Sparked by high-profile cases involving children who commit violent crimes, public concerns regarding child delinquents have escalated. Compared with juveniles whose delinquent behavior begins later in adolescence, child delinquents (offenders younger than age 13) face a greater risk of becoming serious, violent, and chronic juvenile offenders. OJJDP formed the Study Group on Very Young Offenders to examine the prevalence and frequency of offending by children younger than 13. This Study Group identified particular risk and protective factors that are crucial to developing effective early intervention and protection programs for very young offenders.

This Bulletin is part of OJJDP’s Child Delinquency Series, which presents the findings of the Study Group on Very Young Offenders. This series offers the latest information about child delinquency, including analyses of child delinquency statistics, insights into the origins of very young offending, and descriptions of early intervention programs and approaches that work to prevent the development of delinquent behavior by focusing on risk and protective factors.

Some Key Findings

The number of child delinquents1 (juveniles between the ages of 7 and 12) handled in the nation’s juvenile courts has increased 33 percent over the last decade (Snyder, 2001). This development is cause for concern not only because offense patterns reflect more serious crimes among these youngsters, but also because these very young offenders are more likely to continue their involvement in crime. Child delinquents are two to three times more likely to become serious, violent, and chronic offenders2 than adolescents whose delinquent behavior begins in their teens. Recent high-profile media cases of violence committed by children age 12 or younger also have drawn attention to the potential for child delinquents to inflict deadly harm. For these reasons alone, child delinquents represent a significant concern for both society and the juvenile justice system.

The arrest rate of child delinquents changed between 1988 and 1997: arrests for violent crimes increased by 45 percent (paralleling the increase in violence for all juveniles) and drug abuse violations increased by 156 percent. In contrast, arrests for property crimes decreased by 17 percent (Snyder, 2001). The Denver Youth Survey, which is a followup study of more than 1,500 high-risk youth, showed that at ages 11–12, about 10 percent of boys and girls had a police contact because of delinquency (Espiritu et al., 2001).

Figure 1:   Proportion of Delinquency Careers That Eventually Had Four or More Delinquency Referrals, by Age at First Referral
Figure 1: Bar graph showing the proportion of delinquency careers that eventually had four or more delinquency referrals, by age at first referral. Note: The proportion of careers with four or more referrals is likely to be underestimated for the first bar in this graph. Coding errors in the birth dates of a small number of youth first referred at age 17 caused them to be misclassified with an onset age of 7.
Source: Snyder, 2001.
The total volume of child delinquency cases handled in the juvenile courts is large. In 1997, an estimated 181,300 delinquents were less than 13 years old at the time of court intake (Butts and Snyder, 1997; Snyder, 2001). Youth referred to court for a delinquency offense for the first time before the age of 13 were far more likely to become chronic juvenile offenders than youth first referred to court at an older age (see figure 1). It is important to note that because the upper age of juvenile court jurisdiction generally is 17, older first-time delinquents have fewer years of opportunity to develop into chronic juvenile offenders.

Figure 2 shows the overlap between juvenile offenders and serious, violent, and chronic offenders for two groups: child delinquents and older onset delinquents. A larger proportion of child delinquents, compared with later onset delinquents, become serious, violent, and chronic offenders. Also, a higher proportion of the violent child delinquents become chronic offenders.

Figure 2:    Very Young Offenders Have a Greater Percentage of Serious, Violent, and Chronic Careers Than Older Onset Delinquents
Figure 2: Venn diagram showing that very young offenders have a greater percentage of serious, violent, and chronic careers than older onset delinquents.
Source: Snyder, 2001.
Child delinquents have their own typical offense profile. They account for one-third of all juvenile arrests for arson, one-fifth of juvenile arrests for sex offenses and vandalism, one-eighth of juvenile arrests for burglary and forcible rape, and one-twelfth of juvenile arrests for violent crime (Snyder, 2001).

This Bulletin summarizes the final report of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention’s (OJJDP’s) Study Group on Very Young Offenders (the Study Group). See the box for more information on the Study Group. The report, Child Delinquents: Development, Intervention, and Service Needs (Loeber and Farrington, 2001), is the first volume published that presents empirical information on child delinquents from hundreds of studies, including data from several studies that were newly analyzed for the report. It summarizes knowledge concerning the nature of child delinquency, its developmental course, key risk and protective factors, and effective interventions. Child delinquency is an enduring and troubling phenomenon that requires more research and the efforts of a broader community to be fully understood and addressed. The work summarized in this Bulletin helps to advance knowledge about child delinquents and about fair and effective ways to deal with them.

OJJDP’s Study Group on Very Young Offenders

Historically, delinquency studies have focused on later adolescence, the time when delinquency usually peaks. During the 1990s, numerous studies examined chronic juvenile offenders, a group responsible for a disproportionately large number of crimes (especially serious crimes). However, OJJDP’s Study Group on Serious and Violent Juvenile Offenders—whose work was inspired by OJJDP’s Comprehensive Strategy for Serious, Violent, and Chronic Juvenile Offenders (Wilson and Howell, 1993)—reported in 1998 that youth who are referred to juvenile court for their first delinquency offense before age 13 are far more likely to become chronic offenders than youth first referred to court at a later age. Specifically, this Study Group found that the onset of problem behaviors in male children starts, on average, much earlier than the average age of first court contact for Crime Index offenses.1 The discovery that minor problem behavior leading to delinquency often begins at a very young age was a major impetus for OJJDP to develop a new initiative, the Study Group on Very Young Offenders, which began its work in 1998. This cooperative 2-year-long venture was undertaken to analyze existing data and to address key issues that had not previously been studied in the literature.

Consisting of 16 primary study group members and 23 coauthors who are experts on criminology, child delinquency, psychopathology, and the law, the Study Group on Very Young Offenders reviewed hundreds of studies, undertook many special analyses, and received valuable input from a survey of more than 100 practitioners in the field. The Study Group concentrated on the delinquent behavior of children ages 7 to 12 and on children’s persistently disruptive and precociously deviant behavior from the toddler years up to adolescence.

This concerted effort produced valuable insights into the nature of child delinquency. The Study Group found evidence that some young children engage in very serious antisocial behavior and that, in some cases, this behavior foreshadows early delinquency. The Study Group also identified several important risk factors that, when combined, may be related to the onset of early offending. To better understand the early origins of child delinquency, the Study Group emphasizes that research should focus on the preschool and elementary years, a time during which early interventions can be implemented, before the accumulation of multiple offenses and the commission of serious offenses. The Study Group report concluded with a review of preventive and remedial interventions relevant to child delinquency.

The Child Delinquency Bulletin Series draws from the Study Group’s final report, which was completed in 2001 under grant number 95–JD–FX–0018 and subsequently published by Sage Publications as Child Delinquents: Development, Intervention, and Service Needs (edited by Rolf Loeber and David P. Farrington). OJJDP encourages parents, educators, and the juvenile justice community to use this information to address the needs of young offenders by planning and implementing more effective interventions.

Study Group Members

The Study Group on Very Young Offenders was chaired by Rolf Loeber and David P. Farrington. The initial members of the Study Group were Barbara J. Burns, John D. Coie, Darnell F. Hawkins, J. David Hawkins, James C. Howell, David Huizinga, Kate Keenan, David R. Offord, Howard N. Snyder, Terence P. Thornberry, and Gail A. Wasserman. Leena K. Augimeri, Brandon C. Welsh, and Janet K. Wiig later joined these members. Over the years, many additional practitioners from the field have contributed to this effort.

1 Index offenses include murder, robbery, rape, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny, auto theft, and arson.


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Child Delinquency: Early Intervention and Prevention Child Delinquency Bulletin • May 2003