Understanding Criminal Careers

Keith Soothill, Claire Fitzpatrick, Brian Francis

• Publisher: Willan
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781843925026
• eBook ISBN: 9781134025909
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

The study of criminal careers is of increasing interest in criminology. It is now generally recognised that it is important to try to understand criminal behaviour across the life-course rather than focusing on fragmented incidents which provide only a partial picture. This is an accessible text which clarifies the crucial theoretical and methodological debates surrounding the study of criminal careers.

It focuses on some major longitudinal studies discussing the onset, persistence, desistance and the duration of a criminal career. The important topics of prediction, risk and specialisation are addressed. The challenging question of 'When do ex-offenders become like non-offenders?' points a way forward. The book concludes by proposing an even more ambitious approach to the topic of criminal careers.

Chapter 1

---

Introduction

There is a renewed interest in studying crime across the lifespan. However, the interest has been fragmented and the aim of this book is to build bridges between theoretical criminology, the study of criminal careers and policy-relevant research. Certainly there has been a burgeoning, or perhaps we should say resurgent, interest in criminal careers research. As we shall see when we consider the major longitudinal studies, there are phases when there are enthusiasms for this type of research and then it seems to go out of fashion. Much of the recent resurgence — that is, over the past decade or so — has been related to the opportunities that advances in computer and statistical work can deliver. There is scope for doing statistical manipulations which previously would have taken many person-years to complete but are now undertaken in minutes. However, there has also been a renewed interest in qualitative work whereby interviewing offenders produces new insights. The discovery of the original worksheets of the major longitudinal study by the Gluecks in the vaults of Harvard University and the subsequent re-interviewing of many in this cohort around the age of 70 produced a captivating book by Sampson and Laub in 2003. In this respect, something of the origins of criminal career research and the recent resurgence of interest were brought together.

In short, there are some masterpieces to share but, curiously, there has never been a text that usefully summarises this burgeoning field. This is what we aim to achieve in the chapters that follow. It is tempting to launch into displaying the wares in the warehouse of criminal career research. However, firstly, we need to define this area of study.

What is'criminal careers' all about?

According to David Farrington, who is a leading authority on the criminal careers approach, a criminal career is ‘the longitudinal sequence of offences committed by an individual offender’ (1997: 361). In other words, it is the sequence of offences committed by an offender over time. The time focus is particularly important here, as a career suggests a trajectory or a pathway, or a development over a period of time in an individual's life.

Importantly, Farrington (1997: 364) distinguishes between the two dictionary definitions of the term ‘career’ which underpin two different concepts — firstly, a course or progress through life, and, secondly, a way of making a living. Farrington stresses that in understanding criminal careers the term is being used in the first sense. Hence, a ‘criminal career’ describes the sequence of offences during some part of an individual's lifetime, with no necessary suggestion that offenders use their criminal activity as an important means of earning a living.

Farrington further notes that the criminal careers approach has a particular focus on the factors and experiences in childhood that can impact on later adult development.

(F)or example, hyperactivity at age 2 may lead to cruelty to animals at 6, shoplifting at 10, burglary at 15, robbery at 20 and eventually spouse assault, child abuse and neglect, alcohol abuse, and employment and accommodation problems later on in life. (Farrington 1997: 361)

As one can see from the above quote, Farrington is concerned with certain sorts of behaviour that act as stepping-stones to other types of behaviour. According to him, a career of childhood antisocial behaviour typically leads on to a criminal career and other problems in later life. While this may be true, there are difficulties here when we consider the criminal justice implications and try to predict who is likely to become criminal. For example, on the basis of Farrington's argument, should we intervene in the lives of all hyperactive two-year-olds? Of course this is unrealistic. There are probably quite a lot of hyperactive two-year-olds out there, not all of whom will eventually go on to commit crime. If we presume that all two-year-olds who are hyperactive will go on to offend, we are likely to end up over-predicting and labelling many individuals who will in reality live relatively crime-free lives. This relates to the problem of ‘false positives' in assessing the risk of individuals, an issue that we return to later in Chapter 7.

Another crucial point to make at this stage is that the criminal careers approach is not regarded as one specific theory, but as a paradigm that can embrace various theoretical approaches that are concerned with the sequence of individual offending. As Farrington notes, it is ‘a framework within which theories can be proposed and tested’ (1992: 521) (see also Blumstein et al. 1986a, 1986b; Blumstein and Cohen 1987). Within the criminal careers framework there are a number of theoretical ideas, not just one. Some of these ideas, and the debates and controversies that surround them, are explored in Chapter 2, but for now we move on to outline some key definitions.

Definitional issues

Ensuring that everyone sees the notion of a ‘criminal career’ as no more than a metaphor is important. Blumstein et al. (1986a), for example, usefully distinguish between ‘criminal careers’ and ‘career criminals’ with the former being the metaphor and the latter being the few high-rate or long-duration offenders who really do make a career out of crime. While researchers recognise that it is possible to study the criminal careers of larger aggregates, such as families, gangs or whole communities, the main focus has tended to be on the offending of individuals over time. (As we argue at various points in the book, this individual focus has narrowed the vision in some respects in that there is far less of an emphasis on social forces and the impact of the wider society than should be the case.)

At a minimum, a criminal career has a beginning (normally called ‘onset’), an end (mostly called ‘desistance’) and a criminal career in between (normally identified as ‘duration’). However, what actually constitutes a beginning and what really constitutes an end is contentious and will be a focus in Chapters 4 and 5 on ‘onset’ and ‘desistance’ respectively. So, for instance, does ‘onset’ mean the first time that a mother notices her child taking money or an object without permission? Perhaps, if you asked the child it might even be before that, that is when he or she was taking money or objects without even the mother noticing. In some studies, ‘onset’ often has more of an official imprimatur; in other words, it is when some form of officialdom gets involved. The police may arrest a child, a young man or even an old man for the first time. Perhaps a social worker — and not a policeman — may get involved and note that the child has a habit of taking things without permission. In brief, defining ‘onset’ is not necessarily straightforward.

There are similar problems in defining ‘desistance’. How do we know when someone has stopped committing crime? If we rely on someone's account that they have given up, the next day he or she may take something without permission or be stopped for dangerous driving. Is it like smoking or having cancer when one can begin to say after a certain period of time that a person is no more likely to start smoking or have a further outbreak of cancer than the next person? Perhaps it is just safer to wait until a person dies before deciding that a person really has given up crime. Yet while death really does bring an end to things, there is still really no knowing whether the years before a person's death were, indeed, completely crime-free. For example, the paedophile who has no longer been caught committing offences against young children may have got more circumspect in his activities and simply not been caught.

There are many other terms used in thinking about criminal careers. However, like the term ‘career’, most of the terms also have everyday uses and so it is important to know the precise use of a term for the purposes of studying criminal careers. Box 1.1 lists the more usual ones.

The definitions in Box 1.1 are useful in highlighting some of the key terms used within criminal careers research. However, one term not mentioned in the box that has a crucial impact on research in this area is the concept of ‘crime’ itself. How we define crime, and what kinds of behaviours we include within the category, has clear implications for the kind of research and analysis that is possible. For example, if such offences as ‘speeding’ are included, then obviously more people come within the ambit of this type of research than if they are not included.

Furthermore, we need to embrace the distinction between serious and less serious crime. While this distinction has always been recognised, the offences regarded as serious in one era or in one place may not be so regarded in another era or in another place. In most countries there have been some massive shifts. In England and Wales the so-called ‘Bloody Code’ in the eighteenth century whereby over 200 offences had the possibility of the death sentence seems barbaric in contemporary terms. In the nineteenth century the focus for seriousness was largely on offences involving property rather than offences involving the person. Indeed, in the late nineteenth century more than a half of the cases involving non-consensual sexual crime which actually reached court — which itself was most unusual

Box 1.1 Definitions of some important concepts

Criminal career	the longitudinal sequence of offences committed by an individual offender.
Recidivism	a term for reoffending.
Onset	the beginning of a criminal career.
Desistance	the end of a criminal career.
Duration	career length between onset and desistance.
Prevalence	proportion of the population who are committing offences.
Participation	another name for prevalence.
Frequency	rate of committing offences for active offenders.
Seriousness	a measure of the importance of the offence as determined by the criminal justice system or by the general public.
Severity	a measure of the punitiveness of a criminal sentence or sanction.
Escalation	a measure of how far an offender's criminal career increases in seriousness.
Specialisation	how far offenders focus on certain types of offending.
Diversification	the opposite of specialisation; how far offending covers all types of offences.
Switching	the ending of one ‘formx2019; of offending and the beginning of another.
Sources: Adapted from Farrington (1997) and Loeber and Le Blanc (1990).

— resulted in acquittals (Soothill 2008). While current convictions for rape, for instance, are not impressive, there is now at least a greater recognition among the populace that rape is a very serious offence which can be committed against both women and men (whether they are sexually experienced or not). As this discussion highlights, the behaviours that are regarded as ‘crime’ and the perceived seriousness of these particular behaviours clearly vary across time and space. This is very important for us to bear in mind as we begin to assess the contribution of criminal careers research.

Who are the criminals?

Another important issue for consideration concerns whether criminal activity is a marginal activity in society or, indeed, in people's lives. The latter question is comparatively easy to answer. Even the lives of the most hardened criminals involve much more than simply crime. The successful criminal may have many other roles, including family, leisure activities and so on. Even close neighbours may not know the source of their lifestyle. Not surprisingly, not much is really known about such people for their criminal activity is often hidden from public view, only coming to light if they make a mistake or their crimes are found out.

In contrast to the successful criminal is the totally unsuccessful criminal. Often they are found residing in prison, usually for quite petty crimes. As petty offences theoretically equal shorter sentences, the reality for many unsuccessful criminals is that they have a life in prison by instalments — the ‘revolving door’ phenomenon¹. Prison, sadly, becomes their home so that they may, indeed, throw stones at police station windows in the hope of being captured and returned to prison for Christmas. In other words, there are few aspects of their lives which are not in some way tainted by their possession of a criminal label.

There are also those who have never been involved in criminal activity either knowingly or unknowingly. However, it is questionable whether such a category actually exists. In other words, has anyone never committed a crime? Of course, it relates to what one calls ‘crime’ — if speeding is included, then many more are captured in the portals of crime than if it is not included. Meanwhile, putting aside the concern of whether anyone has led a totally crime-free life — even Jesus seemed to be involved in some considerable malicious damage as he cleared the money changers from the temple — for the rest of us there is a balance or a relationship between criminal activities which come to public notice (i.e. they become visible within the public domain) and crime which remains invisible.

Curiously, those whose crime lives have complete visibility have some strange bedfellows. It includes those who cannot seem to do very much crime without getting caught as well as those whose only crime (allegedly at least!) is a passionate murder committed when the balance of the mind may have been disturbed. However, most of the criminal activity of people who are engaged in crime is invisible (what is conventionally known as the ‘dark figure’). Criminal activity may emerge from the darkness and come into public notice with police enquiries and the like but there is nothing ‘official’ yet. An arrest, for instance, makes alleged criminal activity ‘official’ — that is being formally dealt with by officials.

It is conventional wisdom that social control agents (such as the police) aim to make ‘invisible’ criminal activity ‘visible’ and punishable. This, however, is only a partial truth. At worst, a corrupt police force will take payments — or ‘protection money’ — so that villains can, thus, avoid being brought to justice. This can be at the individual level — that is, a policeman simply takes a bribe — or at a more systemic level — that is police routinely taking payment to prevent those involved in a certain type of activity, usually prostitution or drug dealing, being brought to justice.

However, social control agents can also act quite legitimately in keeping criminal activity more or less invisible. So, for instance, the development of a formal system of ‘warnings’ and ‘cautions’ arises from two concerns — to regularise a more informal system of control on the one hand, and to avoid the alleged dangers of the stigma of a court appearance in the development of a deviant identity on the other. In other words, while the ‘visibility line’ has been breached in these circumstances, the records that are maintained are much more circumscribed than would be the c...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures, boxes and tables
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The Great Debate: competing theoretical approaches and methodological issues
• 3 The Great Solution? Exploring the major longitudinal studies
• 4 When does it all start? Onset of a criminal career
• 5 Continuity and change in a criminal career: persistence and desistance
• 6 Specialisation
• 7 Dangerousness, prediction and risk
• 8 Criminal careers for everyman – and woman?
• 9 What's wrong with criminal careers? Moving forward
• References
• Index