Parsing Apart the Persisters: Etiological Mechanisms and Criminal Offense Patterns of Moderate- and High-level Persistent Offenders

Longitudinal investigations that have applied Moffitt's dual taxonomic framework to criminal offending have provided support for the existence of adolescent-limited and life-course persistent antisocial individuals, and have also identified additional trajectories; for instance, rather than a single persistent trajectory, studies have found both high-level and moderate-level persistent offenders. The current study found that moderate-level persisters' etiology and criminal offense patterns were most similar to high-level persisters, but there were notable differences. Specifically, increasing levels of contextual adversity characterized both moderate-level and high-level persisting trajectories, but moderate-level persisters reported consistently lower levels of environmental risk. While both high- and moderate-level persisters committed more drug-related offenses in early adulthood compared to adolescence, moderate-level persisters engaged in lower levels of antisocial behavior across all types of criminal offenses. Taken cumulatively, the findings of this study suggest that socio-contextual interventions may be effective in reducing both moderate- and high-level persistence in crime. (Publisher abstract modified)