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Section I of this chapter summarizes the most important points of Chapters 2 to 5 and relevant portions of Chapter 10 (which concerns European issues) by addressing key findings that are relevant for juveniles’ transition of offending from adolescence (up to age 18) into adulthood. Section I focuses on: (1) criminal careers, including criminal careers of special categories of offenders (e.g., drug dealers, homicide offenders); (2) explanations of persistence and desistance across adolescence and early adulthood; (3) vulnerable populations. Section II deals with practical issues and covers Chapters 6 to 9 and relevant portions of Chapter 10. The section focuses on six topics: (1) prediction and risk assessments to ascertain the risk of recidivism during the transition period between adolescence and adulthood; (2) legal boundaries between adolescence and adulthood and whether they need to be changed; (3) responses of the justice systems for juveniles and young adults; (4) preventive and remedial interventions outside of the justice system; (5) gender issues; and (6) ethnicity issues. Finally, Section III of this chapter contains the headline conclusions and recommendations for ways to move forward. Special sentencing and treatment provisions for young adult offenders and immaturity as mitigating factors are discussed.

This chapter intrudes the key elements of this volume. This volume focuses on the age period between mid adolescence and early adulthood (roughly ages 15-29) and it addresses what we know about offending careers from the juvenile to the adult years. The volume draws on studies in North America and Europe and focuses on four key groups of young people: Juveniles whose offending persists from adolescence into early adulthood (and perhaps later); juvenile offenders who desisted during adolescence and do not continue to offend in early adulthood; adult-onset offenders who did not offend during adolescence but who became offenders during early adulthood; and, lastly, non-offenders who do not offend either in adolescence or early adulthood. Many juvenile delinquents tend to stop offending in late adolescence and early adulthood and this decrease is accompanied by a decrease in their impulsive behavior and an increase in their self-control. In most states in the U.S. the legal transition between adolescence and adulthood takes place at age 18. However, this age demarcation maps poorly onto maturational processes; research shows that many young people by age 18 do not yet have full control over their behavior and that brain maturation is not yet complete at that age. The implications of these findings for juvenile and adult justice are profound. Preventive and remedial interventions in and outside the justice system often shorten delinquency careers and reduce recidivism in adulthood.

This chapter focuses on the much neglected criminal career aspect of adult-onset offenders. It stresses that risk factors do not always need to have an immediate and direct effect, that some early risk factors have a long-term impact, that many factors play a protective role in childhood and adulthood, but that this protective effect may cease in adulthood, that psychological insulation or resilience toward antisocial and criminogenic factors may not last long, and that delinquency abstention is not necessarily a sign of good adjustment in adolescence. Using data from the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development, the chapter presents important findings and formulates an agenda for future work on adult-onset offending.

The criminal justice system has long been delineated along juvenile and adult lines. The ostensible rationale for this separation was that juveniles are developmentally distinct from adults; they require less punitive, more rehabilitative treatment than adults in order to improve their behavior. The underlying assumption is that adults are fully mature, and so developmental programs will be ineffective for them. However, recent research has indicated that young or emerging adults are not fully mature, either socially or physiologically. This has led for some to call for a new, “third way” approach for young adult offenders. We describe a program in Maine designed for young adult offenders, in which inmates are separated from both juveniles and adults and provided a diverse array of programming.

This chapter discusses issues related to charging and prosecuting parricide offenders. It includes a discussion on juvenile parricide offenders who were sentenced to death when that was legally permissible in the United States. Portraits of these cases differ dramatically from the prototypical severely abused youth and provide clear examples of adult parricide offenders who appeared dangerously antisocial. Life without parole (LWOP) is also addressed, and an example of an abused child sentenced to a mandatory LWOP sentence prior to the Supreme Court's decision in Miller v. Alabama is presented.

This chapter provides a critical perspective on the emerging developmental orientation of juvenile justice, particularly looking at the perspective that justifies treating youth differently because of their developmental differences. This perspective makes them less culpable and more amenable to rehabilitation. Indeed, in a relatively recent series of cases, the Supreme Court has held that offenders under the age of 18 were not only ineligible for the death penalty, but ineligible for life without parole for non-capital crimes, and ineligible for life without parole for capital crimes when no individualized assessment is provided. The chapter argues that juvenile offenders should certainly be treated differently from adult offenders, not because they are less mature or malleable but because empirical research shows that adult offenders should not be treated the way they are in the adult criminal justice system.

This chapter looks at the development of practice with adult offenders, along with far-reaching changes that have taken place in how society views and responds to offending by young people. There has been a growth of the number and range of professionals and organisations involved in work with offenders both adults and young people. As the delivery of practice has become more diverse, so too have understandings of crime and those who commit it. The relative simplicity of the original police court missionary's role has given way to more complex and complicated responses to crime; responses which require policy, coordination and management. This chapter briefly touches on some of the developments that have taken place over the last century in face-to-face work with offenders. It emphasises the changing nature of the worker-offender relationship and its continued importance as an alliance in the process of managing change. It also discusses organisational changes and case management, the ‘What Works’ initiative and the development of effective practice, and the risk of reoffending.

Administrative data offer unique opportunities for producing useful knowledge on the criminal justice system. Courts, institutions, and agencies collect information on the individuals involved in the system, but this information is typically not used for research purposes. Thus, these databases represent an important resource for etiological and evaluation research. At the same time, these sources of data can be quite challenging to work with as they are not collected for the purpose of research. This chapter facilitates research using administrative data by discussing the types of studies that can be done using administrative data and providing straightforward techniques for building partnerships with and accessing administrative data from courts, jails, prison systems, and community corrections offices. It offers innovative and practical approaches to managing the unique challenges and strategies associated with the use of these forms of data.