CRIMINAL ACTIVITY AT DIFFERENT AGES

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This study provides basic information about criminal activity at different ages (with offence data col lectedfrom official records) for a representative group of Swedish males andfemales who were invest igated, from the age of 10 to 30, in a longitudinal research programme. It details information about the subject population, the method by which crime records were collected, and the coding system used. Prevalence of criminal offences at different ages is described, together with analyses of the ages at which subjects usually began breaking the law, when they were most criminally active, what types of crimes they committed at different ages, and what type of sanctions they were sentenced to. The paper concludes with a discussion of the prevalence of crime. Criminologists distinguish between the study of crime as a societal phenomenon and the study of the development of criminal behaviour in individuals. Legal statistics, typically associated with the former, involve gathering data on the nature and the number of criminal offences for a population at a certain point in time or over an extended period. Typically collected on an annual basis, the statistics give an outline of the amount of crime in society over time, as well as its regional distribution, etc. In formation regarding whether or not the same individuals commit these offences from one year to another is not provided. To accomplish such an investigation requires data concerning offences committed at different ages by each individual, i.e. studying the development of criminality on an individual basis. The general consensus as to the understanding of how crime evolves in individuals stresses the need for such longitudinal data. That different correlates of criminal be haviour are found at different ages (Farrington 1981a), and, subsequently, that differ ent factors may modify the course of development of criminality at different ages, constitute major reasons for studying the development of criminality in individuals by following the same group of subjects over an extended period of time. Few such empir ical studies of the course of criminality in individuals have been presented in the crim inological literature (but see Cline 1980); nevertheless, it is these studies that enable us to observe when criminal behaviour starts, peaks, and ends, as well as which types of individual crime careers are involved (Wolfgang, Figlio, and Sellin 1972). The thorough understanding of the development of criminal behaviour in indi viduals requires information that can provide the investigator with facts about other aspects of the individual's course of development. Criminological research identifies a