This volume focuses on the complex relation between offending and the transition from school to the workplace: how employment and education are related to breaking the law and getting in contact with the criminal justice system. The contributors report results from several large scale and sophisticated studies conducted in the Netherlands that gathered rich data on employment, education and criminal behaviour. Each of the studies focuses on a particular period during the life course and particular risk categories. Taken together, they contribute to our understanding of how getting out of school, getting into a job and doing illegal things are intertwined over the life-course, and how these relations differ with age and gender.

The background of this volume is our interest in the often-studied relation between offending and employment, or more generally, between offending and the transition from school to work, including dropping out, part-time work and joblessness. The available literature casts little doubt that employment and education are indeed related to less crime and offending. However, this relation is much more complex than it appears at first hand.

The volume is primarily aimed at researchers and students in the fields of criminology, sociology and economics. However, it may also be of use for non-academic professionals, in particular policy makers and practitioners in the field of criminal justice, probation/rehabilitation, and youth/schools.

This book has brought together a top-notch cast of contributors to explore the interconnections among delinquency, education, and employment. Through sophisticated data analysis and cutting-edge theoretical work, this book has the potential to make a significant contribution to what we know about how education and employment are linked to delinquency. Without a doubt, anyone seriously interested in understanding the development of delinquency needs to read this book and have it as a handy reference. Kevin Beaver, Florida State University, USA. This book greatly advances our knowledge about the transition from adolescence to adulthood and about relationships between school, work and offending. It contains very high quality research and should be of great interest to criminologists and social scientists all over the world. David P. Farrington, Emeritus Professor of Psychological Criminology and Leverhulme Trust Emeritus Fellow, Cambridge University, UK. This volume offers a very important contribution to the area of life course Criminology. It includes unique and sophisticated studies on the complex relation between offending and the transition from school to the workplace in the Netherlands. Paul Nieuwbeerta, Professor of Criminology, Leiden University, The Netherlands. This volume makes a sterling contribution to life course criminology. It has a clear advantage in using various and complex datasets that?cover different periods during the life course, thus providing?a?comprehensive understanding of the complex relation between offending and the transition from school to the workplace. Anders Nilsson, Professor of Criminology, Stockholm University, Sweden.