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White-Collars and Black Sheep: A Twenty-Year Criminological Follow-Up of White-Collar Ex-Offenders

NCJ Number
181432
Journal
Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology Volume: 32 Issue: 3 Dated: December 1999 Pages: 303-314
Author(s)
Keith Soothill; Brian Francis; Gabriel Escarela
Date Published
December 1999
Length
12 pages
Annotation
This article describes the analysis of the outcomes of a 20-year criminological follow-up of a consecutive series of 348 male ex-offenders seeking white-collar employment who were offered the services of a specialist employment agency in the early 1970s.
Abstract
The study demonstrated the value of a more sophisticated statistical analysis which combines survival analysis with smoothing models; this provided new insights into the theoretical understanding of the data. Remaining in contact with the organization, irrespective of whether a suitable job was found, benefited those with approximately 4 to 12 previous convictions. Lessons from this study may be generalizable to all social work intervention. The obvious may fail to produce effects while the unexpected may succeed. Rather than probing the reasons for failure, the study focused on trying to understand the apparent success. Figures, notes, references