Recidivism in a Sample of Serious Adolescent Offenders.

OBJECTIVES: A broad research literature in criminology documents key aspects of how criminal offending develops and changes over the life span. We contribute to this literature by showcasing methods that are useful for studying medium-term patterns of subsequent criminal justice system involvement among a sample of serious adolescent offenders making the transition to early adulthood. METHODS: Our approach relies on 7 years of post-enrollment follow-up from the Pathways to Desistance Study. Each person in the study was adjudicated delinquent for or convicted of one or more relatively serious offenses during adolescence. Their local jurisdiction juvenile court petition records and their adult FBI arrest records were systematically searched. RESULTS: We estimate in-sample 7-year recidivism rates in the 75% to 80% range. Our analysis also provides recidivism rate estimates among different demographic groups within the sample. Extrapolated long-term recidivism rates are estimated to be on the order of 79% to 89%. CONCLUSIONS: The Pathways data suggest that recidivism rates of serious adolescent offenders are high and quite comparable to the rates estimated on other samples of serious offenders in the extant literature. Our analysis also reveals a pattern of heightened recidivism risk during the earliest months and years of the follow-up period followed by a steep decline.

Assessing the nature and mix of offences among serious adolescent offenders.

BACKGROUND: Much of the research on specialisation in offending tends to show that offending careers are marked by more versatile than specific criminal activity. One key limitation of this research has been that very few studies have used both official records and self-reports to study the longitudinal mix of offences. AIMS: This study uses longitudinal data to examine the mixture of offences during mid-adolescence and into early adulthood, a key transitionary period of the life course, using both self-reports and official records. METHOD: Data from 1354 serious adolescent offenders are used to study the mixture of offences over a 7-year period. RESULTS: The results point strongly to the conclusion that generality is typical and specialisation is exceptional.

Demographic Patterns of Cumulative Arrest Prevalence By Ages 18 and 23.

In this study, we examine race, sex, and self-reported arrest histories (excluding arrests for minor traffic violations) from the 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY; N = 7,335) for the period 1997 through 2008 covering cumulative arrest histories through ages 18 and 23. The analysis produces three key findings: (1) males have higher cumulative prevalence of arrest than females; and (2) there are important race differences in the probability of arrest for males but not for females. Assuming the missing cases are missing at random, about 30% of black males have experienced at least one arrest by age 18 (vs. about 22% for white males); by age 23 about 49% of black males have been arrested (vs. about 38% for white males). Earlier research using the NLSY showed that the risk of arrest by age 23 was 30%, with nonresponse bounds [25.3%, 41.4%]. This study indicates that the risk of arrest is not evenly distributed across the population. Future research should focus on the identification and management of collateral risks that often accompany arrest experiences.

Cumulative prevalence of arrest from ages 8 to 23 in a national sample.

OBJECTIVE: To estimate the cumulative proportion of youth who self-report having been arrested or taken into custody for illegal or delinquent offenses (excluding arrests for minor traffic violations) from ages 8 to 23 years. METHODS: Self-reported arrest history data (excluding arrests for minor traffic violations) from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (N = 7335) were examined from 1997 to 2008. RESULTS: By age 18, the in-sample cumulative arrest prevalence rate lies between 15.9% and 26.8%; at age 23, it lies between 25.3% and 41.4%. These bounds make no assumptions at all about missing cases. If we assume that the missing cases are at least as likely to have been arrested as the observed cases, the in-sample age-23 prevalence rate must lie between 30.2% and 41.4%. The greatest growth in the cumulative prevalence of arrest occurs during late adolescence and the period of early or emerging adulthood. CONCLUSIONS: Since the last nationally defensible estimate based on data from 1965, the cumulative prevalence of arrest for American youth (particularly in the period of late adolescence and early adulthood) has increased substantially. At a minimum, being arrested for criminal activity signifies increased risk of unhealthy lifestyle, violence involvement, and violent victimization. Incorporating this insight into regular clinical assessment could yield significant benefits for patients and the larger community.

Understanding the relationship between onset age and subsequent offending during adolescence.

This article examines the well-documented relationship between early initiation or onset of criminal behavior and a heightened risk of involvement in offending. Previous research examining this question conducted by Nagin and Farrington (Criminology 30:235-260, 1992a; Criminology 30:501-523, 1992b) used data from the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development and found that: (1) onset age was correlated with offending involvement; and (2) the correlation could be explained by stable individual differences in the propensity to offend rather than a causal effect of early onset age. In this study, similar analytic methods are applied to data from the Second Philadelphia Birth Cohort. This data set consists of all 13,160 males born in Philadelphia in 1958 who resided in the city continuously from ages 10 to 18, slightly more than half of whom were non-white. Information from each of the youths was collected from schools, juvenile justice agencies, other official sources and surveys. In a model that mimics previous analyses, we initially found that an early age of onset is associated with greater subsequent involvement in delinquent behavior. When unobserved criminal propensity was controlled, however, we found that a late rather than an early onset of delinquency was related to future offending. In finding a state dependent effect for age of onset, our findings are contrary to propensity theory in criminology. In finding that it is late rather early onset which puts youth at risk for future offending, our findings are contrary to developmental/life course theory. Our results are more compatible with traditional criminological theory that is friendly to state dependence processes, though they too have not to date articulated why a late onsetting of offending might be particularly criminogenic.

Using State Child Labor Laws to Identify the Causal Effect of Youth Employment on Deviant Behavior and Academic Achievement.

On the basis of prior research findings that employed youth, and especially intensively employed youth, have higher rates of delinquent behavior and lower academic achievement, scholars have called for limits on the maximum number of hours per week that teenagers are allowed to work. We use the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 to assess the claim that employment and work hours are causally related to adolescent problem behavior. We utilize a change model with age-graded child labor laws governing the number of hours per week allowed during the school year as instrumental variables. We find that these work laws lead to additional number of hours worked by youth, which then lead to increased high school dropout but decreased delinquency. Although counterintuitive, this result is consistent with existing evidence about the effect of employment on crime for adults and the impact of dropout on youth crime.

Assessing the Race-Crime and Ethnicity-Crime Relationship in a Sample of Serious Adolescent Delinquents.

Official record studies consistently show that Blacks exhibit higher levels of involvement in criminal offending than Whites do. Although self-report studies suggest somewhat lower levels of Black overrepresentation in criminal offending activity (especially with less serious forms of crime), there appears to be considerable evidence that Blacks are disproportionately involved in serious crime. Yet most of this evidence is based on data from broad cross-sections of the general population. To date, there is little evidence on which to base inferences about the relationship between race and criminal involvement within serious offender populations. In this article, the authors use both official record and self-report data on samples of serious adolescent offenders in Philadelphia and Phoenix to reach a better understanding of the relationship between race and criminal activity. The analysis suggests that consistent race differences of the kind normally seen in the criminological literature are not evident in our sample of serious offenders.

Assessing the offending activity of criminal domestic violence suspects: offense specialization, escalation, and de-escalation evidence from the Spouse Assault Replication Program.

OBJECTIVE: Over the past quarter century, intimate partner violence research has occupied an increasingly important position in the research agenda of criminology, public policy, and public health. Yet, a number of questions about the criminal careers of domestic violence offenders remain unresolved. This study attempts to determine (1) the extent to which criminal domestic violence offenders specialize in violence, and (2) whether the severity of an offender's attacks against the same victim increase, decrease, or stay about the same over time. METHODS: Data from the Spouse Assault Replication Program (SARP) are used to address two questions corresponding to different features of the criminal careers of domestic violence offenders. RESULTS: The specialization analysis reveals that the majority of domestic violence offenders with prior official criminal records have been involved in nonviolent forms of criminal behavior in addition to domestic violence. The escalation analysis identifies groups of escalators and de-escalators as well as individuals who engage in stable low-level aggression and stable high-level aggression. CONCLUSIONS: Few SARP domestic violence offenders have been specializing exclusively in violence. There is also a heterogeneous mix of offenders who escalate and de-escalate the severity of their attacks over the short-term follow-up periods. Few studies have presented data consistent with the present study's findings. A longitudinal analysis of the criminal careers of domestic violence offender subtypes is critical for future research.

THEORY AND RESEARCH ON DESISTANCE FROM ANTISOCIAL ACTIVITY AMONG SERIOUS ADOLESCENT OFFENDERS.

Improving juvenile court decision making requires information about how serious adolescent offenders desist from antisocial activity. A systematic research agenda on this topic requires consideration of several processes, including normative development in late adolescence, what constitutes desistance, and the factors likely to promote the end of involvement in antisocial behavior and successful adjustment in early adulthood. This article presents an overview of the major points to consider in pursuing this research agenda.

CRIMINAL CAREERS OF SERIOUS DELINQUENTS IN TWO CITIES.

Because different methods for studying criminal behavior all suffer from important limitations, it is useful to apply different methodologies to the same population whenever possible. In this analysis, we examine the relationships between self-report and official record-based measures of offending activity using populations of adolescent serious offenders in Phoenix, Arizona, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.