From Late Childhood Minor Delinquency to Early Adult Offending: The Long Reach of Psychological Inertia

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine whether crime continuity runs from late childhood minor delinquency to early adult criminal offending, and if so, whether it can be accounted for by psychological inertia. Moral neutralization and cognitive impulsivity were evaluated as mediators of the minor delinquency–criminal offending relationship in a further test of the psychological inertia theorem. Participants were 2,669 (1,267 boys, 1,402 girls) youth followed from age 9, when their involvement in minor delinquency was gauged, to age 22, when they were asked if they had accrued any criminal charges in the past 4 years. The results of a causal mediation analysis revealed significant indirect effects linking minor delinquency to adult criminal charges via moral neutralization and cognitive impulsivity at age 15, which supports the mediation postulate of the psychological inertia theorem. These effects were cumulative, consistent with the additive postulate of the psychological inertia theorem. Although the mediating effects were small, they spanned a period of 13 years and showed that antisocial beliefs and attitudes are among the factors that link early expressions of antisocial behavior to later and more serious expressions of criminality.