Predictors and outcomes of persistent or age‐limited registered criminal behavior: a 30‐year longitudinal study of a Swedish urban population

Abstract

This study uses data from the longitudinal research program Individual Development and Adaptation, where an entire school-grade cohort of children in a middle-size Swedish city (n approximately 1.300) has been followed from ages 10 to 43 and 48 for women and men, respectively. Our findings indicate that the patterns of offending across the life-course differ between genders, where males seem to initiate their offending earlier than females. Further, there are very few women on a persistent offending-trajectory. Focusing on precursors to as well as consequences of offending as indexed in official registers, our results indicate that individuals in the persistent offender group have the most pronounced adjustment problems in school- as well as in middle age. Individual characteristics and behaviors (e.g., aggression, hyperactivity, antisocial behavior) vary systematically between individuals with different developmental offending patterns. The combination of an unstable upbringing and own antisocial behavior seems to be especially predictive for criminality. For persistent offenders, the prevalence of alcohol and psychiatric problems at adult age is high for males and extremely high for females (nine out of ten and six out of ten for each of the two problem types for females). Further, the importance for adjustment of the two-dimensional variation in the number of crimes committed during adolescence and adult age seems to have been surprisingly well captured by the "crude" division into the four offender groups that were used.

Life Course Offending Pathways Across Gender and Race/Ethnicity

“…Other studies outside of the Australian context have found females to be particularly at risk for adult onset relative to males (e.g., [6,15,18,27,90]). It may be that the welfare context in Australia helps females, especially non-Indigenous ones, successfully navigate the transition to adulthood in ways that are different from other contexts.…”

“…Female offenders are evenly split among these two groups (43.9 % of female offenders in each group), while male offenders are much more likely to fall into the adult onset-low offending group (56.4 vs. 26.1 %). This is notable because other studies report more evidence of adult onset among females compared to males [15,18,27,36]. But while 2 % of the female population falls into one of the three more serious and chronic trajectories, 8.1 % of the male population is represented on one of these three trajectories.…”

“…Women are more likely to populate this trajectory than the chronic offender trajectory [6]. In some studies, female adult onset offenders outnumber males [15,18,27,36,100], although this is not a uniform finding [83,93]. This is the offending group we know the least about, and because our sample follows an offending cohort into adulthood, we can help outline the key features of this group and its distribution across gender as well as race/ethnicity.…”

Teachers' Ratings of Childhood Behaviours Predict Adolescent and Adult Crime among 3016 Males and Females

“…17 However, knowledge of the validity of teacher ratings for predicting criminal offending through adolescence and early adulthood is limited. 18,19 Our study aimed to identify behaviours in childhood that were associated with future criminality and that could be rated by classroom teachers. Among children with CP, those whose antisocial behaviour persists display more aggressive behaviour.…”

Zur Bedeutung der Eltern-Kind-Beziehung für die physische Gewaltausübung jugendlicher Mädchen – Ergebnisse einer mixed-methods-Studie

“…Unsere Studie nimmt 1 Zentrale Komponenten sind sowohl bei Mädchen als auch Jungen gesellschaftliche Desintegrationsprozesse (Heitmeyer 1997;Morenoff et al 2001), Zugehörigkeit zu einer gewaltorientierten Peergruppe (Bohnsack et al 1995;Böttger 2004;Sandler/Alpert 2000;Stott et al 2001) und eigene Gewaltwiderfahrnisse (oft durch die Eltern) (Sutterlüty 2003). Die Wechselwirkung zwischen belastenden familiären Bedingungen, der Zugehörigkeit zu einer gewaltorientierten Peergruppe und eigener Gewaltausübung ist empirisch gut belegt (Vaillancourt/Hymel 2004;Lösel/Bliesener 2003;Sutterlüty 2003;Bergman/Andershed 2009). In individuellen biografischen Verlaufsprozessen, durch epiphanische Erfahrungen und durch das Erleben von unmittelbarem Sinn während der Gewalthandlung wird Gewaltanwendung zunehmend als eine sinnhafte Handlung erlebt und in gewaltaffine Wahrnehmungsmuster eingebettet (Sutterlüty 2003;siehe auch Heeg 2009siehe auch Heeg , 2013Silkenbeumer 2000Silkenbeumer , 2007.…”