Delinquent development in Dutch childhood arrestees: developmental trajectories, risk factors and co-morbidity with adverse outcomes during adolescence.

Heterogeneity of re-offending patterns was studied in a group of 287 male early onset offenders who were first arrested before age 12. By combining data on the frequency and severity of offending as registered by the police over a 5-year follow-up period, three delinquent trajectories were identified; low, escalating, and high level re-offenders. Predicting group membership by individual and environmental characteristics known to the police at the time of the first arrest proved difficult. Compared to low level re-offenders, escalators were older and more often came from disadvantaged neighborhoods. High level re-offenders were also older at onset, more often had a non-Western ethnic background, and initially committed more vandalism. Furthermore, at the first police encounter, the police reacted more severely towards those who later became high level re-offenders. Finally, high and escalating re-offenders more often had other adverse outcomes, such as criminal victimization and Child Welfare Agency involvement.

Relating psychiatric disorders, offender and offence characteristics in a sample of adolescent sex offenders and non-sex offenders.

INTRODUCTION: Several studies have paid attention to the relationship between psychiatric disorders and adolescent offending but few have distinguished different types of offenders, especially within the category of youngsters who have committed sex offences. AIM: To test for relationships between psychiatric disorder and specific offence category among young male offenders. METHOD: Nationwide data were extracted from Dutch Forensic Psychiatric Services (FPD) files for five groups of offenders, as defined by their index offence: 308 violent sex offenders; 134 non-violent sex-offenders; 270 sex offenders against children; 3148 violent offenders and 1620 offenders charged with any crime other than interpersonal body contact crimes. They were compared on individual characteristics and psychiatric diagnoses according to DSM-IV criteria. Having a diagnosis of a paraphilia alone was exclusively associated with sex offending, therefore all such youths were excluded from further analyses. The OVERALS technique was used to explore possible relationships between offence, psychiatric diagnoses, sociodemographic and individual characteristics among the remaining young men for whom all pertinent data were available (n = 1894). RESULTS: Sex offenders constituted a distinct group of juvenile delinquents. Developmental disorders were more common among non-violent sex offenders and child molesters. Violent offences were more typical of delinquents from immigrant backgrounds. CONCLUSION: Group differences in types of psychiatric diagnoses may reflect differences in aetiological factors for the various types of sexual and other delinquent behaviour, and this would be worthy of further study.