Destiny or Divergence? Adulthood Psychosocial Outcomes and Their Impact on Offending for Adjudicated Youth

• In Event: Criminal, Social, and Health Outcomes of Serious and Violent Youth

Abstract

Within developmental and life course research there is disagreement regarding the existence/importance of selection effects as barriers to experiencing, or benefiting from, key protective factors that help promote desistance. Some view certain risk factors as having a cascading effect in which past risk begets future risk and in turn jeopardizes the acquisition or maintenance of important protective factors. Others assert that human agency and macro-level structural factors ensure that turning points are equally likely across individuals characterized by varying levels of risk. Recent data collected as part of the Incarcerated Serious and Violent Young Offender Study were used to evaluate (a) whether the prevalence and quality of adult psychosocial outcomes (e.g., employment, relationships, mental health, substance use) varied according to level of risk in adolescence, (b) the degree of stability and/or change in these outcomes between adolescence and adulthood, and (c) whether stability and/or change in these outcomes impacted stability and/or change in level of offending. Findings have implications for life course theories of desistance as they apply to particularly at-risk offenders.

Authors

• Evan McCuish, Simon Fraser University

• Raymond Corrado, Simon Fraser University