Criminal Careers and "Career Criminals," Volume I (1986) / Chapter Skim
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1. Introduction: Studying Criminal Careers
1. Introduction: Studying Criminal Careers
Pages 12-30
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From page 12... ...
Thus, a paradigm focusing attention on indivicluals might be most appropriate both for probing the causes of criminal behavior and for developing crime control policies intencled to interrupt or modify criminal careers. Much research on crime has been focused on aggregate crime rates, that is, crimes per capita in the general population.
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From page 13... ...
In addition to the primary components of participation and frequency, two other dimensions that affect aggregate crime rates can be incorporated in the criminal career approach: duration, the length of an individual career (the time from first to last offense) , and seriousness, which includes both the offenses committed and patterns of switching among offenses.
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From page 14... ...
Career criminals are of interest for formulating policies that can identify these offenders early in their careers and selectively target criminal justice resources at preventing their crimes, primarily through incarceration. Individual-level data are fundamental to the analysis of criminal careers.
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From page 15... ...
These efforts to control crime are carried out in conjunction with efforts to achieve other goals of the criminal justice system, such as imposing"deserved" punishment, en hancing public confidence in the justice system, and maintaining order in penal facilities. Knowledge for Policy Knowledge about criminal careers may be especially helpful in cleveloping effec tive crime control policies.
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From page 16... ...
Classification of Offenders Selective treatment of offenders in the criminal justice system is one way to direct criminal justice discretion more effectively toward reducing the level of crime. Recent research findings have rekindlecl interest in basing selection explicitly on classifications derived from empirically demonstrated relationships between specific variables and criminal career dimensions, especially the fre quency of serious criminal activity.
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From page 17... ...
For this reason, their implications for criminal justice policies are important considerations in both Chapters 5 and 6, in which Me crime control uses of criminal career knowledge and the efficacy of preclictionbased decisions are examined. Many of the ethical issues considered are matters of long-stancling legal and philosophical debate.
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From page 18... ...
But to understand the impact of decisions made about individual offenders, it is also extremely important to understand residual career length, the expected time remaining in an offender's criminal career at the time of the deci sion. Basic Definitions and Symbols To use these concepts to organize research results that have been developed in a variety of paradigms, the panel found it necessary to adopt consistent vocabulary and symbols for labeling the key dimensions that characterize individual criminal careers.
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From page 19... ...
(For further discussion of definitional issues relating to participation, see Appendix A.) Comparable symbols are cleaned for the arrest process, which is often the only source of information about inclividual criminal careers.
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From page 20... ...
B Percent of a population ever arrested A = ,ub Other Measures Arrest probability q = Probability of arrest following a crime (q = ,u/A) Career length T = Total criminal career length Residual career length TR = Average time remaining in a criminal career Career dropout rate ~ = Fraction of a criminal population whose careers terminate during an observation period to the cumulative participation rate in crime, we denote the fraction of a population that is ever arrested as B.4 The arrest process can be viewed as a sampling from the crime process, since not all crimes result in arrest.
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From page 21... ...
On the line, the symbol x denotes the times at which the offender committed crimes. Symbols of crimes for which the offender was arrested are cir 21 Period of I ncarceration Crime aO ~Criminal Career Length T Conviction , Age of Onset I,,, -- -- -- -i_ Residual Criminal-Career Length Following Release, TR End of I Criminal Career ~ AGE aT cled, and the crimes for which the arrest led to conviction are enclosed in a square.
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From page 22... ...
USING THE CRIMINAL CAREER PARADIGM Interpreting Aggregate Crime Rates The criminal career paradigm adopted here represents a departure from analyses that have focused on aggregate measures, such as incidence rates of crimes per capita or arrests per capita. Applying to active offenders and nonoffenders alike in a population, these aggregate measures confound the combined contribution of the extent of participation and the frequency of offending by active offenders.
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From page 23... ...
While varying in absolute magnitude, aggregate population arrest rates display a very consistent pattern increasing rapidly during the juvenile years to reach peak rates in the late teens and then steadily declining.S Figure 1-2 illustrates this pattern for the FBI index offenses of robbery, aggravated assault, and burglary in 1983. Analyses of recidivism rates for identified offenders have also Historically, arrest rates peaked in an offender's early twenties.
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From page 24... ...
From the theoretical perspective, the participation and frequency alternatives have implications for whether causes should be sought in broad social processes affecting the general population and people's movement into and out of criminal careers or in more CRIMINAL CAREERS AND CAREER CRIMINALS arrest rates also show large differences in levels of criminal activity between whites and blacks. As shown in Table 1-2, the differences between races increase as one focuses on more serious offense types, and have decreased in recent years.
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From page 25... ...
aThese ratios were computed before the arrest rates were rounded. bIndex rates include arrests for murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny, and motor vehicle theft.
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From page 26... ...
Incapacitation, Rehabilitation, and Deterrence Analyses that partition the effects of sanctions among participation, frequency, and duration may provide valuable insights for improving the effectiveness of alternative crime control strategies. To date, for example, evaluations of deterrent effects have relied almost exclusively on aggregate crime rates, and evaluations CRIMINAL CAREERS AND CAREER CRIMINALS of rehabilitative interventions have relied primarily on recidivism rates.
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From page 27... ...
.~ .2.. f ~ So Residual Crimin al Career _; T Length Following Release, TR Criminal Career Length, T Criminogenic Effect Rehabilitation Effect End of Criminal Career - AGE FIGURE 1-3 Incapacitation, rehabilitation, and criminogenic effects in an individual criminal career.
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From page 28... ...
caution that the poor quality of the evaluations, and the CRIMINAL CAREERS AND CAREER CRIMINALS The third principal mode of crime controT by the criminal justice system, in addition to incapacitation and rehabilitation, is deterrence. Deterrence is the crime-reduction effect achieved from the symbolic threat communicated to other offenders and to potential offenders by sanctions imposed on identified offenders.~° The most common mode for examining the deterrent effect has been crosssectional studies of jurisdictions with diverse sanction practices to examine the effect on aggregate crime rates of the sanction variation (controlling for other sources of variation in crime rate and in sanction policy)
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From page 29... ...
Several categories of research literature that study criminal behavior using paradigms other than the criminal career as defined in this report were not systematically included. Biographical and autobiographical case studies of individual offenders are excluded because the sub - jects are not generally representative of specific offender populations.
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From page 30... ...
Chapter 5 considers the uses of this information in assessing different types of interventions intencled to modify criminal careers. Chapter 6 considers the effects of incorporating knowledge about criminal careers into explicit classification rules intended to aid criminal justice decision making.
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