The Life-Course of Serious and Violent Youth Grown Up

Book excerpt: The Life-Course of Serious and Violent Youth Grown Up addresses significant gaps in the literature on youth involved in chronic, serious, and violent offending. Through longitudinal research and a long follow-up into adulthood, it challenges common perceptions about offending outcomes. Using theoretically grounded, methodologically sophisticated and empirically driven research, this book culminates 20 years of data emerging from the Incarcerated Serious and Violent Young Offender Study (ISVYOS). Initiated in 1998 to understand the origins of serious and violent youth offending, it follows 1,719 formerly incarcerated youth through adulthood and offers a contemporary perspective to questions about chronic offending in adolescence and social and offending outcomes in adulthood. The authors provide a theoretically framed examination of new findings from the ISVYOS regarding participants’ justice system involvement, from onset to persistence to desistance. Most participants experienced continued involvement in the justice system in adulthood. However, contrary to past literature, ISVYOS findings challenge static descriptions of chronic offending and notions of the youth "super predator". ISVYOS findings also challenge assertions that experiences and risk factors in childhood and adolescence are not informative of adult justice system involvement. Together, the findings call for a more humanistic approach that recognizes that the complex lives of individuals formerly incarcerated in adolescence implies that desistance does not happen by default. This book will be of great interest to scholars, researchers, and students of forensic psychology, developmental and life course criminology, youth justice, and violent crime.