Joint developmental trajectories of victimisation and offending in young people

This presentation examines adolescent offending and victimisation trajectories over 5 annual sweeps, using joint latent trajectory modelling, The offending and victimisation summaries were made up of questions that were only present at every sweep to ensure a comparable set of results. The sample of 4,300 young people (age 13-17, 51% male) is from the Edinburgh Study of Youth Transitions and Crime. The results of the study showed that there was strong evidence for a positive relationship between offending and victimisation. Several trajectories were identified; a low offending, low victimisation trajectory, a high offending, high victimisation trajectory, and a decreasing trajectory decreasing on both offending and victimisation. A significant difference in gender and family structure was seen between the classes of the final model; males and those who do not live with both of their parents were seen to be more dominant in the higher offending trajectories, while the low trajectories were dominantly female and those who do live with both parents. A subsequent investigation into attrition also indicated that there is a higher chance of drop out in the higher offending trajectories.