Developmental Offending Patterns: Female Offending Beyond the Reference Category

• Author: Kelsey Gushue,Raymond R. Corrado,Evan C. Mccuish
• Date: 01 February 2021
• Published date: 01 February 2021
• DOI: 10.1177/0093854820966729
• Subject Matter: Articles

CRIMINAL JUSTICE AND BEHAVIOR, 2021, Vol. 48, No. 2, February 2021, 139 –156.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0093854820966729

Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions

© 2020 International Association for Correctional and Forensic Psychology

139

DEVELOPMENTAL OFFENDING PATTERNS

Female Offending Beyond the Reference Category

KELSEY GUSHUE

EVAN C. MCCUISH

RAYMOND R. CORRADO

Simon Fraser University

Compared with young men, justice-involved young women are often characterized by a greater array of risk factors, yet show

a more limited pattern of offending. This paradox may be related to risk factors functioning differently not only for male

versus female adolescents but also among female adolescents involved in offending. Data were used on 284 girls from the

Incarcerated Serious and Violent Young Offender Study to address whether risk factors varied across different offending

trajectories modeled between ages 12 and 23. Risk factors measured from self-report interviews were compared across the

three trajectories identified. Individual, family, and school risk factors varied across trajectory groups, but not always in ways

anticipated. Female offending does not appear to fit neatly within existing developmental criminology theory. Theoretical

models should be adapted, or new models developed, to account for the complexities of female offending patterns.

Keywords: gender; justice-involved girls; longitudinal; trajectories; risk factors

INTRODUCTION

By the late 1990s, the “invisible girl” could be ignored no longer; officially recorded

violent crime among female youth was increasing1 and the gap in offending rates between

male and female youth was diminishing (Savoie, 1999). Two important questions to address

from a developmental criminology perspective include whether there are (a) distinct female

offending patterns across developmental periods and (b) key childhood and adolescent life

experiences that help explain these differences (Loeber & Le Blanc, 1990). These questions

were addressed in the current study by using a subsample of girls (n = 284) from the

AUTHORS’ NOTE: This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of

Canada (410-2004-1875). In addition, the authors gratefully acknowledge the assistance of the British

Columbia Ministry of Children and Family Development (MCFD). The views expressed herein are those of

the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the agencies that funded or supported the

research. The agencies providing support for the project were not involved in any aspect of the data collection/

analysis. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Kelsey Gushue, School of

Criminology, Simon Fraser University, 8888 University Drive, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada V5A 1S6;

e-mail: kgushue@sfu.ca

966729CJBXXX10.1177/0093854820966729Criminal Justice and BehaviorGushue et al. /

research-article2020

140 CRIMINAL JUSTICE AND BEHAVIOR

Incarcerated Serious and Violent Young Offender Study (ISVYOS; Corrado & McCuish,

2018) to study risk factors associated with offending trajectories between ages 12 and 23.

Daly’s (1992) feminist pathway perspective pushed back against conceptualizations of

young women involved in crime as a homogeneous group. Daly (1992) identified five

distinct pathways to female involvement in crime (e.g., harmed and harming, battered

women, street women, drug connected, and other). Since Daly’s (1992) initial study, path-

way investigation research identified pathways that are both unique to women involved in

crime (Gehring, 2018) and heterogeneous across female subgroups (Brennan et al., 2012;

Broidy et al., 2018; Salisbury & Van Voorhis, 2009). Feminist pathways research also

demonstrated the potential for variability in criminal history characteristics across identi-

fied pathways, such as age of onset, chronicity, and offense type (e.g., Brennan et al., 2012;

Broidy et al., 2018). Developmental frameworks have been slow to adopt these heteroge-

neous conceptions.

Moffitt’s (1993) dual taxonomy outlined two unique offending trajectories: adolescence

limited (AL) and life course persistent (LCP). AL offending emerges in mid adolescence

and then ends prior to adulthood. LCP offending emerges as young as childhood and con-

tinues at a high rate through adulthood. Risk factors for AL offending included observing

peers’ rewards for engaging in delinquency and attempting to bridge the maturity gap,

whereas risk factors for LCP offending included the interaction between neuropsychologi-

cal deficits and exposure to a negative environment (Moffitt, 1993). Moffitt and Caspi

(2001) argued that the dual taxonomy was generalizable to women, but that women were 10

times less likely than men to follow the LCP pathway. This assertion essentially reduced

female delinquency to a single dimension. More recent empirical studies have questioned

whether a single AL offending pattern sufficiently accounted for the heterogeneity of female

offending (El Sayed et al., 2017).

PATTERNS OF OFFENDING

Developmental theorists and proponents of the criminal career framework posited that

the age–crime curve represented an aggregation of several distinct offending trajectories.

Offending trajectories describe within-individual change or stability in patterns of offend-

ing over the life course. Although there are numerous examples of studies examining

offending trajectories, rarely do such studies include women (Jennings & Reingle, 2012),

and most studies that do rely on mixed samples rather than examining offending trajecto-

ries specific to a female sample (cf. Ahonen et al., 2016). Studies using mixed samples

showed that women were disproportionately associated with low-rate or nonoffending tra-

jectories compared with men (Block et al., 2010; Blokland et al., 2005; Bongers et al.,

2004; Broidy et al., 2015; Wiesner & Windle, 2004; Yessine & Bonta, 2008). These find-

ings reiterated assertions about the lack of heterogeneity in patterns of female offending

(Moffitt & Caspi, 2001).

Heterogeneity in female offending may be masked in samples that include both boys and

girls due to the disproportionately higher prevalence of male chronic offending. However,

investigations of community samples of women also identified limited heterogeneity. Three

trajectories were typically identified that were defined by nonoffending, low-rate offending,

and high-rate offending (Ahonen et al., 2016; Cohen et al., 2010; D’Unger et al., 2002;

Jennings et al., 2018; Loeber et al., 2017). In these studies, the nonoffending trajectory was