Adolescence-limited Offenders Research Articles

Education and social care predictors of offending trajectories: A UK administrative data linkage study

ObjectivesThe age-crime curve indicates that criminal behaviour peaks in adolescence and decreases in adulthood, but longitudinal studies suggest that this curve conceals distinct patterns of (re)-offending or trajectories. Some trajectories (e.g., life course persistent offenders) are reported to have distinct risk factors and more negative outcomes than others (e.g., adolescent limited offenders).
 MethodsThe current study had two main objectives: (1) To use UK administrative crime data to identify trajectories of (re)-offending; and (2) To prospectively identify (re)-offending trajectories using longitudinal administrative education and social care data. This project uses linked UK administrative data containing the anonymised education and social care records for individuals born between September 1985 and August 1999, which have been linked to later official crime records up to the end of 2017. To identify offending trajectories, we used information on offence type, age of first conviction/caution, age of last recorded conviction/caution and offending history at three age points (Juvenile: 10-17 years; Young adult: 18-20 years; Adult: 21-32 years).
 ResultsLatent Class Analyses with and without ‘Gender’ and ‘Ever served a custodial sentence’ as covariates was conducted to identify trajectories of (re)-offending. We are currently developing statistical models to see if we can use prospective longitudinal education and social care factors to discriminate between these trajectories. In my talk, I will share findings on the offending trajectories identified and present some early results on the key education and social care drivers of the offending trajectories.
 ConclusionFindings from this study has the potential to provide deeper insights into how these education and social care factors might affect (re)-offending patterns. This could inform education, social care and criminal justice system responses to offending behaviours which seek to reduce offending and its associated social and economic costs.

Education and social care predictors of offending trajectories: A UK administrative data linkage study.

ObjectivesTotal annual costs of crime in England and Wales is estimated at £50bn.The age-crime curve indicates that criminal behavioural peaks in adolescence and decreases in adulthood. Life-course persistent offenders begin to behave antisocially early in childhood and continue this behaviour into adulthood. By contrast, adolescent-limited offenders exhibit most of their antisocial behaviour during adolescence, with a minority continuing to offend into adulthood. However, evidence suggests that this curve conceals distinct developmental trajectories. Prospective cohort study data has highlighted distinct risk factors for these offending trajectories, but this research is limited because of small sample sizes for disadvantaged groups, selection bias and infrequency of data collection.
 ApproachThe current study began in February 2022 and is one of the first to use UK linked national crime and education records. The aim is to: (1) establish the offending trajectories of individuals between the ages of 10 and 32 years following their first recorded conviction or caution using national crime records; and (2) develop prediction models of these offending trajectories using administrative education and social care data.
 ResultsIn my talk, I will share findings on the offending trajectories identified and present some early results on the key education and social care drivers of the offending trajectories.
 ConclusionsFindings from the project have the potential to identify previously unknown, or confirm lesser known, offending trajectories using real world data based on the UK population. It may also lead to the detection of previously unknown risk or protective factors for offending, which has implications for early intervention and could help inform criminal justice system responses to early antisocial behaviour.

Self-reported and general practitioner recorded indicators of lifetime health up to age 48 according to offender type in the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development.

Previous research has suggested that people with a history of offending have worse health compared to non-offenders, but it is less clear whether all types of offenders are at similar health risks. In a New Zealand birthcohort study, Moffitt evidenced three main offending trajectories-life-course-persistent (LCP), adolescence-limited (AL) and late-onset (LO) offending, subsequently confirmed in other substantial longitudinal studies. Our aim was to explore the relationship between these offending trajectories and both self-reported (SR) and general practitioner (GP) (primary care) recorded health indicators. Self-reported medical data at age 48 were obtained for 394 men followed since age 8years in the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development. In addition, medical records were obtained from GPs for 264 of them. Health indicators from both sources were compared between each of the three established trajectories of offenders across the life course-LCP, AL, LO and the non-offenders. LCP offenders were found to have over twice the likelihood of disabling medical conditions according to both self-report and GP records. They were also more likely to have GP records indicating mental health problems and treatment for them. According to GP records alone, the LO offenders were also more likely to have mental health problems. The health of AL offenders appeared to be no different from that of the crime-free controls. Our findings add weight to the growing evidence that LCP offending and offending that only occurs relatively late in life are likely to be the indicators of generally unhealthy and disrupted lives. This suggests that if lifestyle is to change for the better, interventions are likely to be needed for health as well as antisocial behaviour.

Sociodemographic Characteristics, Adverse Childhood Experiences, and Substance Use and Psychiatric Disorders Among Adolescent-Limited, Adult-Onset, Life-Course-Persistent Offenders and Nonoffenders in a General Population Survey

This study compared sociodemographic characteristics, adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), and substance use and psychiatric disorders between adolescent-limited (AL), adult-onset (AO), life-course-persistent (LP) and nonoffender (NO) groups using a large U.S. general population survey. The odds of experiencing several ACEs were greater among each offender group relative to NOs. LP offenders experience more ACEs than AL and AO offenders. Each offender group generally experienced greater substance use and psychopathology than NOs, whereas LP offenders experienced more substance use and psychopathology than AO and AL offenders. The results of this study identified several sociodemographic factors, ACEs, and types of psychopathology that differentiate AL, AO, LP, and NO offenders that can help inform prevention and intervention strategies designed to prevent offending and shorten criminal careers.

Childhood Risk Factors for Self-Reported Versus Official Life-Course-Persistent, Adolescence-Limited, and Late-Onset Offending

There has been no prior research comparing risk factors for categories of convicted individuals (C-types: life-course-persistent; adolescence-limited; late-onset) compared with the corresponding categories of individuals who self-reported offending (SR-types). This article examines the extent to which these convicted and self-reported categories of individuals overlap, and explores childhood risk factors that predict categories of C-types and SR-types. Criminal career information about individuals involved in the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development (CSDD) is used; 25 childhood factors were analyzed. C-types and SR-types were more problematic than both official and SR nonoffenders. Life-course persisters, adolescence-limited offenders, and nonoffenders overlapped in official records and self-reports, but late-onset offenders did not. C-types were significantly similar to SR-types in childhood risk factors; only a few differences were found. The differences between C-types and SR-types might be better conceptualized as quantitative rather than qualitative. Implications for prevention and intervention are discussed.

Criminal Offending and Mortality over the Full Life-Course: A 70-Year Follow-up of the Cambridge–Somerville Youth Study

To investigate the relationship between criminal offending and mortality over the full life-course of treatment group participants in the Cambridge–Somerville Youth Study (CSYS). The CSYS is a delinquency prevention experiment and prospective longitudinal survey of the development of offending. Begun in 1939, the study involves 506 at-risk boys, ages 5–13 years (mean birth year = 1928), from Cambridge and Somerville, Massachusetts. Following the analytic strategy of Joan McCord, participants are drawn from the study’s longitudinal arm (N = 253). Data include court convictions of criminal offenses collected during middle age (mean = 47) and death records collected during old age (up to age 89). Death records were collected for 216 participants or 85.4% of the sample. Life-course persistent offenders experience earlier mortality compared to non-offenders (by about 7 years) and adolescent-limited offenders (by about 8 years). While life-course persistent offenders are not more likely to die early (< 40 years) compared to other trajectory groups, they are more likely to experience premature mortality from late middle age into old age. Life-course persistent offenders are also more likely to experience unnatural deaths, with alcoholism confounding the relationship. That group differences in mortality risk did not emerge until age 55 (while offending is in decline) suggests that the relationship between offending and mortality is not direct and may be spurious. Knowledge about the relationship between criminal offending and mortality can be greatly improved by following participants into old age.

Depression and anxiety outcomes of offending trajectories: A systematic review of prospective longitudinal studies

BackgroundEarlier research has studied different typologies of offending (e.g., adolescence-limited, late-onset, life-course-persistent), but little is known about the mental health problems of different offender groups. ObjectivesThis paper presents a comprehensive review of the literature on the link between developmental trajectories of offending and adult mental health outcomes (i.e., anxiety and/or depression). MethodsA meta-analysis was carried out to synthesize information on different offender types and associated adult mental health problems. Analyses were based on data from prospective longitudinal studies. ResultsA total of 158 reports relating to 53 longitudinal studies were screened. Twenty-one reports were included in the systematic review and nine reports were included in the meta-analysis. Compared to non-offenders, the odds for mental health problems were nearly three-times higher for life-course-persistent offenders (OR = 2.72; CI: 2.18 to 3.40) and almost twice as high for late-onset offenders (OR = 1.70; CI: 1.37 to 2.12). Adolescence-limited offenders suffered the least mental health problems (OR = 1.41; CI: 1.16 to 1.71). ConclusionsDifferent offender groups face varying probabilities of mental health problems. Implications for policy and practice are discussed. More research needs to empirically investigate how and when poor mental health is related to chronic and persistent offending.

The Economic Maturity Gap Encourages Continuity in Offending

In the study of criminal careers, factors that predict continuity in offending are of importance to both theory and policy. One recently advanced hypothesis is Moffitt’s “economic maturity gap,” which argues that some adolescence-limited offenders may be mired in a poor economic situation. As only one study to date has examined this hypothesis, the current study seeks to extend this line of research by assessing the relationship of the economic maturity gap on later offending. Using data from the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development, three distinct operationalizations of the economic maturity gap are used to predict continued offending into mid-adulthood. Findings support the hypothesis that adolescence-limited males who experience this gap in late adolescence are more likely to continue offending into adulthood. Experiencing poor economic circumstances helps to maintain offending into mid-adulthood.

Systematic review of early risk factors for life-course-persistent, adolescence-limited, and late-onset offenders in prospective longitudinal studies.

This paper builds on our previous systematic review of prospective longitudinal studies and examines the early risk factors associated with life-course persistent offending (LCP), adolescence-limited (AL) and late-onset (LO) offending. Out of the 55 prospective longitudinal studies which theoretically could possess the relevant information, only four provided information about risk factors associated with the different offending types. An additional three provided data so that relevant analyses could be conducted. The results suggested that there was little evidence that specific early risk factors were associated with specific offending types. There was also limited evidence that specific risk factors predicted specific offending types when criminal career duration was included in the definitions of LCP, AL, and LO offending. However, LCP offenders tended to have a greater number of risk factors, and the magnitude of these was somewhat greater than for AL offenders, who in turn tended to have more risk factors (and of a greater magnitude) than LO offenders. LCP and AL offenders may differ more in degree (in the number and magnitude of risk factors) than in kind (in the specific risk factors that are predictive). Importantly, as the potential criminal career duration was increased in defining the offending types, those with longer careers tended to have more risk factors, but, LCP and AL offenders were not predicted by different risk factors. Much more research is needed on risk factors for offending types defined according to criminal career durations.

Prevalence of life-course-persistent, adolescence-limited, and late-onset offenders: A systematic review of prospective longitudinal studies

Little is known about the prevalence, frequency, onset, and criminal career duration of life-course-persistent offenders (LCP), compared to adolescence-limited (AL) and late-onset offenders (LO), despite the importance of these categories in criminology. This article is the first to use a systematic approach to identify the prospective longitudinal studies which could possess relevant information and to summarize the outputs of these studies. The principal investigators of these studies were also contacted to assist in identifying relevant data. Overall, 55 prospective longitudinal studies were identified; of these 14 had produced information on the prevalence of the various offending types. In seven additional studies, data was made available to explore criminal career parameters of the various offending types. The results showed that the estimates of the prevalence of LCP, AL, and LO offending varied considerably, and that few studies include criminal career duration in their definitions of LCP offenders. Surprisingly, the average ages of onset for LCP and Al offenders were similar. Much more research on LCP, AL, and LO offenders, which includes a consideration of criminal career duration, is desperately needed.

Moffitt’s Developmental Taxonomy and Gang Membership

Moffitt’s taxonomy remains an influential theoretical framework within criminology. Despite much empirical scrutiny, comparatively less time has been spent testing the snares component of Moffitt’s work. Specifically, are there factors that might engender continued criminal involvement for individuals otherwise likely to desist? The current study tested whether gang membership increased the odds of contact with the justice system for each of the offender groups specified in Moffitt’s original developmental taxonomy. Our findings provided little evidence that gang membership increased the odds of either adolescence-limited or life-course persistent offenders being processed through the criminal justice system. Moving forward, scholars may wish to shift attention to alternative variables—beyond gang membership—when testing the snares hypothesis.

Desisting from Crime in Emerging Adulthood

Objectives:Test whether Moffitt’s theory of adolescence-limited offenders, which contends that as young people enter adult roles they exit the “maturity gap” of adolescence and desist from crime, still applies given the changed nature of the early adult years. Examine whether spending time in adult roles remains a driver of desistance, and whether today’s emerging adults are at risk of experiencing a maturity gap between how adult they feel and the reality of their social situation.Methods:Using longitudinal data from a Dutch general population sample aged 18 to 24 years, fixed-effects models were run examining the effect of within-person changes in time spent in adult roles on self-reported delinquency and moderation of this effect by feelings of adultness.Results:The more time spent in adult roles, the less delinquency respondents consequently reported. This effect was moderated: When spending more time in adult roles and feeling more adult, higher delinquency was reported than when spending more time in adult roles and feeling less adult.Conclusions:Today’s emerging adults desist from delinquency in response to taking on adult roles. Possible interpretations for the unexpected qualification of this conclusion are discussed, as well as limitations such as the simplicity of our feeling adult measure.

Juvenile Offending and Crime in Early Adulthood: A Large Sample Analysis

Using large sample archival data from the state of South Carolina’s juvenile justice agency and other state agencies, we examined the background, early experiential and delinquency-related variables predicting young adult (ages 17–30 years) offending among juvenile offenders. We also examined characteristics of juvenile offenders who committed only a single misdemeanor offense, compared to non-juvenile offenders. Finally, we examined the variables that accounted for group differences in persistence of juvenile offending. Early adverse experiences including family-related adversities, mental health problems, identification as having school-related disabilities and juvenile recidivism accounted for more than 20 % of the variance in adult offending. Cox proportional hazards analysis revealed several time-dependent covariates including gender, age at first offense and repeat versus one time offending. Contrary to the view that the one time, misdemeanor level juvenile offending represents only minor departure from normative adolescent behavior, we found that this group of offenders differed significantly from non-delinquents on every category of risk for adult offending and also were more likely than non-delinquents to commit felonies as adults. Finally, in comparing adolescence-limited offenders with life-course persistent offenders, we accounted for more than 50 % of the variance in criminal outcomes on the basis of measures of background, early adversity, psychological characteristics and age of first juvenile arrest or referral.

Aggressive delinquency among north American indigenous adolescents: Trajectories and predictors.

Aggressive delinquency is a salient social problem for many North American Indigenous (American Indian, Canadian First Nations) communities, and can have deleterious consequences later in life. Yet there is a paucity of research on Indigenous delinquency. Group-based trajectory modeling is used to prospectively examine trajectories of aggressive delinquency over the course of adolescence using data from 646 Indigenous adolescents from a single culture, spanning the ages of 10-19. Five aggression trajectory groups were identified, characterized by different levels and ages of onset and desistence: non-offenders (22.1%), moderate desistors (19.9%), adolescent-limited offenders (22.2%), high desistors (16.7%), and chronic offenders (19.2%). Using the social development model of antisocial behavior, we selected relevant risk and protective factors predicted to discriminate among those most and least likely to engage in more aggressive behavior. Higher levels of risk (i.e., parent rejection, delinquent peers, substance use, and early dating) in early adolescence were associated with being in the two groups with the highest levels of aggressive delinquency. Positive school adjustment, the only significant protective factor, was associated with being in the lowest aggression trajectory groups. The results provide important information that could be used in developing prevention and intervention programs, particularly regarding vulnerable ages as well as malleable risk factors. Identifying those youth most at risk of engaging in higher levels of aggression may be key to preventing delinquency and reducing the over-representation of Indigenous youth in the justice system.

Can they recover? An assessment of adult adjustment problems among males in the abstainer, recovery, life-course persistent, and adolescence-limited pathways followed up to age 56 in the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development.

Much research has examined Moffitt's developmental taxonomy, focusing almost exclusively on the distinction between life-course persistent and adolescence-limited offenders. Of interest, a handful of studies have identified a group of individuals whose early childhood years were marked by extensive antisocial behavior but who seemed to recover and desist (at least from severe offending) in adolescence and early adulthood. We use data from the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development to examine the adult adjustment outcomes of different groups of offenders, including a recoveries group, in late middle adulthood, offering the most comprehensive investigation of this particular group to date. Findings indicate that abstainers comprise the largest group of males followed by adolescence-limited offenders, recoveries, and life-course persistent offenders. Furthermore, the results reveal that a host of adult adjustment problems measured at ages 32 and 48 in a number of life-course domains are differentially distributed across these four offender groups. In addition, the recoveries and life-course persistent offenders often show the greatest number of adult adjustment problems relative to the adolescence-limited offenders and abstainers.

Heavy drinking ensnares adolescents into crime in early adulthood

PurposeThis study offers a partial test of Moffitt’s (1993) hypothesis that some adolescent-limited offenders may be ensnared by the consequences of their delinquency in a way that continues their offending. MethodsCambridge Study in Delinquent Development data is used along with a multi-step analytic procedure including (a) group-based trajectory modeling to identify variability in offending and (b) propensity score matching to estimate the impact of one specific snare, heavy drinking, on criminal convictions occurring in early adulthood. ResultsResults provide some support for Moffitt’s hypothesis; adolescent-limited offenders who engaged in heavy drinking at age 18 were more likely to be convicted during early adulthood. ConclusionsThis analysis offered a stronger test of the snares hypothesis by first, separating the data into groups of offenders who followed similar offending patterns, and second, matching the cases on developmental and psychosocial characteristics in order to assess the snare’s role on later offending. Findings call attention to the effect of problem adolescent behavior on later adult outcomes.

A national population based examination of the association between age-versatility trajectories and recidivism rates

PurposeTo compare theoretical explanations of the age-versatility curve including the hypotheses of: self-control theory stating that versatility is followed by specialization; taxonomic theory stating that adolescent-limited offenders are specialists and life-course offenders are versatile and orthogenetic theory stating that specialization and versatility are present in a large number of offender groups. MethodsThese explanations were tested with Israeli national population-based data on all first and subsequent juvenile offenders (n=17,176) with 248,114 registered police contacts from 1996 to 2008. ResultsSemi-parametric group-based modeling identified two trajectory-groups that characterized the age-versatility curve of police contacts before first conviction. The trajectory-groups were labeled as versatility (n=2,447; 14.2%), and specialization (n=14,729; 85.8%). After controlling for 19 documented demographic, familial, and criminogenic risk factors, Cox regression showed that juvenile offenders in the versatility group were at increased risk of recidivism compared to offenders in the specialization group. ConclusionsThese results partially adhere with taxonomic theory than the remaining theories and indicate that assuming a trajectory of elevated pre-conviction versatility increases the risk of recidivism.

The Moffittization of Criminology

One of the most important theoretical developments of the last 20 years is Moffitt's (1993) developmental taxonomy, which articulates a three-part typology of individuals. Abstainers are persons who do not engage in antisocial behavior. Adolescence- limited offenders are persons who engage in deviance briefly during their adolescence and life-course-persistent offenders were those who display antisocial conduct across life. In the taxonomy, abstainers and life-course-persistent offenders are pathological in statistical terms and represent about 5% to 10% of a population. Conversely, adolescence-limited offenders are normative in statistical terms and represent the remain- der of a population. The taxonomy can be best understood as a heuristic device to understand highly prosocial individuals, mostly prosocial individuals who dabble in antisocial conduct in various ways, and extremely antisocial individuals who rarely dabble in prosocial conduct. Although the developmental taxonomy has received extensive empirical attention, it is at times taken too literally and held to a pure typological argument that the theory frankly never made (see Moffitt, 2007, on this critique). The basic premise of the taxonomy has been supported by large-scale epidemiological studies (Vaughn, DeLisi, et al., 2011; Vaughn, Fu, et al., 2011), and it is understood that within normative and pathological types of offenders, there is natural variance...

A Partial Test of Moffitt’s Developmental Taxonomy: Examining the Role of Genetic Risk

A developing line of research indicates that behavioral patterns associated with the typologies identified in Moffitt’s developmental taxonomy may be influenced by genetic factors. Based on these findings, the current study examines whether Moffitt’s etiological explanations of life-course persistent offenders, adolescence-limited offenders, and abstainers have merit after controlling for genetic influences. To do so, a sample of twins drawn from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health were examined. The results revealed that genetic influences significantly predicted entry into each of the typologies identified by Moffitt even after controlling for theoretically relevant factors. Implications of the findings and suggestions for future research are discussed.

Parent‐child relationships of boys in different offending trajectories: a developmental perspective

This study tested the theoretical assumption that transformations of parent-child relationships in late childhood and adolescence would differ for boys following different offending trajectories. Using longitudinal multiinformant data of 503 boys (ages 7-19), we conducted Growth Mixture Modeling to extract offending trajectories. Developmental changes in child reports of parent-child joint activities and relationship quality were examined using Latent Growth Curves. Five offending trajectories were found: non-offenders, moderate childhood offenders, adolescent-limited offenders, serious childhood offenders, and serious persistent offenders. Non-offenders reported high and stable levels of relationship quality between age 10 and 16. Adolescent-limited offenders reported a similarly high relationship quality as non-offenders at ages 7 and 10, but a lower and decreasing relationship quality in adolescence. Compared with non-offenders, serious persistent offenders reported poorer parent-child relationship quality at all ages, and a decreasing relationship quality in adolescence. Serious persistent offenders and adolescent-limited offenders reported similar levels and changes in parent-child relationship quality in adolescence. Although serious persistent offenders reported fewer joint activities at age 10 and 13 than non-offenders, a similar linear decrease in joint activities in early to middle adolescence was found for boys in each trajectory. Developmental changes in parent-child relationship quality differ for different types of offenders. This finding has scientific and practical implications.