Incarcerated girls’ early life experiences and their influence on serious offending in emerging adulthood
Warr (1989) conceptualized offence severity as the intersection of the harmfulness and wrongfulness of an act, which overlaps with how Canada’s justice system makes decisions about sentencing. The current study used this logic to move beyond static indicators of crime severity (e.g., history of viol...
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2021
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| In: |
Canadian journal of criminology and criminal justice
Year: 2021, Volume: 63, Issue: 3/4, Pages: 112-134 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
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| Summary: | Warr (1989) conceptualized offence severity as the intersection of the harmfulness and wrongfulness of an act, which overlaps with how Canada’s justice system makes decisions about sentencing. The current study used this logic to move beyond static indicators of crime severity (e.g., history of violent offending) to examine risk factors for longitudinal patterns of offending severity over the life course. Data on girls (n = 284) from the Incarcerated Serious and Violent Young Offender Study were used to examine the impact of self-reported risk factors on trajectories of offence severity between ages 12 and 23 (i.e., amount of time spent in custody at each year of age). Overall, 40% of incarcerated girls were associated with serious offending in emerging adulthood; however, it was rare for offending severity to escalate during emerging adulthood (ages 18–23; n = 25, 8.8%). Early-onset illicit substance use and frequent involvement in physical altercations during adolescence predicted serious offending that escalated between adolescence and emerging adulthood. A much wider range of risk factors in adolescence distinguished between participants who demonstrated frequent offending of a less serious nature, which slowly declined in adulthood, and those who were rarely, if ever, involved in frequent or serious offences in adulthood. Substance abuse treatment strategies may be especially important for disrupting incarcerated girls’ pathway to escalation of the severity of offending during emerging adulthood. |
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| ISSN: | 1911-0219 |
| DOI: | 10.3138/cjccj.2021-0026 |