Effect of Criminal History Variables on the Process of Desistance in Adulthood Among Serious Youthful Offenders

• NCJ Number: 217611
• Journal: Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice Volume: 23 Issue: 1 Dated: February 2007 Pages: 28-49
• Author(s): Michael E. Ezell
• Date Published: February 2007
• Length: 22 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This study investigated the impact of several criminal history factors on the risk of a new arrest in adulthood among a sample of serious juvenile offenders.

Abstract

Results indicated that duration of time since last arrest was a strong and negative predictor of the risk of a subsequent arrest during adulthood. This finding remained significant even after controlling for previous differences in offending levels. The findings also revealed that criminal involvement in early adulthood was a more significant predictor of future offending than elements of juvenile offending. While changes were observed in offending patterns, most offenders in the sample did not completely cease to offend. The results suggest that for many offenders, offending patterns were more intermittent, forming more of a zig-zag pattern. If offending patterns are more intermittent in nature, research needs to involve longer follow-up periods in order to minimize the problem of false desistance. The study focused on examining arrest failure patterns in later adulthood among a random sample of 1,989 serious male juvenile offenders released from the California Youth Authority (CYA) in the early 1980s. Data were drawn from the participant’s criminal arrest histories. New arrests after ages 25, 30, and 35 were examined using survival function analysis and proportional hazard models were used to explore the impact of several criminal history variables on the arrest failure at each of the three ages. Criminal history variables under analysis included age at first arrest, juvenile criminal offending level, adult offending level, total criminal offending level, and the length of time since last arrest. Both bivariate and multivariate analyses were employed. Future research on serious offenders should include more measures of the impact of adult life events, such as marriage and family, employment, and drug use histories. Tables, figures, notes, references