“Cohort Profile: The Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development (CSDD)”, 2021-03-21 ():
The Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development (CSDD) is a prospective longitudinal study of 411 London males who were first assessed in 1961–196262ya at age 8–9. The main aim of the CSDD is to study the development of offending and antisocial behavior from childhood to adulthood.
The males have been interviewed 9× from age 8 to age 48, and they have been searched in criminal records up to age 61. Their parents, children, teachers, peers, and female partners have also been interviewed. Numerous childhood, adolescent, and adult factors have been measured, including individual, family, and socio-economic factors.
Up to age 61, 44% of the males were convicted of criminal offences. The CSDD has advanced knowledge about criminal careers, risk factors for offending, the life success and health of offenders, and the effects of life events on the course of development of offending.
The CSDD shows how a combination of childhood adversities tends to lead to a combination of adult adversities including offending. Early prevention programmes are needed to interrupt this development and reduce the intergenerational transmission of offending and antisocial behavior.
[Keywords: longitudinal, offending, risk factors, life success, criminal career]
…In addition to 399 males from these 6 schools, 12 males from a local school for “educationally subnormal” (special needs) children were included in the sample, in an attempt to make it more representative of the population of males living in the area. Therefore, the males were not a probability sample drawn from a population, but rather a complete population of males of that age in that area at that time.
Most of the males (357 or 87%) were White in appearance and of British origin, in the sense that they were being brought up by parents who had themselves been brought up in England, Scotland, or Wales. Of the remaining 54 males, 12 were African-Caribbean, having at least one parent of West Indian (usually) or African origin. Of the remaining 42 males of non-British origin, 14 had at least one parent from the North or South of Ireland, 12 had parents from Cyprus, and the other 16 males were White and had at least one parent from another Western industrialized country.
On the basis of their fathers’ occupations when they were aged 8, 94% of the males could be described as working-class (categories III, IV, or V on the Registrar General’s scale, describing skilled, semi-skilled, or unskilled manual workers), in comparison with the national figure of 78% at that time. A majority of the males were living in conventional two-parent families with both a father and a mother figure; at age 8, only 6% of the males had no operative father and only 1% had no operative mother. This was, therefore, overwhelmingly a traditional White, urban, working-class sample of British origin.
…It is important to have a high response rate in criminological studies because the most elusive and uncooperative people tend to be the most antisocial, and therefore the most interesting to criminologists. For example, 1973 (p. 77) reported that parents who were rated as uncooperative (5%) or reluctant (5%) in the initial interviews when the male was age 8 were substantially more likely to have sons who were later convicted as juveniles (40% compared to 18%). Similarly, 1977 (pg165) showed that 36% of the males who were the most difficult to interview at age 18 were convicted, in comparison with 22% of the remainder.
…During the interviews, the males were asked to self-report offences that they had committed that had not necessarily come to the notice of the police. The most important interviews were at ages 14, 18, 32, and 48. During these 4 age ranges, almost all of the males (93%) said that they had committed at least one of 8 types of offences (burglary, theft of motor vehicles, theft from motor vehicles, shoplifting, theft from machines, assault, drug use, and vandalism), which account for the majority of all conviction offences. However, only 29% had been convicted for at least one of these offences during the same age ranges. Based on the commission of 8 offences, the average age of onset was much earlier according to self-reports (10.3, compared with 19.1 according to convictions up to age 56). Similarly, the average age of desistance was much later in self-reports (35.2, compared with 25.1 according to convictions for these 8 offences). The probability of a self-reported offence leading to a conviction was highest for burglary and theft of vehicles (both 28%) and lowest for fraud and theft from work (both 1%; see et al 2014.)