Criminal Careers and "Career Criminals," Volume II (1986) / Chapter Skim
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1. Issues in the Measurement of Criminal Careers
1. Issues in the Measurement of Criminal Careers
Pages 1-51
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From page 1... ...
The juxtaposition of Me two underestimations highlights two major issues in the measurement of crime- the adequacy of official records as measures of phenomena and We apparent discrepancy in estimates of the amount and distribution of crime generated by different measurement me~ods. The resolution of these issues in Me measurement of crime has not been as easily accomplished as in the there remain substantial differences between survey and official-record estimates of mortality.
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From page 2... ...
The parameters of criminal involvement over time prevalence, indiviclual offending rates, patterns of criminal behavior, and duration of involvement-and the correlates of those parameters have not been specified, due in part to the paucity of rigorous research in the area and the concomitant unresolved measurement issues. All the problems regarding the validity and reliability of measures of crime apply to criminal career ALTERNATIVE MEASUREMENT APPROACHES Five basic alternative approaches to the measurement of crime produce data that may be useful, directly or indirectly, in measuring individual offending patterns: official crime records, self-reports of criminal behavior, reports of personal
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From page 3... ...
Victimization, observation, and informant measures of crime are more indirect in their generation of estimates than the two other measures and have limited applications in criminal career research. In general, they tend not to measure the parameters and correlates of criminal behavior as comprehensively or directly, and they suffer from having somewhat unique or narrow sample characteristics.
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From page 4... ...
Taken together, they are at the heart of the controversy over the question of convergence and discrepancy in estimates of correlates of crime produced by different measurement approaches. The issue is whether official records and selfreports of criminal behavior generate similar distributions and correlates of crime.
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They are not discrepant by method of measurement, but the correlations produced by each are lower than expected because of the apparent diminished validity of self-reports, for both grades and delinquent behavior, among members of this subgroup. S Social Class Most research on the relation between social class and crime does not assess the issue.
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The survey was repeated in 1972, and in 1976 the National Institute for Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention became a cosponsor of an annual survey of the self-reported and official delinquency of a national probability panel of youths aged 11-17 in 1976. CRIMINAL CAREERS AND CAREER CRIMINALS mately 1,500 youths, they report that there is a moderate inverse relationship between class and serious "person crimes" and serious "property crimes," particularly for person crimes among black youths of Tow socioeconomic status (Elliott and Ageton, 19801.
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propose that the apparent discrepancy between self-report and official measures for social class, as well as for gender and race, becomes "illusory" when standard but critical methodological considerations are taken into account, particularly comparisons of results by 7 level of measurement and by the domain (variety) , type, and seriousness of criminal behavior.
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From page 8... ...
Official data historically have implied that blacks are "more criminal" than whites simnIv by virtue of their overrepresentation in the criminal justice system and official records. Self-reports, on the other hand, suggest that there is less difference in both prevalence and incidence of crime (e.g., GoIcT, 1970; Chaiken and Chaiken, 19821.
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From page 9... ...
reports that in the Racine, Wisconsin, cohort study of the relationship between juvenile and aclult criminal careers, self-reports of delinquency hac! little relationship to race, but there was a 9 disproportionate representation of blacks with official records of police contact.
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suggest that there may have been underreporting among some subgroups of prisoners in the second Rand inmate survey, particularly among blacks and the less educated.8 For example, there is the "puzzling finding" that blacks report much lower rates of assault than whites; but it is also reported that the responses of blacks are less reliable, i.e., have "substantially worse internal quality," and that "respondents whose survey responses have poor internal quality tend estimates of parameters and correlates anal, ultimately' the convergence of the CRIMINAL CAREERS AND CAREER CRIMINALS to report Tow crime commission rates for the crimes they report committing." There seems to be consistency in both inmate surveys regarding the underreporting of some subgroups, particularly black inmates, reacting to lower-thanexpected individual offending rates when self-reports are compared with official records. In short, a number of studies of juvenile and aclult offenders report a discrepancy between race and self-reportect and official crime data, and the discrepancy is likely explainecl by underreporting on the self-report instrument rather than by race discrimination within the criminal justice system.
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11 is also quite good, both for reports of criminal behavior anct for independent variables. A small number of studies on juvenile clelinquency have reported high test-retest reliability coefficients; the time between administration of the self-report instrument ranged from a couple of hours (Hinclelang, Hirschi, and Weis, 1981: 81-82)
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From page 12... ...
official criminal justice records, such as offenses known to the police, court referrals, convictions, and incarceration (Gould, 1969; Erickson, 1972; Elliott and Voss, 1974; Hin(lelang, Hirschi, and Weis, 1981; Chaiken and Chaiken, 1982~; (4) official records from other agencies, such as school, mental health, social service, and drug abuse (Weis, fanvier, and Hawkins, 1982~.
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From page 13... ...
The relationships of "self-reports of criminal behavior" and "self-reports of official record" each to "official record" are the most important vaTiciation correlations to assess. The relationship between self-reports of criminal behavior and having an official record is perplexing.
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CRIMINAL CAREERS AND CAREER CRIMINALS (.6) (Hindelang, Hirschi, and Weis, 1981:10~1051.
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, and research on drug addicts (Ball, 1967~. In general, the majority of respondents with official records will report having them; in one instance 100 percent of a group of juveniles who hac!
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There CRIMINAL CAREERS AND CAREER CRIMINALS may be generalized systematic error in the reports of certain subgroups of respondents for the whole range of crime, particularly for the most serious offenses. Obviously, this could distort self-report scores for the very offenses that might resolve discrepancy between self-report and official measures the more serious crimes, which are the concern ofthe criminal justice system.
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i4 The very scarce research on response effects in the measurement of crime ac3dresses some ofthese sources of response bias and shows substantial consistency with findings of survey-methodology research in other substantive areas. There are also some apparent differences, especially regarding the effect of respondent characteristics.
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From page 18... ...
For example, questionnaires hac3 higher validity coefficients than interviews for mates, and the responses of females under anonymous conclitions may have been slightly more valid than those under nonanonymous circumstances. The nonanonymous interview was the least valid CRIMINAL CAREERS AND CAREER CRIMINALS of the four conditions among white mates, and black males did worst on the anonymous interview and nonanonymous questionnaire (Hindelang, Hirschi, and Weis, 1981:1201.
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From page 19... ...
With refinement, this version of the technique could prove to be more useful in etiological and criminal career research when individual-level measures are necessary.
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In the anonymous questionnaire condition, 86 percent of the mates answered each of the 69 crime items, as clid 97 percent in the anonymous interview; in the anonymous questionnaire CRIMINAL CAREERS AND CAREER CRIMINALS condition, 90 percent of the females answerec! all self-report delinquency items, and 96 percent clid so in the nonanonymous interview.
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From page 21... ...
Changing words in a question can lead to concomitant changes in the meaning attributed by a responclent and, therefore, to ctifferent responses. For example, in the measurement of criminal behavior a critical element is "intent," and its inclusion or exclusion can change- an item from a crime to a legal act.
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are significant contributors to other sources of response effects, particularly (differences in response categories, recall periods, and salience of queried events. Response Categories.
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As always, the problem is valiclating reports of criminal behavior for which no external validation criteria are available. Short of this, what is known about the cognitive psychology of frequency estimates of past events may be helpful in interpreting findings ancl, ultimately, in developing instruments.
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In general, respondents provide more accurate estimates of low-frequency events anct much more variable responses for higher frequency events (Loftus, 19801. When the event is criminal behavior and the respondent is asked to locate it within a specified recall period, say the past year, the task becomes much more complex and the sources and magnitude of potential error increase.
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From page 25... ...
Behaviors that are more frequent and also similar to each other will also be less salient; in addition they increase retroactive interference, which in turn, decreases the ability to cTifferentiate discrete events and distorts frequency estimates. In self-reports of criminal behavior, these effects may be problematic for reports of the most serious offenses and for the most serious offenders.
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From page 26... ...
reliability of self-reports and official records of juvenile crime that Delinquency exists most clearly in the minds ofthose least likely to engage in it." To the extent that this is true, the implications for research are increasingly important because, as samples become more representative of serious crime and criminals, "measurement problems are intensified." These problems seem to be more related to characteristics of subgroups of respondents and to motivated error than is reported in the literature on general survey methodology. Of the three major categories of response effects (interviewer, task, and respondent characteristics)
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estimate that"a relatively large fraction of the inmate population, up to 65 percent, may take part in those life-styles." i8This is also apparently true among samples of the general youth population; lIuizinga and Elliott (1981:80) report that for the majority of young people the use of drugs is not related to criminal behavior, but, that among those who use drugs and do crime, the levels of juvenile criminal involvement are highest among those who use the greatest variety of drugs (alcohol, marijuana, and other drugs)
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From page 28... ...
It is hypothesized that the unique characteristics of more serious, chronic offenders contribute to both increased memory error and motivated error in their responses to questions about their official criminal records and criminal behavior. There is little doubt that drugs, ranging from alcohol to heroin, impair a person's ability to encode and store information about an event during which the person was under the influence of drugs.
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, and, given the sordic! drug history of most serious, chronic offenders, it is a short logical leap to the hypothesis that among both juvenile and adult serious, chronic offenders there will be significant memory error in responses to questions about their past criminal behaviors.
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From page 30... ...
Another cultural source of response bias may be the black, mate, street-corner culture, wherein not cooperating with "the man" has been refined over many years of oppression into a highly functional form of defensive and, more subtly, offensive adaptation. Here anyone, even a black mate researcher, is a figure of authority not to CRIMINAL CAREERS AND CAREER CRIMINALS be trusted but rather to be hustled and cajoled into believing in the sincerity and veracity of the respondent.
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From page 31... ...
That is, the limitations of official records also contribute to validity and reliability problems in 31 the measurement of crime, including the measurement of individual offending patterns in criminal career research. LIMITATIONS OF OFFICIAL RECORDS Most of the major limitations of measures of the amount and distribution of crime based on official records hac3 been identified by the end of the nineteenth century, including the primary problem of the "ciark figure" of unknown crime (Sellin and Wolfgang, 19641.
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From page 32... ...
Official records are not maintained primarily for research purposes, an(1 consequently, whoever the researcher or whatever the research task, there will be i9There are many other problems, but they are not discussed because of space limitations or because they are not considered problematic for criminal career research for example, the coding and scoring problems that arise when~harge~-colmts, and arrests in police records have to be distinguished by a coder (Marquis and Ebener, 19811. The reader is referred to Savitz (1982)
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From page 33... ...
For example, in the Rand inmate surveys, only 3 of the 10 variables that predict high-rate robbers are from official records; data for the others were collected in the self-report survey (Chaiken and Chaiken, 1982:86 871. Those offender characteristics found to best distinguish serious, chronic offenders extensive drug abuse, employment instability, and a record of early juvenile violence" are not easily accessible within the criminal justice system.
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From page 34... ...
This means that caTculating "time at risk," "street time," or "free time," which is crucial to estimating individual offending rates, is hampered by this source of error. If measuring temporal changes in criminal behavior were not so central to criminal career research, and if respondents' memories for ciates and sequential orders were not so unreliable, these time-co(ling problems would not be consi(lered as critical as they are here.
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From page 35... ...
The legal categories that are user] to process and code offenses are broad and do not necessarily correspond to the criminal behavior that led to official processing.22 There may be substantial disparities between the actual criminal behavioral event and the legal category within which it is processed and recorded, as well as substantial variation within the legal category.
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From page 36... ...
These kinds of changes and research are what may be necessary to enhance the validity and reliability of both official and self-report measures, to improve convergence on parameter CRIMINAL CAREERS AND CAREER CRIMINALS estimates and their correlates, and, ultimately, to create the best possible combination of measures of individual offencling patterns. RESEARCH STRATEGIES TO IMPROVE MEASUREMENT Even though official records and selfreports have relatively good general validity and reliability as measures of crime, it is clear that both approaches to measurement are imperfect ant!
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From page 37... ...
Since research on criminal careers is a relatively new area of concentrated research effort and work on the measurement of criminal careers is rudimentary, organizing and synthesizing the relevant research literature is an essential step in building a better understanding of the effects of research methods on estimates of prevalence, incidence, and correlates of serious, chronic criminal behavior. This type of analysis, whereby published estimates of crime are systematically coded and analyzed statistically, facilitates the investigation of the effects of research methods (independent variables)
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From page 38... ...
findings on criminal career characteristics, such as involvement in the serious crimes of robbery, assault, and burglary. For example, by including measurement approaches used in a study as a ciata point (self-report, official records, observation, informant)
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From page 39... ...
The role of drug abuse as a source of response bias seems particularly significant among serious, chronic offenders, the majority of whom have long-duration, heavy druguse histories that are related to their involvement in other kinds of crime. Studying the effects of these respondent characteristics on measurement, specifically on the validity and reliability of responses about criminal behavior, is not the way they are usually examined.
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From page 40... ...
Fours, a study could be launched with a simple factorial design that included the necessary sample size and variation on respondent characteristics-official crim inal-noncriminal, drug user-nonuser, competent-less competent, black-white, violent-less violent that would allow a simple assessment of independent and interactive respondent effects. Comparisons on self-reports of individual offending, drug use, official records, and validity and reliability tests could show the hypothesized effects.
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From page 41... ...
The face-to-face interview would be the focus of the research, for a number of reasons. First, the information cannot be anonymous for research purposes, and besides anonymity does not seem to affect responses to questions about criminal behavior (Hindelang, Hirschi, ant]
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From page 42... ...
For example, official records are not very useful as incTicators of anything for young children, simply because children do not engage in the criminal behaviors that get them into trouble with the law. On the other hancl, direct observations and informant reports (e.g., teachers, parents, peers)
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From page 43... ...
There is insufficient and inadequate information in official records regarding the characteristics of offenders, as well as the behavioral referents of the legal categories of offense. Offenses of record are the organizational products of a process that transforms initial criminal behavioral events that were detected into sanctioned ancl, therefore, recorcled official offenses (Black, 19701.
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From page 44... ...
To get closer to the domain of criminal behaviors circumscribed by official records, one needs to delve deeper than the legal categories recorded in the active records of the police department or court. One should go to the offender's case file for the much more detailed information given in depositions by the victim, witnesses, po CRIMINAL CAREERS AND CAREER CRIMINALS lice, and offender.
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From page 45... ...
R 1971 On fitting the "facts" of social class and criminal behavior: a rejoinder to Box and Ford.
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From page 46... ...
American Sociological Review 1:95-110. Elliott, Delbert S., and Huizinga, David 1983 Social class and delinquent behavior in a national youth study.
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Pp. 91-130 in Wil Dijkstra and Johannes van der Zouwen, eds., Response Behavior in the Survey-Interview.
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Middlesex, England: Penguin Books. CRIMINAL CAREERS AND CAREER CRIMINALS Hunter, I
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Lewis 1961 The distribution of juvenile delinquency in the social class structure. American Sociological Review 26:72~732.
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American Sociological Review 2:187-200. Robert L., and CRIMINAL CAREERS AND CAREER CRIMINALS Valentine, Bettylou 1978 Hustling and Other Hard Work: Life Styles in the Ghetto.
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From page 51... ...
Williams, Jay R., and Gold, Martin 1972 From delinquent behavior to official delinquency. Social Problems 20:20~229.
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