A national population based examination of the association between age-versatility trajectories and recidivism rates

•Tests competing theories of juvenile offending on subsequent recidivism.•Examine the age-versatility curve pre-first-conviction and recidivism association.•Trajectory modeling identified specialization and versatility groups.•Cox models show that pre-conviction high-stable-versatility increased recidivism.•Results were generally consistent with the taxonomic theory of crime.

PurposeTo compare theoretical explanations of the age-versatility curve including the hypotheses of: self-control theory stating that versatility is followed by specialization; taxonomic theory stating that adolescent-limited offenders are specialists and life-course offenders are versatile and orthogenetic theory stating that specialization and versatility are present in a large number of offender groups.MethodsThese explanations were tested with Israeli national population-based data on all first and subsequent juvenile offenders (n = 17,176) with 248,114 registered police contacts from 1996 to 2008.ResultsSemi-parametric group-based modeling identified two trajectory-groups that characterized the age-versatility curve of police contacts before first conviction. The trajectory-groups were labeled as versatility (n = 2,447; 14.2%), and specialization (n = 14,729; 85.8%). After controlling for 19 documented demographic, familial, and criminogenic risk factors, Cox regression showed that juvenile offenders in the versatility group were at increased risk of recidivism compared to offenders in the specialization group.ConclusionsThese results partially adhere with taxonomic theory than the remaining theories and indicate that assuming a trajectory of elevated pre-conviction versatility increases the risk of recidivism.