Assessing changes in offending behaviour in a national cohort - An application of latent transition analysis

This paper emerges from previous work which has focused on patterns of offending behaviour (Francis et al, 2004; Soothill et al, 2007). In that work, we identified 15 distinct patterns of offending behaviour for males, and 5 patterns for females amongst 16-20 year olds. Using a national cohort of those offenders born in 1958, we expand this work by looking at criminal behaviour between the ages of 10 to 40, focusing on flows and transitions between these various patterns of behaviour. Taking a sample of over 10,000 offenders and considering their conviction histories, we use latent transition analysis to search for patterns of distinct offending behavior ,and to estimate transitions between these distinct classes of behaviour at particular points in time. Latent transition analysis allows both latent classes and transitions to be estimated simultaneously, and gives insight into the major flows and pathways of offenders in their criminal behaviour. This paper aims to offer both substantive and methodological insights into the criminal life course.