Summary and conclusions

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This report has examined the involvement in police-reported crime during 1995 to 2005 of children and youth born in 1987 and 1990, in the parts of Canada covered by the Incident-Based Uniform Crime Reporting Survey. The coverage of the UCR2 Survey during this period was about half of Canada by population. The police-reported offences committed by each member of the study population were linked together to form records of their delinquent careers. Each person was tracked for exactly 10 years: those born in 1987 were tracked from their 8^th birthday to the day before their 18^th birthday, and those born in 1990 were tracked from their 5^th to the day before their 15^th birthday.

By their 18^th birthday, just under one-fifth (18.5%) of all persons born in 1987 had been recorded by police as having committed a criminal offence: one-quarter of boys and one-eighth of girls. One in 11 boys had allegedly committed an offence against the person, one in six an offence against property, and one in ten an other offence. Thus, particularly in the case of boys, recorded delinquency is fairly widespread among the population. This finding is consistent with similar research conducted in other countries (reviewed in Piquero et al., 2003), and with Canadian research based on youth court records (Carrington et al., 2005).

The great majority of these young offenders were involved in recorded crime during their teenage years and not as children: less than 2% of persons born in 1987 and 1990 were involved in recorded crime prior to their 12^th birthday. To some extent, this may reflect under-reporting by the public or under-recording by police of criminal activity prior to the age of criminal responsibility. Although this study ends at the 18^th birthday, there is no sign that the numbers of new first-time recorded offenders were levelling off at that age: on the contrary, it appears likely that substantially more than one-fifth of the population would be recorded as criminal offenders if the age range covered by the study were extended. This is also confirmed by the results of research in other countries which has tracked criminal activity into early and middle adulthood (Piquero et al., 2003), and by Canadian research using court data which found that 43% of persons appearing in court between the 12^th and 22^nd birthdays had been charged for the first time in their lives in connection with an alleged offence committed after their 18^th birthday (Carrington et al., 2005).

The number of children and youth involved in recorded crime increases with each year of age from very few 5 year olds to a peak of one in every 17 persons at the age of 16. Peak participation in recorded crime is reached one year earlier by girls, at 15. The proportion of property offenders decreases with age from more than 90% of 5 year old offenders to 50% of 17 year olds, while the proportion of offenders against the person increases from less than 10% of 5 year olds to 30% of 17 year olds. "Other" offenders increase from zero at 5 years old to more than 40% of offenders at 17, and the proportion of "other" offenders shows no sign of levelling off, unlike the other two categories of offenders.

The average number of recorded offences committed per year by offenders also increases with age, but not as dramatically as the prevalence of offenders among the population. It rises from an average of 1.1 incidents for 5 to 8 year old offenders to a peak of 1.8 incidents per 15 year old offender: 1.9 for boys and 1.4 for girls. The increase in average activity from 8 to 11 years of age is largely in offences against the person by boys; from 12 to 15 years, it is largely in administrative and drug offences by both sexes.

While recorded criminal activity is fairly widespread among Canadian youth, the amount of recorded crime committed by most child and teenage offenders is quite small and concentrated among the less serious types of crime. The term "delinquent career" is rather a misnomer for almost two-thirds of offenders born in 1987—59% of boys and 76% of girls—who had only one recorded offence during the observation period. Only 10% of offenders born in 1987 had five or more recorded offences, and might therefore be called "chronic" or "persistent" offenders. These offenders averaged 11 recorded offences each, and were responsible as a group for 46% of all recorded crime committed by the 1987 birth cohort. Overall, offenders born in 1987 committed an average of 2.4 recorded offences, or 2.1 if administrative offences are excluded, over the 10-year period from their 8^th to their 18^th birthday.

About one-quarter (24%) of the offences allegedly committed by these youth were minor thefts, and 15% were either minor property damage ("mischief"), possession of stolen property, or fraud. Nine percent were minor assaults and 10% were drug offences, almost all being simple possession of cannabis. However, almost one-fifth (18%) were very serious offences: robbery, assault with a weapon or causing bodily harm, sexual assault, other offences against the person, break and enter, and major theft. No evidence was found that delinquent careers tend to progress from less to more serious offences. The notion of "progression" is inapplicable to the majority of careers, which consist of only one offence. However, even among repeat offenders, the offences which occurred later in the career were not, on average, more serious than those occurring earlier.

Little evidence was found of specialization in one type of crime on the part of these offenders, even when the type of crime is defined very broadly in the three categories of offences against the person, against property, and "other" offences. Two-thirds of repeat offenders born in 1987 had more than one type of crime in their career. Furthermore, there is a strong inverse relationship between specialization in one type of crime and the number of offences in the career: 50% of delinquent careers with only two recorded offences were specialized, compared with 20% of those with 5 offences, and 10% of careers with 10 or more offences. This suggests that where "specialization" is observed, it is more a function of committing few offences than of a tendency to specialize on the part of the offender. Among the 35% of repeat offenders with specialized careers, 24% were specialized in property offending, 7% in offences against the person, and 4% in "other" offences.

The recorded age of onset of a delinquent career is defined as the age at which the first recorded offence was allegedly committed. The number of offenders with recorded onset during childhood is very low, and rises rapidly during the teenage years. If childhood onset is defined as occurring before the 12^th birthday, then 11% of offenders in both cohorts were childhood-onset offenders. The peak age for recorded onset of offending is 15, when 3.7% of all persons born in 1987 began their delinquent careers: 4.8% of boys and 2.6% of girls. The peak age for boys is one year later at 16, when 4.9% began their delinquent careers. Thus, almost one in 10 of all boys born in 1987 – or about 40% of male offenders born in 1987 – began their delinquent careers at 15 or 16 years of age. The peak age of onset for offences against the person and against property is also 15, but the peak age of onset for other offences is unknown, as the numbers continue to rise to the end of the period of observation (the 18^th birthday).

Consistent with the results of other research, it was found that childhood-onset offenders tend to have delinquent careers which last longer within the limits of the period of observation and include more criminal incidents than offenders with later onset. However, it is adolescent-onset offenders who are responsible, as a group, for most recorded crime (83%), because there are many more of them – they make up 89% of all offenders in the study.

It is difficult to draw conclusions about the duration of the delinquent and criminal careers of this population, because no information was available on their offending after the 18^th birthday. Thus, we do not know whether their "delinquent careers" continued into adulthood as "criminal careers". Fifty-nine percent of offenders in this study had a recorded offence during the last 2 years of observation and therefore might well have had careers which extended beyond the period of observation. Indeed, a substantial proportion of all the offenders in this population had careers which began only in the last 2 years of observation. The remaining 41% of careers which could be considered to have ended before the 18^th birthday were typically of very short duration. About four-fifths had only one recorded offence, and therefore a duration of zero. The remaining completed careers (comprising about 9% of all delinquent careers) had an average duration of 1 year and 3 months.

It is tempting to see the age-crime curve in Figure 1 as summarizing the shape of the developmental curves of the many delinquent careers included in this study. However, that would be a serious misinterpretation. Very few of the recorded delinquent careers in this study spanned the entire 10 year period of observation. Rather, the curve shown in Figure 1 represents the aggregation of many very short careers and a few longer ones – the majority, indeed, comprising only one offence and therefore appearing in Figure 1 as a constituent of only a single point. For the majority of offenders in this study, the concept of the "delinquent career" is not really applicable. Even among repeat offenders, most delinquent careers are of short duration and include few recorded offences. On the other hand, the few "chronic" or "persistent" offenders – comprising 10% of offenders born in 1987 - who committed five or more recorded offences over the 10-year period, were responsible for a disproportionate amount (46%) of all crime committed by members of this birth cohort.