Abstract
The purpose of this study is to identify the factors of reoffending by male juvenile delinquents through an analysis of the official police records provided by a prefectural police headquarters near Tokyo. The analysis is based on the records of 1433 delinquent boys who were born within a one-year period between October 1987 and September 1988 and were first arrested during their junior high school days. Cox proportional hazards models were applied to the data. The main findings are as follows: (1)Thirty-eight percent of the subjects were rearrested by the time they reached the age of 20; (2)the lower the age at the time of the first arrest, the stronger was its effect on reoffbnding; (3)the problems in their parents' attitude and the broken home situation they faced were some of the factors of their reoffending; and (4)school maladjustment also contributed to reoffending. Those who faced school maladjustment at the time of their first arrest had a high tendency to commit a second offense at any time, and not just during their junior high school days.
