Relating Clusters of Adolescent Problems to Adult Criminal Trajectories: a Person-Centered, Prospective Approach

Abstract

Purpose: Motivated by offender typology debates, we evaluate whether adult offending trajectories can be predicted from adolescent risk factors. Methods: Drawing on data from the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development (N = 411), we use person-centered, latent class cluster analysis (LCCA) to identify groups of respondents with similar behavioral, social, and psychological profiles measured in adolescence. We then use hierarchical linear models to estimate the criminal trajectories associated with each cluster using annual offending measures from 19 to 50 years of age. This offers a test of whether prospectively defined crime trajectories validate theoretical conceptions of qualitatively distinct offender groups. Results: Our LCCA identified four clusters of boys with varying patterns of adolescent characteristics. The offending trajectories associated with these clusters differed in magnitude rather than shape. While we were able to identify a subgroup of offenders whose criminal offending remained relatively high over the life course, significant differences across subgroups were varied and dissipated after young adulthood. All offending trajectories followed the familiar age-crime curve, characterized by a sharp decline in offending in early adulthood. Conclusions: Our findings support multidimensional interventions that would offset the constellations of behavioral, psychological, and social setbacks adolescents face. At the same time, our findings undermine the notion that qualitatively distinct patterns of offending can be prospectively identified and suggest that the processes behind criminal decline over the life course are generalizable across offenders.