Criminal Career Research - A Review of Recent Evidence (From Crime and Justice - An Annual Review of Research - Volume 2, P 321-379, 1980, Norval Morris and Michael Tonry, ed. - See NCJ-74239)

• NCJ Number: 74243
• Author(s): J Petersilia
• Date Published: 1980
• Length: 59 pages
• Sale Source: University of Chicago Press
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This overview of criminal career research is based on four active research programs: the Rand Habitual Criminals Program; the Philadelphia Birth Cohort Study (1972 to Present); the Racine, Wisc., Birth Cohort Studies (1974 to Present); and the Carnegie-Mellon Research Program on Incapacitation.

Abstract

A criminal career may consist of a single, undiscovered, easily excused lapse or a high level of sustained involvement in serious crime. Modern criminal career research derives largely from policy concerns about the likely crime preventive effects of incapacitative sanctions. Consequently, criminal career research tends to be more concerned with sustained careers than with minor criminal careers. If a small number of individuals commits a disproportionate number of serious criminal acts and if they can be identified and confined early in their careers, the argument goes, significant numbers of serious criminal offenses could be prevented. The leading criminal career research, much of it unpublished, has produced useful results, but cannot provide guidance to policy makers on the use of sanctions. Less than 15 percent of the general population will be arrested for commission of a felony and about one-half of these will never be arrested for another. Only about 5 percent of the population will demonstrate the beginnings of a sustained criminal career, but once 3 contacts with the police have been recorded, the probability of another such contact will be very high. Most criminal careers begin early in life, commonly between the ages of 14 and 17 and often for expressive reasons. Serious criminal careers are often continued for instrumental reasons. Repetitive offenders tend not to specialize narrowly; the mix of offenses may shift from one stage of a sustained criminal career to the next, often increasing in seriousness. Offense rates depend on the offender's age, criminal record, and the offense type committed. Arrest, conviction, and incarceration rates increase as the career advances; offense rates tend to decline, however. Continuing criminal careers are not necessarily marked by a growth in sophistication and income or of geographic range. Although it is clear that a small portion of the universe of known offenders commits a disproportionate number of offenses, the data accumulated to date on criminal careers do not permit prospective identification of such offenders or the prediction of the crime reduction effects of alternative sentencing policies. Footnotes, tabular data, and 86 references are appended. (Author abstract modified).