Onset of Offending Research Paper

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The age of onset of offending is the age at which the first crime is committed. Generally, this is 3–5 years earlier in self-reports than in official records. The aggregate age-crime curve conceals several trajectories and pathways. In particular, life-course-persistent offenders, who start early and persist for a long time, are distinguished from adolescence-limited offenders, who start later and have short criminal careers. An early age of onset predicts a long criminal career. The most important risk factors for early onset are similar to risk factors for offending in general and include neuropsychological problems, low intelligence, and high impulsiveness, combined with poverty and poor child rearing. However, adult onset offenders are very different, because they tend to be nervous, withdrawn and have few friends in childhood. Effective programs that can prevent or delay onset include nurse home-visiting programs, parent training, skills training, and preschool intellectual enrichment programs.

Introduction

The age of onset is defined as the age at which the first offense is committed. “Offenses” are defined as the most common types of crimes that predominate in official criminal statistics, including theft, burglary, robbery, violence, vandalism, fraud, and drug use. Ages of onset are often studied within criminal career research. A “criminal career” is defined as the longitudinal sequence of offenses committed by an individual offender (Blumstein et al. 1986). It has a beginning (onset), an end (desistance), and a length in between (duration), during which offenders commit crimes at a certain rate (frequency per year).

Criminal career research falls within developmental and life-course criminology, which is concerned with the development of offending and antisocial behavior from the womb to the tomb, as well as with risk and protective factors and life events that influence development. Crimes usually do not appear without warning; they are commonly preceded by childhood antisocial behavior (such as bullying, lying, cheating, truanting, and cruelty to animals) and followed by adult antisocial behavior (such as excessive drinking, sexual promiscuity, spouse assault, child abuse, and neglect). However, the focus in this research paper is on the onset of offending.

The key questions addressed in this research paper are:

What is known about ages of onset from official records and self-reports?
How does the age of onset vary with gender and race?
What is known about developmental sequences of onsets?
To what extent does the age of onset predict later criminal career features?
What are the most important risk factors for early onset, adolescent onset, and adult onset?
What are the most important theories of onset?
How can the onset of offending be prevented?

What Is Known About Ages Of Onset From Official Records And Self-Reports?

It is well known that the aggregate (official) crime rate increases with age to a peak in the teenage years and then decreases in the twenties. It is less well known that this curve reflects variations in the prevalence of offenders rather than in the frequency of offending by offenders. A review of knowledge about the age-crime curve by Farrington (1986) concluded that the peak age of onset of offending was usually between ages 8 and 14. In the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development (CSDD), which is a prospective longitudinal survey of over 400

London males, the peak age of the first conviction was at 14, with 5 % of the males first convicted at that age. In the CSDD, 129 males (31.9 %) were first convicted between ages 10 and 20, but only 35 (8.7 %) between ages 21 and 40, and only 6 (1.5 %) after age 40 (up to age 56; see Farrington et al. 2013).

Rather than presenting the onset rate, taking all persons in a cohort still alive as the denominator, it might be better to present a “hazard” rate. This relates the number of first offenders to the number of persons still at risk of a first offense, excluding those with a previous onset. In the CSDD, the hazard rate showed a later peak than the onset rate, at age 17, when 6 % of the males still at risk were first convicted (Farrington et al. 1990). Basically, the peak hazard rate was later and greater than the peak onset rate because of the decreasing number of males who were still at risk of a first conviction with increasing age (the denominator).

Few studies have compared self-reported and official ages of onset. In a study of 470 Montreal delinquents, Le Blanc and Fre´chette (1989) found that the males had an average age of onset of 10.8 years in self-reports and 14.6 years in official records. Similarly, in the Pittsburgh Youth Study, which is a follow-up of over 1,500 Pittsburgh boys, Loeber et al. (2003) discovered that the average age of onset for self-reported serious delinquency was 11.9 years, while the first court contact for an index (more serious) offense occurred at an average age of 14.5 years. In the Dunedin study in New Zealand, Moffitt et al. (2001, p. 83) compared the ages at first arrest, first conviction, and first self-reported offense, and found that the age of onset in official records was approximately 3–5 years after the age of onset in self-reports.

Similarly, in the CSDD, Kazemian and Farrington (2005) showed that the average age of the first self-reported offense was at 11.9, while the average age of the first conviction was at 16.9. They also found that retrospective self-reports of offending (at age 32) were inadequate, compared with more contemporaneous self-reports; 41 % of prospectively admitted crimes were not admitted retrospectively, and the average retrospective age of onset was 4 years later than the average prospective age of onset. Therefore, accurate information about ages of onset cannot be obtained by retrospective questioning.

Variations By Gender And Race

In general, the official age-crime curve for African Americans is a magnified version of the curve for Caucasians, with an earlier age of onset, a higher peak prevalence of offending, and a later age of desistance. For example, Parker and Morton (2009) analyzed the criminal careers of over 800 male South Carolina delinquents and found that 32 % of African Americans, compared with 13 % of Caucasians, had an early age of onset (before age 12). Low family income and low verbal intelligence were associated with early onset and were more common among the African American delinquents.

In the Dunedin study in New Zealand, Moffitt et al. (2001) argued that gender differences in the prevalence of offending were attributable to gender differences in the number or level of risk factors such as neuropsychological problems and conduct disorder. They found little evidence for an early onset group of persistent female offenders, because females generally had fewer risk factors and because female delinquency was less persistent than male delinquency. In the Christchurch Study in New Zealand, Fergusson and Horwood (2002, p. 174) also reported that fewer females than males followed an early onset pathway, with female chronic violent offending being particularly rare. However, relative to males, proportionally more females showed early onset adolescence-limited offending (see later), and a series of explanatory factors relating to family functioning and early adjustment operated in a similar fashion for both males and females. In a multisite study in the United States, Broidy et al. (2003) showed that trajectories for male and female offending were similar in number and pattern, but the male trajectories were more highly elevated than the female trajectories, because males engaged in more delinquent behavior than females overall.

What Is Known About Developmental Sequences Of Onsets?

The age of onset varies with different types of offenses. It is desirable to study sequences of onsets, to investigate to what extent the onset of one type of offense is followed by the onset of another type. In the Montreal study, Le Blanc and Fre´chette (1989) discovered that shoplifting and vandalism tended to occur before adolescence (average age of onset 11), burglary and motor vehicle theft in adolescence (average onset ages 14–15), and sex offenses and drug trafficking in the later teenage years (average onset ages 17–19). In a study of over 700 adult Massachusetts sex offenders, Danielle Harris (2013) reported that their average onset ages were 15.7 for burglary, 16.0 for theft, 17.3 for robbery, 18.3 for assault, 22.4 for rape, and 25.5 for child molesting. In general, nonsex offenses occurred 6.7 years before sex offenses.

In the CSDD, Kazemian and Farrington (2005) found a typical sequence from minor to serious self-reported offenses, with shoplifting and vandalism most frequently beginning before other types of offending. In contrast, for official offenses, they found that the males were likely to be convicted for theft of vehicles and burglary before any other offense. These findings suggest that there are different onset sequences for self-reported and official offending.

How can onset sequences be explained? First, it may be that different acts are different behavioral manifestations of the same underlying construct that persists at different ages. An underlying antisocial tendency, for example, may manifest as shoplifting in early adolescence, burglary in later adolescence, and intimate partner violence and child abuse in adulthood, with no facilitating effect of an earlier act on a later one. Second, different acts may be different behavioral manifestations of the same or similar underlying constructs at different ages but also part of a developmental sequence, where one act facilitates another act, for example, cigarette smoking facilitating later marijuana use. Third, different acts may be indicators of different constructs and part of a causal sequence, where changes in an indicator of one construct cause later changes in an indicator of a different construct. For example, neuropsychological deficits may cause subsequent school failure.

The first possibility can be distinguished empirically from the second and third. When acts in a sequence are all different behavioral manifestations of the same underlying construct, preventing or changing an early act in the sequence will not necessarily affect the probability of occurrence of later acts, unless there is some change in the underlying construct. However, with developmental and causal sequences, changing an early act in a sequence will affect the probability of occurrence of later acts. In general, it is not clear whether onset sequences reflect persistent heterogeneity or state dependence (Nagin and Farrington 1992).

Rolf Loeber (1988) pioneered the study of developmental pathways and outlined five features of a developmental progression: some behaviors had an onset at earlier ages than others, there was usually escalation in the seriousness of behaviors over time, there was usually retention of earlier behaviors in the sequence when a new behavior occurred, each behavior was best predicted by the developmentally adjacent behavior, and the ordering of the behaviors in the sequence was invariant, although it was noted that many people did not progress from one particular behavior to the next one in the sequence. He proposed that there were three different developmental pathways for antisocial behavior: aggressive versatile, nonaggressive antisocial, and exclusive substance abuse.

The aggressive versatile pathway was characterized by violent, property, and drug offenses; had an onset in the preschool years; and included conduct problems, hyperactivity/impulsivity and attention deficit, educational problems, and a high rate of innovation (the occurrence of new behaviors). The nonaggressive antisocial pathway, characterized by property and drug offenses, had a later onset in late childhood or early adolescence and included only nonaggressive conduct problems, no hyperactivity/impulsivity or inattention, and a low rate of innovation. Interestingly, this latter group of children typically were involved with deviant peers. The exclusive substance abuse pathway had the latest onset (in late adolescence) and no antecedent conduct problems, but it included antecedent internalizing problems such as shyness and nervousness. Surprisingly, these categories bear a great deal of resemblance to three groups that are considered in more detail later: early onset, adolescence-limited, and adult onset offenders.

Loeber (1988) concluded that one of the factors that predicted whether there would be a transition from one behavior to the next in a pathway was the frequency of occurrence of the first behavior. This suggests that, when individuals commit trivial offenses more frequently, their behavior is likely to escalate to more serious offenses in the future. It is clear that certain types of offenses occur on average before other types and that onset sequences can be identified. There has been extensive research on Loeber’s pathways, which are now termed overt, covert, and authority conflict pathways (see Farrington and Loeber 2013). The overt pathway starts with minor aggression and then progresses to physical fighting and eventually serious violence; the covert pathway starts with shoplifting and frequent lying and then progresses to vandalism and eventually serious delinquency (burglary and vehicle theft), and the authority conflict pathway starts with stubborn behavior and then progresses to defiance and eventually truancy and running away from home.

Age Of Onset As A Predictor Of Later Criminal Career Features

There is no doubt that an early age of onset predicts a long criminal career and many offenses. For example, in the CSDD, the boys who were first convicted at ages 10–13 had an average of 9.2 convictions and an average criminal career duration of 14.2 years, those first convicted at ages 14–16 had 6.1 convictions and a duration of 14.4 years, those first convicted at ages 17–20 had 2.7 convictions and a duration of 6.7 years, and those first convicted at ages 21–30 had 2.0 convictions and a duration of 3.8 years (up to age 56; see Farrington et al. 2013).

Less is known about whether an early onset predicts a higher rate of offending per year or whether particular types of crimes committed on the first occasion presage a long and serious criminal career. In Sweden, Robert Svensson (2002) found that theft-related offenses committed on the first occasion were most likely to be followed by long criminal careers, whereas in Australia, Mazerolle et al. (2010) concluded that a first offense of violence did not predict a distinctive criminal career (compared to a nonviolent first offense).

Terrie Moffitt (1993) distinguished between adolescence-limited (AL) and life-coursepersistent (LCP) offenders. LCP offenders tend to start offending early (usually before age 13), whereas AL offenders tend to start in adolescence (at about ages 13–16). LCP offenders are relatively few in number (approximately 5–10 % of the offender population) and tend to be difficult children, often showing signs of conduct problems very early in childhood. AL offenders are highly influenced by their peers. LCP offenders have long criminal careers, whereas AL offenders often give up offending around or soon after age 20. LCP offenders are often very versatile offenders involved in both predatory and violent crime. Their offending trajectory deviates significantly from the aggregate age-crime curve, because it does not decrease dramatically after age 20. The peak in the aggregate age-crime curve in the teenage years is largely caused by AL offenders joining in with LCP offenders.

Much of the developmental research on the age-crime curve focuses on underlying trajectories of antisocial behavior and offending. There is now fairly strong empirical evidence to suggest that there are categories of offenders with trajectories that are partly concordant with Terrie Moffitt’s (1993) taxonomy. Many studies have identified the two distinct offender profiles (Piquero 2008), but research has also revealed other unpredicted categories, including low-level chronics who offend at a low and stable rate across a long period of time and short-term high-rate offenders who start on a life-coursepersistent path but then desist and do not show life-course-persistent characteristics by offending in adulthood (Piquero et al. 2010).

Nagin and Odgers (2010) found that four trajectories fitted the CSDD data and that there were important differences between people in each category. Other than a large nondelinquent group, these authors identified a high-rate chronic trajectory which contained the highest proportion of cases with low IQ, poor parenting, high risk taking, and parental criminality, and a low-rate chronic trajectory with fewer cases of low IQ, poor parenting, high risk taking, and parental criminality. Those in the adolescence-limited trajectory began engaging in delinquency later and ended their delinquency earlier than participants in the two chronic trajectories. A key issue is whether these trajectories differ in degree or in kind. The number of trajectories identified will be dependent on the type and size of the sample, the statistical techniques used, and the length of the follow-up period (Farrington et al. 2013).

Risk Factors For Early Onset

A number of studies have found a relationship between poor neuropsychological development and early onset life-course-persistent criminal behavior (e.g., Nagin et al. 1995; Piquero 2001). Neuropsychological deficits include delayed cognitive and motor development and poor verbal comprehension and expression. Children with neuropsychological problems are often difficult to bring up, and their parents may be those who are least able to manage a difficult child. These vulnerable children are disproportionally born into unfavorable conditions because the characteristics of parents and children, such as cognitive abilities, temperament, and personality, tend to be correlated and to some extent inherited (Moffitt 1994, p. 19). The consequences of negative interactions between the child and the parent may reinforce the problem. The impact of biological or social risk factors is likely to be affected by preexisting vulnerabilities and the timing and additive or interactional effects of other factors. Vulnerability to neuropsychological problems is probably caused by such factors as heritability, low birth weight, early brain injury, and birth complications (Piquero 2001).

Early results from the Dunedin study in New Zealand showed that young boys with both low neuropsychological test scores and adverse home environments had aggression scores more than four times greater than those of boys with only neuropsychological problems or only adverse homes. Children with poor self-control and aggressive behavior often experience rejection by adults and peers and consequently do not learn prosocial behaviors. In turn, poor socialization can cause problems at school and can result in truancy and school exclusion so that opportunities to learn basic academic and social skills are lost, and these skills become increasingly difficult to attain.

There have been very few systematic comparisons of risk factors for early versus later onset. Most research on onset compares persons who have an early onset with those who do not have an early onset (including non-offenders). Therefore, the results may reflect differences between offenders and non-offenders rather than differences between early and later onset offenders. In the CSDD, Farrington and Hawkins (1991) compared childhood risk factors for early onset (first convicted at ages 10–13) with later adolescent onset (first convicted at ages 14–20). They found that early onset was most strongly predicted by boys rarely spending leisure time with their father, high troublesomeness, authoritarian parents, and psychomotor impulsivity.

Some researchers have suggested that early onset is a behavioral manifestation of a high criminal propensity rather than a unique offender category or, in other words, that differences in onset are quantitative and continuous rather than qualitative and discontinuous. Gottfredson and Hirschi (1990) argued that the early onset of antisocial behavior was attributable to the underlying construct of low self-control that was established early in childhood because of inadequate parental management and poor socialization. They further proposed that the ordering of individuals on this trait of low self-control was stable over time and that those with the lowest levels of self-control tended to have the earliest ages of onset and high amounts of versatile criminal activity, and they desisted later than individuals with higher levels of self-control. Low self-control influences an individual’s ability to delay gratification and causes criminal acts, antisocial behaviors such as promiscuous sex and alcohol and drug abuse, and substantial versatility in criminal and antisocial behavior in a range of situations and opportunities.

Risk Factors For Adolescent Onset

In contrast to those offenders who have an early onset, there is a much larger group who only offend as adolescents over a relatively short period of time. Unlike LCP offenders, these AL offenders are not handicapped by neuropsychological deficits, family problems, or socially disadvantaged backgrounds. In contrast, AL offending is often a response to changes experienced in adolescence, such as physical changes around puberty and the increasing influence of peers rather than parents. Terrie Moffitt (1993) suggested that AL offenders began offending because of a perceived “maturity gap”: their inability to achieve adult goals legitimately because of their age. Delinquent acts that symbolize adult social status are common, including smoking, drinking alcohol, drug use, and promiscuous sexual behavior, demonstrating that they have left childhood behind.

Most criminal careers of AL offenders are short-lived, ending in early adulthood. Because they have healthy neuropsychological and social development, AL offenders retain the social and academic skills to live a conventional life unless they suffer “snares,” such as early disengagement from social institutions such as school and family and involvement with the criminal justice system. Breaking away from parents may occur sooner rather than later for some children, who may choose to engage with delinquent peers because of family conflict or breakdown.

Risk Factors For Adult Onset

Adult onset offenders often constitute approximately half of all adult offenders in longitudinal official data (Eggleston and Laub 2002; Zara and Farrington 2009). Terrie Moffitt (1993) denied that there were any true adult onset offenders; she thought that these offenders had previously offended but had not been caught. McGee and Farrington (2010), using data from the CSDD, found that all adult onset offenders (with a first conviction at age 21 or later) had self-reported some previous offending in childhood and adolescence, but generally for minor types of offenses with relatively low conviction rates. They concluded that about one-third of adult onset offenders were “true” self-reported delinquents who could have been convicted because of the frequency and seriousness of their offending. The adult onset offenders were disproportionally likely to commit sex offenses, theft from work, vandalism, and fraud.

It has been suggested that adult onset offending may be caused by changes in adult circumstances such as the loss of a job or a relationship or, in other words, the reduction in bonding to society (Sampson and Laub 2005). Some researchers have found that adult onset offenders are more likely than others to have mental illness (Elander et al. 2000), and findings from the CSDD suggest that these individuals are nervous, withdrawn, and had few friends in childhood (Zara and Farrington 2009). Possibly, their inhibition, nervousness, and lack of peer influence in the teenage years protected them from teenage offending but not from adult offending.

Zara and Farrington (2006) systematically compared risk factors for adult onset (first convicted at age 21 or later) and earlier onset (first convicted at ages 10–20). The adult onset offenders were more nervous, less daring, and less troublesome in childhood (ages 8–10), less likely to have early sex by age 14, and less likely to truant at ages 12–14. The adult onset offenders were similar to non-offenders in their self-reported delinquency at age 14 and much less delinquent than the earlier onset offenders.

Theories Of The Onset Of Offending

Not surprisingly, the major theories that try to explain why people start offending, sequences of onsets, and the relation between onset and duration are the developmental and life-course theories. The important theory of Terrie Moffitt (1993) has already been discussed in some detail. Unlike Moffitt, Thornberry and Krohn (2005) did not propose that there were types of offenders, but they did suggest that different factors influenced onset at different ages. At the earliest ages (birth to 6), the most important factors were neuropsychological deficit and difficult temperament (e.g., impulsiveness, negative emotionality, fearlessness, poor emotion regulation), parenting deficits (e.g., poor monitoring, low affective ties, inconsistent discipline, physical punishment), and structural adversity (e.g., poverty, unemployment, welfare dependency, disorganized neighborhood). They also suggested that structural adversity might cause poor parenting.

According to Thornberry and Krohn, neuropsychological deficits are less important for children who start antisocial behavior at older ages. At ages 6–12, neighborhood and family factors are particularly salient, while at ages 12–18, school and peer factors predominate. Thornberry and Krohn also suggested that deviant opportunities, gangs, and deviant social networks were important for onset at ages 12–18. They proposed that late starters (ages 18–25) had cognitive deficits such as low intelligence and poor school performance but that they were protected (“cocooned”) from antisocial behavior at earlier ages by a supportive family and school environment. At ages 18–25, when they became more independent, they found it hard to make a successful transition to adult roles such as employment and marriage. The theory did not postulate a single key construct underlying offending but suggested that children who started early tended to continue because of the persistence of neuropsychological and parenting deficits and structural adversity. Interestingly, Thornberry and Krohn (2005) predicted that late starters (ages 18–25) would show more continuity over time than earlier starters (ages 12–18) because the late starters had more cognitive deficits.

The key construct in Sampson and Laub’s (2005) theory is age-graded informal social control, which means the strength of bonding to family, peers, schools, and later adult social institutions such as marriages and jobs. Sampson and Laub primarily aimed to explain why people did not commit offenses on the assumption that why people want to offend is unproblematic (presumably caused by hedonistic desires) and that offending is inhibited by the strength of bonding to society. The strength of bonding depended on attachments to parents, schools, delinquent friends, and delinquent siblings, and also on parental socialization processes such as discipline and supervision. Structural background variables (e.g., social class, ethnicity, large family size, criminal parents, disrupted families) and individual difference factors (e.g., low intelligence, difficult temperament, early conduct disorder) had indirect effects on offending through their effects on informal social control (attachment and socialization processes).

Sampson and Laub were concerned with the whole life course. They emphasized change over time rather than consistency and the poor ability of early childhood risk factors to predict later life outcomes. They assumed that early and later onset (and other criminal career features) depended on the strength of bonding. They focused on the importance of later life events (adult turning points), such as joining the military, getting a stable job, and getting married, in fostering desistance and “knifing off” the past from the present. Because of their emphasis on change and unpredictability, they denied the importance of types of offenders such as “life-course persisters.”

The integrated cognitive antisocial potential (ICAP) theory of Farrington (2005) is mainly intended to explain offending by lower class males. No distinct types of offenders are proposed. The key construct underlying antisocial behavior is antisocial potential (AP), and there is continuity in offending and antisocial behavior over time because of consistency in the relative ordering of people on AP. Therefore, early and later onset and the relation between early onset and later criminal careers depend on levels of AP.

Long-term and short-term influences on AP are explicitly distinguished. Long-term factors encouraging offending include impulsiveness, strain, and antisocial models, while short-term (immediate situational) influences include opportunities and victims. Long-term factors inhibiting offending include attachment and socialization (based on social learning) and life events such as getting married or moving house. The theory explicitly aims to explain both the development of offending and the commission of offenses. Situational factors, motives, and cognitive (thinking and decision-making) processes are included. The theory also assumes that the consequences of offending have labeling, deterrent, or learning effects on AP.

Prevention Programs To Reduce Onset

It is particularly important to prevent the early onset of offending, since this tends to lead to LCP offending. The most effective programs are those that target key risk factors such as poor parenting, high impulsiveness, poor social skills, or school failure (Farrington and Welsh 2007). These programs include general parent education in the home, parent management training, child skills training, and preschool intellectual enrichment programs. However, evaluators have generally reported effects only on offending, not on specific features of criminal careers such as the age of onset or the duration of offending.

The best-known home-visiting program is the Nurse Family Partnership program of Olds et al. (1998). This was evaluated in a randomized trial of 400 women considered to be at high risk, such as teenage mothers, unmarried women, and those living in poverty. The results showed that the prenatal and postnatal home visits caused a significant decrease in recorded child physical abuse and neglect during the first 2 years of life, especially for those mothers who were at high risk; 4 % of visited versus 19 % of non-visited mothers at risk were guilty of child abuse or neglect. This is was an important finding, because those children who are physically abused or neglected are more likely to become violent offenders later in life. The children of visited mothers were less likely to offend later in life than the children of non-visited mothers.

A systematic review carried out by Piquero et al. (2009) concluded that early family or parent training is an effective intervention for reducing behavior problems among young children. For example, Scott et al. (2001) evaluated the “Incredible Years” program in London with 140 children aged 3–8 referred for antisocial behavior, and Gardner et al. (2006) evaluated this program in Oxfordshire with 70 children aged 2–9 referred for conduct problems. This type of research on parent training shows that it leads to improvements in child disruptive behaviors and reductions in delinquency.

In Montreal, Tremblay et al. (1995) evaluated a program that combined child skills training and parent training. Over 300 aggressive or hyperactive boys were randomly allocated at age 6 either to receive the program or not. The program reduced early offending. By age 12, the experimental boys committed less burglary and theft, were less likely to get drunk, and were less likely to be involved in fights than the controls (according to self-reports). At every age from 10 to 15, the experimental boys had lower self-reported delinquency scores than the control boys.

Preschool programs, focusing on intellectual stimulation and increasing thinking and reasoning abilities in order to increase later school achievement, have also been successful. The most famous program is the Perry project which was originally evaluated with 123 disadvantaged African American children aged 3–4. This led to reduced arrests up to age 19, and the benefits continued throughout life. A follow-up at age 40 showed that the experimental participants had significantly fewer lifetime arrests for violent crimes, property crimes, and drug crimes (Schweinhart et al. 2005). Improvements were also found in graduation from school, employment records, and annual incomes for those in the program group compared to the controls. At age 40, a benefit-cost analysis showed that the Perry project produced $17 of benefit per $1 of cost, with 76 % of this benefit being returned to the general public in the form of savings in crime, education, and welfare and increased tax revenue, and 24 % of the benefits accruing to the experimental participant.

Conclusions

The age of onset of offending is earlier in self-reports (about 10–12) than in official records (about 14–15). Because the age-crime curve is higher and wider for males and African Americans than for females and Caucasians, proportionally fewer females and Caucasians have an early onset of offending. Generally, shoplifting and vandalism have an early onset, while violence, fraud, and sex offenses have a later onset. The aggregate agecrime curve conceals different trajectories and developmental pathways. An early age of onset predicts a long criminal career, and the most famous theory (by Moffitt) that is relevant to onset distinguishes between adolescence-limited and life-course-persistent offenders. Risk factors for early onset are similar to risk factors for offending in general (and especially for serious or persistent offending), but risk factors for later adult onset are very different. There are a number of effective prevention programs, but their specific impact on ages of onset (as opposed to offending in general) is not known. Knowledge and theories about onset should be very useful in developing programs to prevent or delay onset.

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