Predicting Criminality? Risk Factors, Neighbourhood Influence and Desistance

Abstract

Using qualitative biographical data from a longitudinal study of youth transitions, criminal careers and desistance, this paper casts doubt on the veracity and predictive power of risk assessment devices such as Asset and OASys. These devices, and the research on which they are based, suggest that earlier and current childhood and teenage influences trigger and sustain later re-offending. In contrast, we argue that focus must be shifted to contingent risk factors that accrue in late teenage and young adulthood. Secondly, risk assessment and criminal career research has ignored the influence that unforeseen and unforeseeable processes of neighbourhood destabilization and life events have in criminal careers and their cessation.

Hearing new voices: Re-viewing Youth Justice Policy through Practitioners’ Relationships with Young People

“…High-risk activities and environments, as well as involvement in crime, shape their everyday lives (MacDonald et al 2001;Webster et al, 2006). Thus some patterns of offending might be understood as 'healthy adaptations' that allow them to endure adverse, unhealthy and sometimes harmful circumstances (Ungar 2004, p.6).…”

Street gang theory and research: Where are we now and where do we go from here?

“…Street youth cultures provide criminal opportunities; provide skills, contacts, and a means of accessing illegal local markets in drugs and stolen goods (Webster, MacDonald, & Simpson, 2006). They also prove the greatest impediment to desisting from drug use and criminality (Webster, et.…”

“…al, 1997). Running head: Street gangs theory research One problem with strain theory is that although it explains some of the reasons why youth may join gangs it fails to explain why most lower class youth eventually lead lawabiding lives even though their economic status remains static (Goldstein 1991) or why many youth who experience strain do not offend (Webster, et. al., 2006).…”

Social Exclusion, Youth Transitions and Criminal Careers: Five Critical Reflections on ‘Risk’

“…According to our research, it would be impossible to understand the contemporary criminal careers of disadvantaged youth in Teesside without reference to two, crucial historical-spatial processes (Webster et al, 2006). The first is the rapid and widespread de-industrialisation of this locale (Byrne, 1999) and the concomitant rise of economic marginality and poverty for working-class youth.…”

“…Prior to the mid-90s, it would have been difficult to locate any individuals who had the sort of transition described by Richard (earlier). In other words, new, imported risks bear down on young people"s lives here; risks which were unknown just a few years earlier and which are "scarcely recognised in risk and prediction studies" (Webster et al, 2006).…”