Criminal Career Research: A Review of Recent Evidence

Abstract

A criminal career may consist of a single, undiscovered, venial 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 than with venial 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 The leading criminal career research, much of it unpublished, has produced useful results, but cannot give much guidance on sanctions use to policy makers. 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. Very roughly, only 5 percent of the population will demonstrate the beginning...