This book examines young people's involvement in crime (including crimes of violence, vandalism, shoplifting, burglary and car crime) as both victims and offenders.

Although adolescence is the time when involvement in crime peaks, few previous UK-based studies have attempted to provide a methodical and comprehensive understanding of adolescent offending on a city-wide basis. This book seeks a better understanding of adolescent crime by studying the relationship between individual characteristics (social bonds and morality and self-control) and lifestyles (as defined by delinquent peers, substance use and exposure to risky behaviour settings) and their joint influence on adolescent involvement in crime, against the backdrop of the juveniles' social context - taking into account family, school and neighbourhood influences.

The findings of this study suggest the existence of three main groups of adolescent offenders; propensity induced offenders, life-style dependent offenders and situationally limited offenders, groups of offenders having different causal backgrounds to their crime involvement, and who therefore may warrant different strategies for effective prevention.

This book examines young people's involvement in crime (including crimes of violence, vandalism, shoplifting, burglary and car crime) as victims and offenders. Although adolescence is the time when involvement in crime peaks, surprisingly there are few previous UK based studies that have attempted to provide a methodical and comprehensive understanding of adolescent offending on a citywide basis. Key explanatory factors have been examined for nearly 2000 young people in the city of Peterborough. This book combines a single city focus, large sample size and high response rates with an in-depth consideration of the explanatory factors involved, focusing particularly on the interaction between individual characteristics and lifestyle, and making use of sophisticated statistical analysis. from outdated positivist perspective that has focused on early childhood factors, introducing rather concepts such as peer-delinquency (gangs), hanging around in public spaces (anti-social behaviour) and substance use - which have been not only problematic in previous attempts at criminological theorizing but have also recently become central foci of Governmental policy initiatives. This book shows how these issues and factors can be incorporated sympathetically into a single framework that advances our understanding of criminal behaviour. It makes a highly significant contribution to the wide gaps in our knowledge of why young people offend, and will be essential reading for students, practitioners and policy makers.