Delinquency Abstainers over the Life Course: A Test of Moffitt's Abstention Hypothesis.

Although most individuals engage in delinquent behavior at some point over the life course, a small percentage refrain from delinquency entirely. The purpose of this paper is to examine how delinquency abstainers differ from offenders over the life course. Using data from Waves 1-10 of the National Youth Survey Family Study (NYSFS) we test the ability of Moffitt's (1993) developmental taxonomy to differentiate abstainers from offenders based on measures of delinquent peer group bonding, involvement in prosocial activities, dating behavior, social isolation, family and school bonding, socioeconomic status, and demographic variables. In addition to comparing abstainers from all other offenders, we identify distinct offending trajectories using growth mixture modeling (GMM) to compare abstainers with different types of offenders (e.g., life-course persistent and adolescence-limited). Implications for theory and future research will be discussed. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]