Understanding the Relationship Between Onset Age and Subsequent Offending During Adolescence

This article examines the well-documented relationship between early initiation or onset of criminal behavior and a heightened risk of involvement in offending. Previous research examining this question conducted by Nagin and Farrington (Criminology 30:235–260, 1992a; Criminology 30:501–523, 1992b) used data from the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development and found that: (1) onset age was correlated with offending involvement; and (2) the correlation could be explained by stable individual differences in the propensity to offend rather than a causal effect of early onset age. In this study, similar analytic methods are applied to data from the Second Philadelphia Birth Cohort. This data set consists of all 13,160 males born in Philadelphia in 1958 who resided in the city continuously from ages 10 to 18, slightly more than half of whom were non-white. Information from each of the youths was collected from schools, juvenile justice agencies, other official sources and surveys. In a model that mimics previous analyses, we initially found that an early age of onset is associated with greater subsequent involvement in delinquent behavior. When unobserved criminal propensity was controlled, however, we found that a late rather than an early onset of delinquency was related to future offending. In finding a state dependent effect for age of onset, our findings are contrary to propensity theory in criminology. In finding that it is late rather early onset which puts youth at risk for future offending, our findings are contrary to developmental/life course theory. Our results are more compatible with traditional criminological theory that is friendly to state dependence processes, though they too have not to date articulated why a late onsetting of offending might be particularly criminogenic.

Raymond PaternosterEmail:

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Sarah Bacon   is an Assistant Professor in the College of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Maryland. Her research interests focus on quantitative methods, testing criminological theory, and capital punishment. This paper is an extension of work conducted for her M.A. thesis at the University of Maryland. Raymond Paternoster   is Professor in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Maryland and Faculty Affiliate of the Maryland Population Research Center, College Park, Maryland. He received his Ph.D. from Florida State University. His research interests focus on testing criminological theory, the relationship between events in adolescence and delinquency, and capital punishment. Robert Brame   is Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at the University of North Carolina Charlotte, Charlotte, North Carolina. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Maryland. His current research interests focus on domestic violence, the use of criminal records for screening purposes, linkages between adolescent employment and criminal behavior, and capital punishment.