The overt pathway begins with incidences of minor aggression (bullying, annoying others, bossing others around) and progresses to fighting (physical fights, verbal fights, gang activity) and finally progresses to violent crime (rape, attack). The pathway begins with a relatively large number of children. At each successive level progressively fewer children engage in that form of behavior. Final violent behavior represents only a small fraction of the initial number of children who engaged in earlier minor aggression.
Similar to the overt pathway the number of children who reach the final stage of this developmental progression is quite small. The covert pathway results in delinquent rather than violent behaviors. The child who follows this developmental progression will first engage in minor covert behaviors (shoplifting, lying) and progress to property damage (vandalism, firesetting, defacing buildings or objects with graffiti), and finally engage in moderate to serious delinquency (fraud, burglary theft).
An authority pathway prior to age 12 consists of a sequence of stubborn behavior followed by disobedience (noncompliance, defiance, passive aggression), and results in authority avoidance (truancy, running away, violating curfew, defiance of parental rules).