On the relationships between gender, early onset, and the seriousness of offending

Building on previous research implicating the age of onset as a predictor of later patterns of delinquent activity, data from subjects participating in the Philadelphia Collaborative Perinatal Project (CPP) are combined with criminal history records from the Philadelphia Police Department to explore the relationships between gender, early onset, and the seriousness of offending. Findings suggest that an early onset before age fourteen is predictive of serious offending by age eighteen, with the earliest onset ages relating to the most severe delinquency patterns. This relationship holds in the full sample after controls for relevant variables; however after controlling for variables considered in the full sample model, the early onset→seriousness of offending relationship holds for males, but vanishes for females. The theoretical and policy implications of these findings and potential directions for future research are discussed.