Exposure to Community Violence and Trajectories of Violent Offending

Abstract

The present study uses longitudinal data from the Pathways to Desistance project to investigate the extent to which trajectories of violent youth offending are affected by exposure to community violence. Latent class growth analysis was used to identify groups that followed distinctive patterns of self-reported violent offending and exposure to violence over time. Multinominal regression was used to identify factors that distinguished membership in the trajectory subgroups. The results indicate that youth who had more chronic and direct exposure to community violence were more likely to remain mired in violent criminal behavior, independent of other known risk factors.