Victim Costs of Arrest Trajectories from Childhood to Mid-Adulthood in At-Risk Men

• In Event: Juvenile Delinquency and Adult Offending: Trends, Trajectories, and Measurement

Abstract

Purpose and design: Few longitudinal studies have examined whether the financial costs of crime are equally distributed across distinctive offender trajectory groups (e.g., Cohen et al., 2010). The aim of this longitudinal study was to contribute to this literature by calculating the monetary costs of crime from ages 10-11 up to 37-38 years using data from 206 at-risk men enrolled in the Oregon Youth Study. Annual counts of official arrests, dates of arrests, types of offenses, and disposition (e.g., incarceration, probation, fines, jail suspension) were derived from court records. Findings and conclusions: Semi-parametric group-based modeling identified three arrest trajectories across the 27-year span using a zero-inflated Poisson model that accounted for exposure time and mortality of the men: rare offenders (62.8%), low-level chronic offenders (21.6%), and high-level chronic offenders (15.7%). Classification quality was high (e.g., entropy: 0.88). Victim costs of adult arrests with jail disposition were calculated using bottom-up estimates based on Cohen and Piquero (2009) and Miller, Cohen, et al. (2021). Preliminary findings showed that the group of high-rate chronic offenders accounted for a disproportionate amount of victim costs up to ages 37-38. Theoretical and policy implications of these findings will be discussed.

Authors

• Margit Wiesner, University of Houston

• David M. Day, Toronto Metropolitan University

• Deborah M. Capaldi, Oregon Social Learning Center

• Joung Yon Choi, University of Houston

• Weiwei Wu, University of Houston