SeCollege : researching the potential for the establishment of a secure college in the Maltese Islands

Abstract

Criminal career research shows that the early age of onset of offending is that of between 8 and 14 years old, whilst offending prevalence peaks between 15 and 19 years. On the other hand, adolescents desist at the age of 20 to the age of 29 thus many children manifesting antisocial tendencies enter adulthood in a conformist way (Farrington, 1992). Desistence has also been attribution to marriage, job satisfaction, and internal migration to better neighborhoods (Laub and Sampson, 2001; Horney, Osgood and Marshall, 1995) which factors serve as crime preventers as against crime promoters (Ekblom, 2010). This said, the relationship between marriage and offending needs to be analysed in view of spouses’ characteristics since a spouse who also manifests “antisocial tendencies” could encourage rather than discourage crime thus adopting the role of the “crime promoter”. In other words, this is directly linked to the concept of assortative partnering which has been identified as a risk and/or mediating factor to the continuity of crime across generations of Maltese Families (Formosa Pace, 2015). However, for most juveniles, according to Moffitt (1993, p.674) criminal activities tend to be temporary and situational whilst for a small minority this is “stable and persistent”. Moffitt (1993, p.682) claims that if a child “steps off on the wrong foot”, and remains on this unconventional path, the consequences may be perpetuated by persistent offending. In such a situation, it is difficult to make up for lost opportunities in acquiring conventional skills such as academic skills.