Adolescence-limited versus life-course-persistent criminal behaviour in adolescent psychiatric inpatients

A nation-wide sample of 1072 Norwegian adolescent psychiatric inpatients we re followed up 1533 (mean 23.8) years after hospitalisation, by record link age to the National Register of Criminality. Defining criminal behaviour as entry into the criminal registry, 481 patients (45%) had an adolescent cri minal debut, entering the registry before the age of 21. Of these, 130 (27% ) had no criminal record after the age of 21 and were consequently consider ed as adolescence-limited criminal offenders, as opposed to the remaining 3 51 (73%) individuals who continued their criminal behaviour beyond the age of 21 and were considered as life-course-persistent criminal offenders. On the basis of hospital records, all patients were rediagnosed according to D SM-IV and scored on factors hypothesised to have predictive power as to per sistence of criminal behaviour. We found that 79.6% of the male, and 58.8% of the female adolescent delinquents went on to life-course-persistent crim inality. In females, intravenous use of illegal drugs, and being discharged from the hospital elsewhere than to the family home, were strong and indep endent predictors of life-course-persistent criminal behaviour. In males, t he following were significant and independent predictors of life-course-per sistent criminality: a high number of conduct disorder criteria fulfilled, comorbidity of psychoactive substance use disorder, and having attended cor rectional school.