Delinquent Development Among Early-Onset Offenders: Identifying and Characterizing Trajectories Based on Frequency Across Types of Offending (original) (raw)
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Examining Longitudinal Data of Juvenile Delinquents in Rock Hill, SC
2017
Examining factors that contribute to the initiation, continuation, and desistance of criminal activities is crucial in determining how the criminal justice system can be reformed in an effort to decrease recidivism rates, as well as halt the initiation of juveniles into the criminal realm in the first place. This study examined longitudinal data from the daily reports of the Rock Hill Police Department, as organized by the Crime Mapping Division. The study examines juvenile suspects between the ages of 10-17 during 2003-2007. Wave One looked at subjects ages 10-13 in 2003/2004. Wave Two looked at subjects ages 12-14 in 2005/2006, and Wave Three looked at subjects ages 15-17 in 2007/2008.Using the concepts of Criminal Careers and recidivism, the goal was to examine continuation or desistance of criminal behavior over six years. Indicators of race, gender, residence in gang areas, hotspots, as well as residence in a single dwelling or an apartment were used to predict continued crimin...
Recidivism in subgroups of serious juvenile offenders: Different profiles, different risks?
Criminal Behaviour and Mental Health, 2012
Background Research has shown that the treatment of juvenile offenders is most effective when it takes into account the possible risk factors for re-offending. It may be asked whether juvenile offenders can be treated as one homogeneous group, or, if they are divisible into subgroups, whether different risk factors are predictive of recidivism.
Serious youthful offenders are presented with a number of significant challenges when trying to make a successful transition from adolescence to adulthood. One of the biggest obstacles for these youth to overcome concerns their ability to desist from further antisocial behavior, and although an emerging body of research has documented important risk and protective factors associated with desistance, the importance of the neighborhoods within which these youth reside has been understudied. Guided by the larger neighborhood effects on crime literature, the current study examines the direct and indirect effects of concentrated disadvantage on youth reoffending among a sample of highly mobile, serious youthful offenders. We use data from Pathways to Desistance, a longitudinal study of serious youthful offenders (N = 1,354; 13.6% female; 41.4% African American, 33.5% Hispanic, 20.2% White), matched up with 2000 Census data on neighborhood conditions for youth’s main residence location during waves 7 and 8 of the study. These waves represent the time period in which youth are navigating the transition to adulthood (aged 18 to 22; average age = 20). We estimate structural equation models to determine direct effects of concentrated disadvantage on youth reoffending and also to examine the possible indirect effects working through individual-level mechanisms as specified by theoretical perspectives including social control (e.g., unsupervised peer activities), strain (e.g., exposure to violence), and learning (e.g., exposure to antisocial peers). Additionally, we estimate models that take into account the impact that a change in neighborhood conditions may have on the behavior of youth who move to new residences during the study period. Our results show that concentrated disadvantage is indirectly associated with youth reoffending primarily through its association with exposure to deviant peers. Taking into account youth mobility during the study period produced an additional indirect pathway by which concentrated disadvantage is associated with goal blockage (i.e., the gap between belief in conventional goals and perceived potential to reach those goals), which was then associated with exposure to deviant peers and indirectly, reoffending behavior. We conclude that the neighborhood effects literature offers a promising framework for continued research on understanding the successful transition to adulthood by serious youthful offenders.
Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 2010
This study examined the effects of neighborhood context on juvenile recidivism to determine if neighborhoods influence the likelihood of reoffending. Although a large body of literature exists regarding the impact of environmental factors on delinquency, very little is known about the effects of these factors on juvenile recidivism. The sample analyzed includes 7,061 delinquent male juveniles committed to community-based programs in Philadelphia, of which 74% are Black, 13% Hispanic, and 11% White. Since sample youths were nested in neighborhoods, a hierarchical generalized linear model was employed to predict recidivism across three general categories of recidivism offenses: drug, violent, and property. Results indicate that predictors vary across the types of offenses and that drug offending differs from property and violent offending. Neighborhood-level factors were found to influence drug offense recidivism, but were not significant predictors of violent offenses, property offenses, or an aggregated recidivism measure, despite contrary expectations. Implications stemming from the finding that neighborhood context influences only juvenile drug recidivism are discussed.
Victims & offenders, 2016
The relationship between victimization and offending has been shown consistently across different samples, settings, and crime types. This study uses data from the Pathways to Desistance Study to examine dual trajectories of offending between the ages of 15 and 24 in a sample of male felony offenders. The dual trajectory models demonstrate substantial convergence in victimization and offending. And while there are sizable numbers of youth who continue to be victimized, but desist or decrease in their offending behaviors, very few youth continue to offend in the absence of Footnotes 1. The Baskin and Sommers study differs in several important ways from the current study. First, they used the recall period/time to develop the trajectories, while the current study utilizes age. Second, that study utilizes baseline covariate (with some cumulative averages) while the current study utilizes time varying covariates. Third, the selection of covariates is different. While the victim/ offender overlap is briefly mentioned, their paper was framed as an examination of the role of exposure to violence on offending trajectories over time, leading to a different selection of covariates. 2. The perceptual measure of neighborhood conditions was selected over a composite measure of neighborhood disadvantage derived from census data because the census areas do not align well with what respondents view as their neighborhood. The perceptual indicator was considered to be a better measure of what the participants experience at a neighborhood level. Correlations between the perceptual measure of neighborhood conditions and the census-derived neighborhood disadvantage measure were moderate at each wave of data collection. 3. This analysis was a bit different than others conducted for this paper. All of the predictor variables remain the same, but there were problems with the estimates of the standard errors. A cross-tabulation between three of the predictor variables (i.e., selling drugs, carrying a gun, and gang involvement) and the dichotomous dependent variable (0 =Low Decreasing ETV/Low SRO, 1 = High ETV/ Persisting SRO) revealed that there were some cell-size issues (i.e., there were cells with little to no people) in the initial analyses. Our next step was to dichotomize each of these variables as 0 = top 25% of the proportions and 1 = bottom 75% of the proportions. Although some significant results emerged here, and in the hypothesized direction, the standard errors and odds ratios are still unstable and should be interpreted with some caution.
The Prediction of Criminal Recidivism in Juveniles
2004
368 CRIMINAL JUSTICE AND BEHAVIOR 1998, accounted for 18% of all persons arrested in 1998, and are among the fastest growing groups of offenders (FBI, 1998). The per-centage of offenses committed by children and adolescents increased by 24% from 1989 to 1998, ...
Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 1991
bstract-Which characteristics of violent youth predict adult arrest for property crimes (e.g. burglary), and for personal crimes (e.g. assault)? We addressed this question by focusing on a group of particularly violent and assaultive boys. Separate logistic regression analyses were conducted to predict property and personal crime arrests as a function of adolescent psychiatric diagnosis, behavior problem history, race and IQ. Property crime arrest was predicted by an adolescent history of property offenses, conduct disorder diagnosis, and race (more arrests among non-whites than whites). Personal crime arrest was predicted by adolescent history of property offenses and adolescent history of substance abuse.
Measuring long term individual trajectories of offending using multiple methods
2009
Criminal career researchers and developmental criminologists have identified describing individual trajectories of offending over time as a key research question. In response, recently various statistical methods have been developed and used to describe individual offending patterns over the life-course. Two approaches that are prominent in the current literature are standard growth curve modeling (GCM) and group-based trajectory models (GTM). The goal of this paper is to explore ways in which these different models with different sets of assumptions, do in fact lead to different outcomes on individual trajectories. Using a particularly rich dataset, the criminal career and life-course study, we estimate a unique trajectory for each individual in the sample using the GCM and GTM. We also estimate separate trajectories for each individual directly using the long time series. We then compare these three separate trajectories for each individual. We find that the average trajectories obtained from the different approaches match each other. However, for any given individual, these approaches tell very different stories. For example, each method identifies a rather different set of individuals as desistors. This comparison highlights the strengths and weaknesses of each approach, and more broadly, it reveals the uncertainty involved with measuring long term patterns of change in latent propensity to commit crimes.
Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology, 2018
There have been few efforts to conceptually and empirically distinguish persistent and chronic offenders, despite the prominence of these concepts in the criminological literature. Research has not yet examined if different childhood risk factors are associated with offenders who have the longest criminal careers (persistent offenders), commit the most offences (chronic offenders), or both (persistent–chronic offenders). We address this gap using data from the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development. Poverty, poor school attainment, and family stress had a pervasive impact on all forms of offending in correlational analyses. Longer criminal career durations were associated with fewer childhood risk factors than was the case for chronic offenders. Chronic offenders were significantly more likely than persistent offenders to experience many environmental risks in childhood. When controlling for all other risk factors, hyperactivity and parental separation uniquely predicted persiste...