Desistance from persistent serious delinquency in the transition to adulthood

Abstract

Many delinquent youth stop offending sometime in late adolescence or early adulthood. However, little is known about individual differences in desistance and which factors promote or inhibit desistance. In the current study, young males in the oldest sample of the Pittsburgh Youth Study were followed from ages 13 to 25. About one-third became persistent serious delinquents between ages 13 and 19. Out of that group, almost 40% desisted in serious offending between ages 20 and 25. Significantly more of the desisters, compared to the persisters in serious delinquency, had been employed or in school. Bivariate analyses demonstrated many predictors of desistance of serious delinquency in early adulthood in the domains of individual, family, and peer factors measured from early adolescence onward. Multiple regression analyses showed that the following promotive factors were associated with desistance: low physical punishment by parents in early adolescence and being employed or in school in early adulthood. The following risk factors were inversely associated with desistance during early adulthood: serious delinquency during late adolescence, hard drug use, gang membership, and positive perception of problem behavior in early adulthood. The article discusses the implications of promotive and risk factors for preventive interventions.

Problem coping skills, psychosocial adversities and mental health problems in children and adolescents as predictors of criminal outcomes in young adulthood

“…The present findings are in accordance with previous community-based studies underlining the role of externalizing psychopathology and substance abuse in adolescence as major predictors of criminal convictions in adulthood [8,10,15,16,22,29,36,39,44,51]. These studies also indicate that, besides criminal behaviours (e.g., stealing or firesetting), other externalizing problems without a direct relation to crime such as lying, temper tantrums, and swearing are also related to adult crimes.…”

“…Irrespective of differences in design and methodology, several population-based studies were able to consistently link child and adolescent conduct problems to later criminal outcomes in adulthood [4,8,10,15,16,22,29,36,39,44,51]. Another risk factor was substance abuse, with community-based studies reporting that early drug use, including alcohol use, were related to later criminal outcomes [5,10,21,51].…”

“…Another risk factor was substance abuse, with community-based studies reporting that early drug use, including alcohol use, were related to later criminal outcomes [5,10,21,51]. Additionally, the consumption of so-called hard drugs predicted persistent criminal offending behaviours even when controlling for other forms of conduct problems [10,51].…”

“…However, none of these methods will provide a complete picture of crime. In previous studies, self-reported delinquency questionnaires [8,14,16,29,36,39,51], police reports [22,44], official charges [10] or convictions [14,22,36] were used to measure criminal outcomes in adulthood. Few studies have reported both self-reported and official information on criminal behaviours [14,36].…”

“…Due to socioeconomic and cultural differences, psychosocial risk factors including SES, migration background, familial and other social stressors and child rearing styles may have a different impact in various countries. Given the findings of previous international studies, it was hypothesized that problematic alcohol use, drug abuse and externalizing mental health problems constitute universal risk factors for later criminal behaviour [4,8,10,15,16,22,29,36,39,44,51]. We also analysed the interaction between sex of the proband and other predictors and then tested an abbreviated 6 externalizing problem scale without the items indicating a specific relationship to criminal behaviours.…”