Citation

Ashton SA, Ioannou M, Hammond L, Synnott J. J. Investig. Psych. Offender Profil. 2020; 17(2): 76-92.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2020, John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1002/jip.1548

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Research has indicated that life-course persistent offenders typically vary their offending style, following a criminal career progression from co- to solo-offending. Few studies have investigated the offenders who contemporaneously mix their style of offending. A sample of 1,047 male adolescent offenders from the Pathways to Desistance study was investigated over a 7-year period. Participants were identified as solo, co or contemporaneous mixed style (CMS) offenders for each wave of data and one-way between groups analysis of variance was conducted to examine variations between the different offending styles in terms of offending frequencies, exposure to violence, peer antisocial behaviour and influence, resistance to peer influence, impulse control and psychopathy. CMS offenders were found to consistently report significantly higher rates of offending and present significantly higher negative risk factors and lower protective risk factors than solo- and co-offenders for the duration of the study. A multinomial logistic regression was used to investigate predictors of offending style with CMS as the reference category. Higher levels of exposure to violence and peer antisocial behaviour and lower levels of impulse control predicted membership of the CMS group for the first part of the study when compared with co-offenders; and higher levels of exposure to violence and peer antisocial behaviour continued to predict CMS offending when compared to solo-offenders until the end of the study.

Language: en

Keywords

offending career progression; offending styles; psychological risk factors; social risk factors; youth offending