Life-Course Persistent Offenders and the Propensity to Commit Sexual Assault

Abstract

Moffitt's (1993) developmental theory has garnered an extensive amount of attention from scholars across a range of disciplines, and the results generated from this body of literature have been consistently supportive. Specifically, the segment of the population predicted by Moffitt to be chronically aggressive-called life-course persistent offenders-has been found to account for a disproportionate number of serious crimes. What remains less certain, however, is whether this same group of offenders are also responsible for perpetrating acts of forced sex. The authors examined the tendency for life-course persisters to sexually assault using a nationally representative sample of individuals. Our findings suggest that life-course persisters are disproportionately more likely to be sexually coercive compared to other individuals.

A unified crime theory: The evolutionary taxonomy

“…A result that indirectly supports some of the predictions offered by Boutwell et al (2013) concerns race differences in the experience of prenatal complications. As Tucker and colleagues (2007) point out, the risk for experiencing birth complications in black women has been roughly four times that of white women for a considerable amount of time (i.e., decades).…”

“…AL offenders and abstainers are expected to fall closer to K on the life history spectrum, displaying greater parental investment and less reproductive output. Initial tests of these ideas have offered some support for these statements (e.g., Boutwell et al, 2013). Moving forward, it remains to be seen whether the evolutionary taxonomic approach will be successful in unifying the fields of evolutionary psychology and criminology.…”

“…As Penke and colleagues (2007; p. 563) note, balancing selection -…occurs when both extremes of the same trait dimension are favoured by selection to the same degree under different conditions.‖ There are several ways in which balancing selection might operate; however, we highlight one pathway in particular as it was suggested by Boutwell et al (2013) in regard to LCP offending: negative frequency dependent selection. This variant of balancing selection works via pressures in the social environment of organisms (Penke et al, 2007).…”

“…10 evolutionary taxonomy of offending drawing on the concepts proposed by Rushton (1985a;1985b), Wiebe (2012), and Ellis (1988), while building on the propositions already articulated by Boutwell et al (2013).…”

Re-Examining of Moffitt’s Theory of Delinquency through Agent Based Modeling

“…While our work is the first computational modeling test of Moffitt’s dual taxonomy, which she first proposed in 1993 [ 9 ] and thereafter reviewed in 2003 [ 46 ], there have been many empirical studies to validate her theory [ 47 , 48 ]. There are other researchers who propose various configurations or groupings [ 49 – 51 ]—but the simplest building block for all these other variations would be Moffitt’s two groups.…”