Gender and Race in Juveniles' Pathways to Serious, Violent and Chronic Offending.

This paper analyzes the pathways into serious, violent and chronic offending across race and gender in a large sample of youth referred to the juvenile department in a metropolitan county in Texas. Building on the literature on gender-specific risk factors in offending, this study specifically analyzes the impact of abuse, mental health problems, running away, gang involvement and juvenile justice involvement for serious, violent and chronic offending in a group of deviant youth. The results indicate that mental health problems, running away, gang involvement and prior juvenile justice involvement are positively related to serious, violent and chronic offending for both male and female youth, while abuse appears to be unrelated to serious, violent, and chronic offending for both genders. However, the predictive power of these four risk factors varies across race and ethnicity within gender. Overall, the findings show that these risk factors better predict minority youths' serious, violent and chronic offending than white youths'. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]