The research I intend to carry out will look into the human capital investment and criminal behaviour of youths. This is a complex issue which has still not been thoroughly investigated because of the endogenous nature of the two phenomena in terms of individual decision making. The choice not to invest in education and commit offences are likely to stem from similar expectations of future labour market and life opportunities. This perception can arise because individuals have a high discount rate for the future and low aversion to risky activities. There is a large literature showing that crime is mainly committed by individuals with lower education and income. However there is a lack of evidence on the mechanism in why this comes about and especially how younger people’s future offending careers are affected by there ‘dropping out’ of formal schooling early. I have access through collaboration with Statistics Netherlands (CBS) to a unique database linking personal information of a large cohort of young people to their reported criminal activity. It contains details on for example education, behaviour, and peer groups, about the surveyed individual but also about their parent’s income, education and offending behaviour. This wealth of information should enable research which could shed light on why certain individual commit crimes and others don’t. The subjects I will investigate are the education-crime relationship, the importance of other risk factors such as peer effects and parental criminal capital, and the dynamics and persistence of youth offending. I will use cutting edge econometric methodologies to disentangle the endogenous nature of human capital investment and offending decisions. Results from such a study could have important implication to design education policies to prevent the onset of criminal careers of young individuals.