A B S T R A C TScholars in the field of developmental criminology traditionally assign a major role to long-term risk factors such as inadequate parental supervision or poor school performance. Only recently has attention been paid to the effects of situational risk factors such as the presence of co-offenders and being drunk. Hardly any empirical research, however, integrates both long-term and short-term risk factors. We formulated hypotheses derived from the Integrated Cognitive Antisocial Potential theory (Farrington 2005) with regard to long-term and shortterm risk factors for serious delinquency, and tested these hypotheses using data from the WODC Youth Delinquency Survey (data sweep 2005) of 292 juvenile delinquents. The findings indicate that serious delinquency is related not only to (an accumulation of) long-term risk factors, but also to situational factors, such as lack of tangible guardians and having used substances (alcohol or drugs) prior to the offence. K E Y

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Recorded crime as an indicator of the integration of individuals of non-Western origin.In this article, we seek to find out to what extent the various ethnic groups residing in the Netherlands are (over)represented as suspects in the recorded crime statistics. This research reveals that even after correcting for a number of socioeconomic background variables, the probability of being suspected of an offence is still considerably greater for non-Western ethnic minority groups than for the autochthonous Dutch population. Particularly notable in the figures is the large overrepresentation of second-generation Moroccans and first-generation Antilleans. The data we used in this study are recorded crime statistics, which are based on the entire population and can be analysed at the individual level. These data certainly do not provide a complete description of crime in the Netherlands; a substantial ‘dark number’ remains. However, there are no hard indications that this dark number differs between the various ethnic groups residing in the Netherlands.

Sexual offenses are often part of a larger criminal career also encompassing nonsexual crimes. However, most sexual offending typologies focus on an individual’s most recent sexual offense. We compare data from Belgian and Dutch national conviction cohorts and use latent class analysis to distinguish groups of individuals based on their history of sexual and nonsexual offenses, considering continuity and variety. The resulting classification is compared between individuals convicted of sexual offenses and individuals convicted of nonsexual offenses. Results show that four latent classes can be distinguished based on continuity and variety in criminal histories of individuals convicted of sexual offenses, and that some of these classes resemble those distinguished among individuals convicted of nonsexual offenses. We find limited overlap between these latent classes and typologies based solely on the index offense. Results show marked similarities across countries. These results challenge theories of sexual offending to incorporate patterns of nonsexual offending.