Onset and persistence among young offenders during an exceptional event: evidence from New South Wales, Australia

Developmental and life-course criminologists have long been interested in the criminal careers of individuals, and particularly why an individual starts their offending, why they continue, and why they stop. Two of these criminal career parameters—known as onset and persistence—have perhaps been the most researched in the discipline. However, no scholarly work to date has explored to what extent these two parameters were impacted during the COVID-19 pandemic. In this study, we use unit-record data for individuals born in 2004 in New South Wales drawn from the Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research (BOCSAR) Reoffending Database (ROD) to explore how the rate of onset and persistence were impacted during the first two years of the pandemic. Our analysis shows that the cumulative rate of onset declined by 17 percent compared to a cohort born two years prior. We find that these declines are clustered mainly in property offending, such as stealing, with some smaller declines in onset witnessed for violent offending. However, we find very few impacts on the rate of persistent offending among this cohort—in fact, these offenders committed 10 percent more property offences during the COVID-19 period than their older counterparts. We think that the disruption to routine activities and guardianship are most likely responsible for the decline in new onset, but we do not think these same mechanisms are responsible for the limited changes among high frequency offenders. The implications of these results for the field are discussed and future research areas are identified.