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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