Elsevier

Journal of Criminal Justice

Volume 29, Issue 3, May–June 2001, Pages 189-206
Journal of Criminal Justice

On the relationships between gender, early onset, and the seriousness of offending

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0047-2352(01)00084-8Get rights and content

Abstract

Building on previous research implicating the age of onset as a predictor of later patterns of delinquent activity, data from subjects participating in the Philadelphia Collaborative Perinatal Project (CPP) are combined with criminal history records from the Philadelphia Police Department to explore the relationships between gender, early onset, and the seriousness of offending. Findings suggest that an early onset before age fourteen is predictive of serious offending by age eighteen, with the earliest onset ages relating to the most severe delinquency patterns. This relationship holds in the full sample after controls for relevant variables; however after controlling for variables considered in the full sample model, the early onset→seriousness of offending relationship holds for males, but vanishes for females. The theoretical and policy implications of these findings and potential directions for future research are discussed.

Introduction

Reviews of literature in both criminology and psychology speak with one voice on the importance of the age of onset of antisocial behavior as a marker for future antisocial behavior. In general, previous research shows that the earlier the onset of antisocial activity, the higher the likelihood that individuals will go on to engage in further (and oftentimes more serious) antisocial acts Blumstein et al., 1986, Farrington et al., 1990, LeBlanc & Loeber, 1998, Loeber & Farrington, 1998, Tolan, 1987.

This observation occupies central import in several developmental theories of antisocial behavior Loeber et al., 1998, Loeber et al., 1998, Patterson et al., 1989. For example, Moffitt's (1993) taxonomic theory parcels the age–crime curve into two distinct offending trajectories. The first group of offenders, the life-course persistors, are hypothesized to engage in antisocial behavior early in life, offend more while active, and are unlikely to desist. The cause of their involvement in various types of antisocial activities, including violent and person-oriented offenses, lies in the interaction between neuropsychological deficits and disadvantaged familial and socioeconomic environments. The second group of offenders, the adolescence-limiteds, are hypothesized to concentrate their involvement in antisocial behavior to the adolescent period. Limited to acts that symbolize adult privilege and prestige (i.e., smoking, vandalism, alcohol and drug use, minor theft, status offenses), adolescent-limited antisocial behavior is caused by the modeling of deviant peer affiliations and the maturity gap (i.e., strain) experienced throughout the teenage years. According to Moffitt, the two groups of offenders share one feature: the age of onset. For Moffitt, life-course persistors experience onset at an earlier age in the life course than do their adolescent-limited counterparts, such that age-of-onset becomes the defining feature of the two groups (Moffitt, Caspi, Dickson, Silva, & Stanton, 1996, p. 403).

Whether the relationship between early onset and the seriousness of offending is relegated to males (and not females), however, is a topic that has been little investigated. In one of the only existing studies on this front, Tolan and Thomas (1995) used the National Youth Survey to explore the relationship between onset age and chronicity/seriousness of offending across gender groups. Their findings indicated that early onset was related to higher rates of more serious acts over a longer period of time for both boys and girls; however, once other psychosocial variables were included as predictors, the effect of early onset on later criminal involvement weakened.

The study of early onset and serious offending also has implications for intervention and prevention programs that could be targeted at particular individuals depending upon their age in the life course. For example, to the extent that those individuals who initiate their offending early in life engage in more serious offenses, interventions could be administered to those persons at highest risk for an early entrance into criminal behavior Tremblay et al., 1992, Tremblay & Craig, 1995, Wasserman & Miller, 1998. Thus, by understanding the relationship between early onset and the seriousness of offending, researchers and policy makers may stand in a better position to design and implement effective programs that delay the onset of criminal offending, and reduce the probability of serious offending in adulthood.

This study attempts to overcome several limitations with prior research. First, previous research has encountered difficulty in establishing the initial age of onset (i.e., left-hand censoring). Second, while previous studies contain a rich array of psychosocial variables, they do not contain several of the developmentally based predictors of antisocial and criminal behavior that have been implicated in developmental theories of crime. Finally, much of the previous research on longitudinal patterns of criminal behavior have relied solely on White subjects Laub et al., 1998, Moffitt et al., 1996, Nagin & Land, 1993, Nagin & Tremblay, 1999.

Following the work of Tolan and Thomas (1995), the purpose of this study is to bring evidence to bear on three questions: (1) Do groups that differ on onset timing show different patterns of chronic and serious offending?; (2) Is that difference attributable to onset age once other relevant predictors are considered?; and (3) Does this relationship vary by gender? Cast in the broader theme of understanding similarities and differences in the development of antisocial behavior across gender groups, these questions are examined with data from the Philadelphia Collaborative Perinatal Project (CPP), a longitudinal study that followed 987 African American subjects from prebirth to age eighteen. The particular racial makeup of the Philadelphia CPP sample affords us a unique opportunity to examine a series of questions within the context of a sample which has been subject to little empirical scrutiny.

Section snippets

Early onset of criminal offending

The term onset typically refers to a discrete change in state namely from nonoffender to offender. Due to its relationship with complex and dynamic factors both preceding and following its occurrence, the timing of onset has played a critical role in describing the course of delinquent and criminal behavior (Farrington et al., 1990). Unfortunately, the determinants and consequences of this concept have been little investigated. It, therefore, is no surprise that researchers have struggled to

Characteristics of onset

The age of fourteen has been used by many to distinguish early from late onset with those incurring their first offense prior to age fourteen regarded “early onset” and those incurring their first offense at age fourteen or thereafter regarded “late onset” Gibson et al., 2000, Moffitt et al., 1994, Patterson & Yoerger, 1993, Tibbetts & Piquero, 1999. According to Moffitt (1993), less than 10 percent of the population exhibit early onset of offending, a figure comparable to the 8.3 percent

Male–female criminal behavior

Although statistics from the FBI's 1992 Uniform Crime Reports indicate that females constitute only 19 percent of total arrests, and one out of four arrests for violent crimes (Flowers, 1995), these figures may underestimate the significance of delinquency and criminal activity in this population. Even though it remains difficult to estimate the prevalence of female crime based on official statistics, namely because of a purported male-biased criminal justice system (Zoccolillo, 1993), it

Current focus

This study follows the suggestion by Tolan and Thomas (1995) that research cross-validate their preliminary investigation into the early onset→seriousness of offending relationship. In this vein, the study departs from, yet builds upon their original effort in two important ways. First, the data do not suffer from the left-hand censoring problem of the onset indicator that was evident in their study. Second, the data contain a number of variables that have recently been advanced in

Data

Data for this study come from the Philadelphia portion of the National CPP (Niswander & Gordon, 1972). Funded by the National Institute of Neurological and Communicative Disorders and Stroke, the CPP followed the course of 56,000 pregnancies at several universities in an effort to document developmental events to seven years of age. The subjects of the Philadelphia CPP were infants of mothers who participated in the project and reflect the characteristics of families who were interested in

Age of onset

The importance of early onset for understanding patterns of criminal offending has been well established Blumstein et al., 1986, Farrington et al., 1990, Tibbetts & Piquero, 1999. In the present study, early onset was measured by the first official police contact for an offense that resulted in an arrest or remedial disposition with the Philadelphia City Police Department. Following previous research Moffitt et al., 1994, Patterson et al., 1992, Simons et al., 1994, Tibbetts & Piquero, 1999,

Do groups that differ on onset timing show different patterns of chronic and serious offending?

Since previous research shows that individuals with the earliest onset ages are generally the most serious offenders (Farrington et al., 1990), the summary seriousness score for each individual onset age was investigated. The five individuals who experienced the earliest onset (age eight) had a higher summary seriousness score (=34.072) than any of the other onset ages. This finding evidences the importance of identifying the earliest age of onset, and suggests that the results obtained by

Discussion

Prior to reviewing the results of this study, several limitations should be addressed. First, the Philadelphia CPP sample is relegated to middle/lower class African Americans residing in Philadelphia. As such, the extent to which the results of the present study would hold for other members of the population and in different social contexts is unknown. Second, the data do not contain measures of certain psychosocial correlates (knowledge of peer delinquency) that have been found to be related

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