Can the interaction of offending propensity and criminogenic exposure explain reoffending among justice-involved adolescents?

Much of developmental life-course criminology (DLC) research has been devoted to identifying early life and proximal risk factors for adolescent offending, however an understanding of how these risks combine to shape a causal path to offending has been lacking until recently. Wikström and colleagues' Situational Action Theory (SAT) (2012) articulates a causal model of crime, contending that offending behaviour can be predicted by the interaction of an individual's offending propensity and their exposure to criminogenic settings. While evidence has accrued supporting SAT in general population adolescent samples, SAT has not yet been examined in justice-involved adolescent populations, where high frequency offending behaviour is more prevalent. We examined the core proposition of SAT in a sample of 3287 adolescents aged 10 to 16 years who were sentenced to their first supervised youth justice order in Queensland, Australia, drawing on linked youth justice data, proven offences and assessments undertaken using the YLS-CMI, a structured assessment tool designed to capture risks of antisocial behaviour. A series of OLS regression models with robust standard errors was used to examine how indicators of offending propensity and criminogenic exposure predict reoffending among youth justice-involved adolescents.