Deviant Identity and Offending: A Longitudinal Study of South Korean Youths

This study examines deviant identity in relation to youth offending by combining items tapping both self-appraisal and reflected appraisal. In particular, using survey data from 3,446 Korean youth across five waves of the Korea Youth Panel Survey (KYPS), findings from group-based trajectory modeling (GBTM) present four distinct offending groups—a high-rate chronic group, stable non-offending group, adolescence-limited group, and declining group. Then, findings from the multinomial logit model reveal that deviant identity is a robust predictor of offending for subgroups of adolescents involved in offending at any level in comparison to stable non-offenders. Accordingly, this study supports the idea that deviant identity should be considered as a prominent predictor of a variety of types of youth offending.