A comparative network analysis of the criminogenic needs of male emerging adult first-time offenders, repeated offenders, and university students

Abstract

We compared facets of criminogenic needs between male young offenders and university students in Hong Kong and assessed the interrelationships between criminogenic needs across the samples using network analysis. The participants, aged between 18 and 23 years old, were 183 incarcerated first-time offenders (age = 19.6 years), 214 incarcerated repeated offenders (age = 19.8 years), and 113 university students (age = 19.6 years). The results show that incarcerated emerging adults had significantly greater criminogenic needs as compared with university students, while no difference between first-time and repeated offenders was found. Gang membership did not have main or moderating effects on criminogenic needs. Regularized Graphical Gaussian Models revealed that the criminogenic needs were clustered comparably across the three groups, while the network comparison test showed that the first-time and repeated-offender networks had significant structure invariance compared with the non-offender network. Differences in highly central nodes in terms of expected influence and bridge expected influence between networks were revealed.