The Offending Trajectories of Youthful Aboriginal Offenders

Abstract

Dans l'étude, on examine les trajectoires criminelles de jeunes autochtones assujettis à une ordonnance de probation au Manitoba, Canada, et on les compare à celles de jeunes probationnaires non autochtones. Selon les résultats des analyses de la croissance mixte obtenus avec les deux souséchantillons, un modèle de trajectoires latentes à deux groupes est la forme d'évolution développementale qui représente le mieux le comportement criminel à partir du début de l'adolescence jusqu'au milieu de l'âge adulte. Un petit nombre de contrevenants ont continué d'adopter un comportement délinquant grave durant toute leur vie. Toutefois, le reste de l'échantillon, soit la majorité des probationnaires juvéniles, se caractérisait par une participation relativement rare et moins grave à des activités criminelles au fil des ans. Le taux de délinquants dans le groupe chronique à criminalité élevée était légèrement plus important chez les contrevenants autochtones (18,7 %) que chez les contrevenants non autochtones (12,3 %). D'autres analyses ont révélé que les contrevenants autochtones étaient plus susceptibles de provenir d'un milieu pauvre caractérisé par un environnement familial instable, la consommation de drogues et l'influence négative des pairs. Ces risques/besoins criminogènes ont contribué à la persistance et à la gravité de leur activité criminelle. En revanche, les liens négatifs ont laissé envisager un risque accru d'appartenir au groupe chronique à criminalité élevée chez les contrevenants non autochtones. À la fin de l'article, on parle des répercussions potentielles de ces résultats et on suggère des pistes de recherches.

Life Course Offending Pathways Across Gender and Race/Ethnicity

“…While 12.7 % of Indigenous females are likely to populate one of these three serious offenders groups, only 6.4 % of non-Indigenous males and 1.5 % of non-Indigenous females are likely to populate any one of these three groups. This mirrors what we know about the influence of race/ethnicity on longitudinal offending patterns from US studies documenting the offending pathways of Blacks and Hispanics [51,63,82,101].…”

“…These results indicate that not only are Indigenous Australians more likely to offend, but when they do offend, they exhibit more chronic and serious offending patterns. This mirrors what we know about the relation between race/ethnicity and offending over the life course in US samples, particularly those focusing on differences between African Americans and Whites [32,82,101].…”

“…In many ways, the criminal justice system experiences of Indigenous Australians appear to echo those of minorities in the USA and Canada, with similar minority overrepresentation in the chronic offender groups. Most notably, the patterns of Indigenous overrepresentation in the criminal justice system [9] mirror those we see among Black, Hispanic, and Native American populations in the USA [45] as well as those we see among Indigenous populations in Canada [25,101]. Indigenous Australians are overrepresented among offenders [17,62,89] and although they account for approximately 3 % of the population [10], they make up over 25 % of the country's adult prison population [9].…”

“…The few life course studies to examine race/ethnicity focus primarily on the experiences of Blacks, although some recent work outlines longitudinal offending patterns among samples of Hispanics [51,63]. Studies comparing Blacks to Whites indicate that Blacks populate chronic offending trajectories at significantly higher rates than Whites [32,64,82,101] and that this reflects their unique structural contexts and related exposure to key risk factors that both foster early onset and preclude desistance [48,84].…”

Ethnic Diversity and Youth Offending: An Examination of Risk and Protective Factors

“…As Choi, Harachi, Gillmore, and Catalano (2005) observe: "substance abuse has been found to be associated with violence, delinquency, academic underachievement, and school problems" (p. 506). Research suggests that there is a particularly high rate of substance abuse among Aboriginal youth offenders (Rojas & Gretton, 2007;Yessine & Bonta, 2009) and that offending patterns seem to be affected by increased alcohol or drug use (Bonta, LaPrairie, & Wallace-Capretta, 1997). Furthermore, the presence of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) in the Aboriginal population is another individual risk factor that is highlighted by Rojas and Gretton (2007).…”