Youth offending during an exceptional event: a developmental view of the COVID-19 pandemic

Developmental and life-course perspectives in criminology have provided valuable frameworks for conceptualising and understanding the trajectory and development of criminal behaviour. Historically, these perspectives have emphasised the importance of major life events and ‘turning points’ in shaping an individual’s trajectory both into and out of crime. The emergence of unprecedented exceptional events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, have challenged existing theoretical paradigms and opened new pathways of research for criminologists. Indeed, criminologists quickly documented large declines among adult offending populations, and, later, a smaller subset of scholars documented similar declines among youth offending populations. Compared to the large body of research conducted on adult offending populations, only a handful of studies have been conducted on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on young offenders and their offending.

It is here that the current thesis makes its contribution. The principal aim of this thesis is to examine the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on offending and criminal career dimensions for young people entering mid to late adolescence in the first stages of the pandemic in the state of New South Wales (NSW), Australia. To do so, this thesis utilises unit-record offence-level data from the Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research (BOCSAR) for individuals born in 2000, 2002, and 2004. The main interest in this thesis is the criminal justice contact of those born in 2004 during the first two years of the pandemic when COVID-19 restrictions were in place. This cohort was chosen because they were entering mid-adolescence, a key time for the onset and escalation of criminal offending, as COVID-19 restrictions were first introduced.

Using these data, the research disentangles the various parameters of the criminal career paradigm among a cohort of young people during the first two years of an exceptional event. Overall, substantial declines in the prevalence and frequency offending and the rate of onset among the 2004 cohort are found when compared to the older cohorts at the developmentally equivalent time. The research finds that the pandemic had no discernible impact on the rate of offending among persistent offenders and instead document an increasing concentration to property offending among this group during the two years of the pandemic. These findings hold true across gender, suggesting a generalised and broad impact on young people and their offending. Further, the geographical concentration of offending during the COVID-19 pandemic is investigated and it is documented that the 2004 cohorts offending became more concentrated towards the Sydney area during COVID-19 lockdowns. Finally, it is shown that the declines in some criminal career parameters are larger in some areas where COVID-19 restrictions were harsher. The theoretical implications of these findings for the fields of developmental and life-course criminology and exceptional event criminology are discussed, and future areas of research are identified.