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Can they recover? An assessment of adult adjustment problems among males in the abstainer, recovery, life-course persistent, and adolescence-limited pathways followed up to age 56 in the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 June 2015

Wesley G. Jennings ,
Michael Rocque ,
Bryanna Hahn Fox ,
Alex R. Piquero  and
David P. Farrington
Wesley G. Jennings*
Affiliation:
University of South Florida
Michael Rocque
Affiliation:
Bates College
Bryanna Hahn Fox
Affiliation:
University of South Florida
Alex R. Piquero
Affiliation:
University of Texas at Dallas
David P. Farrington
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
*
Address correspondence and reprint requests to: Wesley G. Jennings, Department of Criminology, College of Behavioral & Community Sciences, SOC 309, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL 33620; E-mail: jenningswgj@usf.edu.
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Abstract

Much research has examined Moffitt's developmental taxonomy, focusing almost exclusively on the distinction between life-course persistent and adolescence-limited offenders. Of interest, a handful of studies have identified a group of individuals whose early childhood years were marked by extensive antisocial behavior but who seemed to recover and desist (at least from severe offending) in adolescence and early adulthood. We use data from the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development to examine the adult adjustment outcomes of different groups of offenders, including a recoveries group, in late middle adulthood, offering the most comprehensive investigation of this particular group to date. Findings indicate that abstainers comprise the largest group of males followed by adolescence-limited offenders, recoveries, and life-course persistent offenders. Furthermore, the results reveal that a host of adult adjustment problems measured at ages 32 and 48 in a number of life-course domains are differentially distributed across these four offender groups. In addition, the recoveries and life-course persistent offenders often show the greatest number of adult adjustment problems relative to the adolescence-limited offenders and abstainers.

Type
Regular Articles
Information
Development and Psychopathology , Volume 28 , Issue 2 , May 2016 , pp. 537 - 549
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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