts. Conclusion The causal impact of childhood-limited maltreatment is focused on internalizing problems while adolescent maltreatment has a stronger and more pervasive impact on later adjustment. Increased vigilance by mandated reporters, especially for adolescent victims of maltreatment, along with provision of appropriate services may prevent a wide range of subsequent adjustment problems.

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There are between-generation and within-generation continuities in antisocial behavior, although assessment of such continuities is complicated by inevitable design and measurement limitations. Parenting partly mediated the impact of parental antisocial behavior on child antisocial behavior in two successive generations, but the relation between antisocial parents and antisocial children is not fully mediated by parenting variables.