Onset and the type of offence

View the most recent version.

Figure 28 shows the distribution of ages of onset for each type of offence: that is, the age at which an alleged offender was first apprehended for a particular type of offence.¹ The three age-of-onset curves are similar to the overall curve (Figure 25), except that onset for "other" offences remains very low before the 12^th birthday, then increases rapidly, surpassing the rate for offences against the person at 15 years of age, and continuing to rise to the end of the period of the study. Onset for the other two types of offence peaks at 15 years of age.

The rate of onset of each type of offence is rather different for girls than for boys (Figures 29 and 30). The increase with age in the proportion of girls committing their first recorded property offence is much greater in the early teenage years than that of offences against the person or other offences. Although it decreases after the age of 15, the proportions of girls committing their first recorded property offence at 16 and 17 years are still more than twice as high as the proportions committing their first offence against the person or other offences. The pattern for boys is similar to that for the combined sexes (Figure 28), except that the proportion of boys committing their first recorded "other" offence at 17 years of age is greater than the proportions committing their first property or person offences.

---

Note

1. For example, a person whose first recorded property offence was at 9 years old, and first recorded "other" offence at 11 years old, and had no recorded offences against the person, would have two offence-specific ages of onset, and contribute to two offence-specific age-of-onset curves.