title: Co-offending and the diversification of crime types.
abstract: There is theoretical and empirical support for co-offending being important not only for understanding current offending but also subsequent offending. The fundamental question is--why? In this article, an aggregate analysis is performed that begins to answer this question. Disaggregating solo- and co-offending by single year of age (12-29 years) and crime type in a largely metropolitan data set from British Columbia, Canada, 2002 to 2006, it is shown that the distribution of co-offences is significantly more varied than the distribution of solo offences. This more varied distribution of co-offences favors property crimes during youth but fades as offenders age.
authors.affiliation: School of Criminology, Institute for Canadian Urban Research Studies, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada. andresen@sfu.ca
authors.forename: Martin A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Andresen
authors.forename: Marcus
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Felson
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D001955:British Columbia; D015984:Causality; D002648:Child; D003415:Crime / Q000145:classification / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence* / Q000523:psychology / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D015994:Incidence; D007604:Juvenile Delinquency / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence / Q000523:psychology / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D008297:Male; D011329:Prisoners / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D012008:Recurrence; D012307:Risk Factors; D012932:Social Facilitation; D012933:Social Identification; D014505:Urban Population / Q000706:statistics & numerical data