On the relationship between cognitive abilities and life-course-persistent offending among a sample of African Americans: A longitudinal test of Moffitt's hypothesis

Prior criminological research showed that cognitive abilities were related to delinquent and criminal activity, primarily within adolescent samples. Moffitt's developmental taxonomy anticipates that cognitive abilities will relate to criminal activity differently throughout the population of offenders, mattering more for life-course-persistent than adolescence-limited offenders. Unfortunately, prior research had not examined in great detail the long-term influence of cognitive abilities on criminal activity from birth to adulthood nor had research explored this issue within an African American sample. In this study, data from the Philadelphia portion of the National Collaborative Perinatal Project (NCPP) were used to examine the long-term effect of cognitive abilities on criminal activity from birth to adulthood.