Delinquency

　Delinquency is a legal concept referring to wide range of behaviors young people engage in that are against the law, such as shoplifting, selling drugs, or vandalism. Delinquency also encompasses status offenses: acts that are illegal only for young people, such as running away from home and school truancy. Similar behavior is described in psychopathology as antisocial: "a spectrum of behavior usually marked by aggression but representing transgressions against societal norm."[4] The distinction between the legal and psychopathological definitions of antisocial behavior is not clear-cut, and there is considerable overlap between some psychiatric diagnoses-particularly conduct disorder-and delinquency.[5] Because much of the behavior in question is similar, we will consider research on the development of both delinquency and antisocial behavior. In addition, the focus is on precursors of patterns of behavior because many individual antisocial and delinquent acts are quite common. Although delinquency is a legal concept, most current studies of the etiology of delinquency focus on self-reported delinquency rather than official delinquency because a much broader range of information about causal influences is available with a wider relevance to intervention. [6] Particularly, we draw on these more recent studies because they tend to employ large data sets and control for relevant variables such as poverty, gender, and race.

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