Discussion

As mentioned previously, the findings of this study are in line with previous research as significant negative relationships were found to exist between onset age and the other key criminal career variables: career length, versatility, chronicity and seriousness. This negative relationship highlights what previous research has found using an array of samples spanning first world countries such as Canada (Le Blanc, 1990), the United Kingdom (Farrington, 1995; Nagin et al., 1995) and the USA (McCord, 1979; Tracy & Kempf-Leonard, 1996; Tracy et al., 1990; Wolfgang et al., 1972). As onset age of offending increases, criminal career length, versatility, chronicity and seriousness decreases. The significant positive relationships between career length, versatility, chronicity, and seriousness indicate that as each increase so does the other. This finding is also consistent with previous research that has found that these are directly interrelated (Chaiken & Chaiken, 1982; Farrington et al., 1996; Monahan & Piquero, 2009; Reiss & Roth, 1993; Spelman, 1994; Tolan & Gorman-Smith, 1998). These results support the general criminal propensity theory posited by Gottfredson and Hirschi (1990) which

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indicates that as criminal propensity increases, so do career length, chronicity, versatility and seriousness while onset age decreases.

It can be noted that the average age of onset of offending (22.4 years) is higher than seen in a lot of studies. However, most studies have concentrated on examining juveniles or have used cohorts that extend from juvenile years to approximately 40 years. For example, Piquero et al. (2007) found that the average age of onset for their cohort studied followed up to age 32 was 18.12 years. In Chapter Two, it was noted that the follow up period in cohort studies affected the observed career length; the later the follow up age, the longer the career length. It is, therefore, likely that the follow up age might have the same effect on the average onset age; i.e. the later the follow up age the later the onset age. In this study, the onset age of offending ranged from 8.9 to 69.9 years which is one of the largest ranges to be found in empirical work and therefore by extension the average age of onset might be expected to be higher. Alternatively, the mode and the median onset age are lower than the mean which may indicate that large outliers may be skewing the mean onset age upwards.

Drug, sex and robbery offences were the most frequently committed first offences, and the offences of burglary, weapon, theft, assault and public order tended to occur at the beginning of the sample‟s criminal careers. Although a number of studies have also found that minor offences such as theft, public order and burglary offences occur earlier in the criminal career, these studies have found that assault tended to occur later (Le Blanc & Frechette, 1989; Piquero et al., 2007). The findings of the present study differ,

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therefore, in the latter respect. This, however, may be because assault offences are generally more common place in Barbados and, therefore, are likely to occur earlier in the criminal career of an offender from Barbados.

All of the variables significantly predicted career length, versatility, chronicity, and seriousness. However versatility was discovered to have the greatest influence of all predictors. This is a novel finding. It has been generally acknowledged that onset age is an important predictor of future criminal careers. However, versatility as an important predictor of criminal career variables has not previously surfaced in the literature. As versatility is measured by the number of the different kinds of crimes that an offender commits, it could be argued that it is a good indicator of the extent to which an offender is committed to a general criminal lifestyle (Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, 1991; Steffensmeier, 1986); consequently someone high on versatility might be more likely to start offending early, have a longer career, commit more offences, and commit more serious offences. Also, seriousness, not onset age, was the strongest predictor of versatility. This suggests that as criminals become more versatile they are more likely to include serious offences in their repertoire of offences.

When the relationship between the other key criminal career variables and offence types was examined it was found that, in general, if offenders had committed a certain type of crime, they were more likely to score higher on all key variables. The most obvious explanation for this is that given that there is considerable variability in the number of crimes committed, and those who have committed a larger number of crimes also tend to

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be more versatile, offenders who have committed any particular type of crime are likely to score higher on the key variables. However, sex and drug offenders tended to be different from the other types of offenders and each other in this respect. Sex offenders and drug offenders had the shortest career length, the lowest chronicity, the least versatility, and the lowest levels of seriousness. Indeed, non-sex offenders were more versatile than sex offenders and non-drug offenders were found to show more seriousness than drug offenders. These effects suggest that sex and drug offenders may be unique in some respect; for example, their motivation may be different from that involved in other types of crime, in that it may not involve material gain per se, nor general propensity to commit crime, but may correspond to more specific personal needs.

Burglary and theft offenders had the longest career length. These finding are in line with previous research (Le Blanc and Frechette, 1989). Additionally, burglary and weapon offenders were found to commit the most crimes, and murder and burglary offenders had the greatest versatility and their offences were most serious. These results are also consistent with previous research that has found that even violent offenders commit more property crime than violent crime and therefore may be more aptly considered frequent offenders (Dean et al., 1996; Piquero, 2000).

Taken as a whole, the initial findings in this study could be construed as supporting the general propensity theory of crime (Gottfredson & Hirschi, 1990). However, the findings in relation to sex and drug offenders suggest some support for a more discrete theory of criminal careers (Blumstein et al., 1986); such that these offenders are qualitatively

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distinct from the other types of offender (Piquero et al., 2007). In other words, whilst a general propensity may underlie much or even most criminal behaviour, offences such as those involving sex and drugs may be motivated more by other psychological process, such as dominant or impulsive psychological needs.

Canter (1996), for example, discusses the various psychological functions that sexual offending has for an offender and notes elements of the behaviour. He elaborates that sex offence behaviour may be used to satisfy sexual needs in addition to non-sexual needs such as anger, power, intimacy as well as general criminality. Cohen, Seghorn and Calmas (1969) also posit that sex offending can be impulsive and may be a crime of opportunity. Blackburn (1993) notes that sex offending is not homogeneous and may in fact reflect the psychological differences of offenders; this can also be said for drug offending. A number of studies have found that a large part of all crime, including property crime, is drug related; specifically substance use related (Moffitt, 1997; Patterson, Lennings & Davey, 2000). However, drug offending also results from drug- related enterprises that form the illegal drugs market (Zaluar, 2004). Zaluar (2004) reports that these enterprises encourage organisational practices and tactics that result in offending behaviour such as violence, aggression, fraud, and murder.

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