The First Offending as an Outcome: The Impact of idividuals' traumatic life events on the first onset

Purpose

The age at which people initiate offending and the level of seriousness they exhibit in their offending have both received a considerable amount of attention from researchers. It is well established that individuals who initiate offending at the earliest ages are at greatest risk of serious, long-term, and frequent criminal offending. The seriousness of the first offending as well is viewed as the predictor of the future criminal career of more serious, long-term, or frequent offendings.

Although many studies have found that the age and the seriousness of the first offending are the most important predictors of the future crminal career, not many research has examined which factors have important effects on the early onset and the seriouness of the first offending. Furthermore, most of them have focused on psychological factors of individual to explain criminal offendings, rather than specific incidence which facilitate more appropriate, immediate interventions. Therefore, this study aims to examine the effects of individual's life events from three dimensions-individual, family and school/community levels-on the age and the seriousness of the initiate offending respectively. By figuring out which specific event which occured before the first offending has significant influence on the onset age and the seriousness of the first offending, more appropriate, immediate and effective interventions are expected for social workers and/or criminal justice practitioners to prevent the initiate offending from the beginning and to prevent the continuation or escalation of future offending.

Methods

This study selected total 1,000 criminals from 10 prisons nationwide in Korea using stratified random sampling. To measure traumatic life events and the seriousness of the offending, Life Event Scale(Coddington, 1972) and Moffitt(2001)'s measurement were used. Each occurrence of negative life event was set as an independent variable and the age, seriousness of the first onset were set as dependent variables. Also, we controlled demographic characteristics(age, sex, etc.) to get more explicit effect. Logit models were performed (ordered logit model for predicting the onset age and nested logit model for the seriousness) using a computer program STATA 9.0.

Results

Results are as follows: First, the occurrence of family's serious economic crisis has a negative effect on the onset age, which means the occurrence of family's economic crisis lowers the onset age. Second, the occurrence of the arrest of close friend has a negative effect on the onset age, which means the occurrence of friends' arrest lowers the onset age. Third, the occurrence the divorce of parents has a positive effect on the seriousness of the onset age, which means the occurrence of the parents' divorce before the first offending worsen the seriousness of the offending.

Implication

Specific events such as the offending of close friends, economic crisis of family or the divorce of parents have effects on lowering the age of the first offending or escalating the seriousness of the offending. These results suggest that social welfare intervention is needed in specific problems like family disorganization, poverty, and adolescents' delinquent peers.