On the number and shape of developmental/life-course violence, aggression, and delinquency trajectories: A state-of-the-art review

The Heterogeneity in the Development of Homotypic and Heterotypic Antisocial Behavior

“…With one exception, the inclusion of heterotypic as well homotypic forms of antisocial behavior made relatively little difference to the number, shape, or interpretation of identified trajectories. That is, like many other groups, we identified low, life-coursepersistent, and adolescent-limited groups [21,41]. We also identified a moderate declining group which is similar to the childhood-limited group identified in other studies [39,42], though the Add Health study did not have data extending back to early or middle childhood.…”

“…First, men, on average, engage in more antisocial behavior than women, and there has been a long tradition of studying men's antisocial behavior because of its significant cost to society [21,26,35,43]. Second, although Odgers et al [39] found support for measurement invariance of antisocial behavior across ages 6 to 26 years for males, they did not find such support for females.…”

“…Their behavior is motivated by the perception that stealing, cheating, rule-breaking, and violence will enable them to acquire desired goods and privileges typically reserved for adults. Although empirical tests of the taxonomy are more consistent with the existence of an adolescent-onset than an adolescent-limited group [6,39] and challenge etiological distinctions between life-course-persistent and adolescent-onset offenders [16], there is robust empirical support for distinct trajectories of antisocial behavior across the life course [21,41].…”

“…With advances in group-based modeling [31,32] which can model trajectories of antisocial behavior using longitudinal data, a large number of studies have tested Moffitt's taxonomic theory [21]. These studies have typically identified between 4 and 7 classes of antisocial behavior trajectories, including the life-course-persistent group, adolescent-limited group, and a low antisocial group.…”

Age and Crime

“…This strongly implies that the age-crime curve is not the same for individual offenders and thus not invariant. Piquero (2008) found that, in general, three or four groups are routinely identified (for an update, see Jennings & Reingle, 2012). This strongly implies that rather than the age-crime relationship being invariant, it varies even within the same sample.…”