Criminal Careers and "Career Criminals," Volume I (1986) / Chapter Skim
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2. Participation in Criminal Careers
2. Participation in Criminal Careers
Pages 31-54
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From page 31... ...
by an understanding of the ways in which inclivictual criminal behavior contributes to total crime. The panel's approach to the study of criminal behavior rests fundamentally on a criminal career paradigm of indivictual offending, which disaggregates the various elements of indiviclual offending into four key dimensions.
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From page 32... ...
Second, in cross-section studies, agency files are searched to ascertain the fraction of any sample of 18-year-olds for whom official records exist. Third, if arrest or court referral records for first offenders are easily distinguishable, a CRIMINAL CAREERS AND CAREER CRIMINALS life-table approach similar to that used in mortality studies can be used: the clistribution of age-specific initiation rates, Ia (i.e., the fraction of the population whose first arrest occurs at each age)
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From page 33... ...
These variations in measurement and their effects on estimated participation rates are a central concern in the following discussion of empirical research on participation. STUDY DESIGNS AND PARTICIPATION ESTIMATES Criminal participation is an incliviclually basecI phenomenon that typically cannot be derived from aggregate arrest statistics.
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From page 34... ...
always be Tower than actual levels of CRIMINAL CAREERS AND CAREER CRIMINALS involvement. In aciclition, crimes reported in an individuaT's official record may not be a representative sample of all crimes committed by that offender.
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From page 35... ...
Since not all juvenile police contacts result in court referral, it is not sur prising that analyses of Philadelphia juvenile court statistics collected at about the same time (mid 1950s to mid 1960s) yield slightly smaller estimates of Bit.
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From page 36... ...
U.S. Studies Known to police or juvenile court Nontragic arrest or police contact 36 CRIMINAL CAREERS AND CAREER CRIMINALS TABLE 2-1 Estimates of Male Participation Rates by Age 18 (official record data)
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From page 37... ...
; McCord's sample is generally acknowledged to have been at high risk of criminal participation; and the very high probability of conviction following arrest TABLE 2-2 Estimates of Male Lifetime Participation Rates (official record data) Participation Rates (percent)
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From page 38... ...
Considerable imprecision surrounds this measure since both D and vary strongly with age during the teenage years. Nevertheless, the literature on these estimates provides much of the available information on relative crimespecific participation rates, and general consistency emerges from 10 studies conducted over the last 25 years.5 From these studies, a systematic pattem emerges in criminal participation across crime types.
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From page 39... ...
When participation is measured by the presence of a juvenile court record that includes adjudication, the estimates range from 2 percent for index offenses in a 1967 national sample to about 11 percent for a broader range of offenses in the recent Seattle study. The three cumulative measures discussed thus far are the most common statistics on participation reported in the literature either from official records or self-reports.
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From page 40... ...
. The most consistent pattern with respect to gender is the extent to which mate criminal participation in serious crimes at any age greatly exceeds that of females, regardless of source of data, Race Racial differences in criminal participation have been examined with both selfreport and official-record data for cumulative participation measures, Big, BL., and DHS, and for current participation, ct.
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From page 41... ...
Combining data from several studies with criminal participation broaclly defined as nontragic offenses, the black/white ratio averages 1.8:1; for index offenses, the ratio averages 3.2:1 (Visher and Roth, Appendix A:Table 81. The Philadelphia cohort data are the only source of offlcial-record participation estimates by racial group across several levels of offense seriousness (Tracy, Wolfgang, and Figlio, 1985:Tables 4a and 5a)
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From page 42... ...
The next section discusses correlates of participation that are of more interest in terms of both theory and policy. OTHER FACTORS ASSOCIATED WITH PARTICIPATION Many studies in the criminological literature examine associations between a wide variety of social factors and some measure of "criminality." Frequently, these studies provide limited information about participation in criminal activity because the measures of criminality confound participation with diversity, frequency, and seriousness (e.g., Nye, 1958; CRIMINAL CAREERS AND CAREER CRIMINALS Hirschi.
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From page 43... ...
. Longitudinal studies Mat relate measures of parenting and farniTy structure when a child is in elementary school to later official records or self-reports of that child's participation in serious delinquency or adult criminal behavior are particularly well suited to assess the impact of parenting on criminal involvement.9 In a comparison of single-source and composite measures of parenting (i.e., those Mat invoke several observers' assessments)
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From page 44... ...
criminal involvement, but many of these studies do not report criminal participation rates (e.g., Nye, 1958; Hirschi, 1969; Patterson and StouthamerLoeber, 1984~. Parental Criminality A factor consistently associated with serious delinquency and aclult criminal participation in many different studies is criminal behavior of parents.
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From page 45... ...
drug use, and a record of delinquency, also appear to be significant in the genesis of serious delinquent behavior in their children. Family Disruption The impact of family disruption, especially divorce and separation, on the participation of youth in criminal behavior has been a popular topic in studies of juvenile delinquency (for reviews, see Hennessey, Richards, and Berk, 1978; across studies in the base rate of delinquents and the selection ratio used by the researchers (for further discussion of RIOC, see Chapter 4 in this volume and Copas and Tarling in Volume II)
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From page 46... ...
Early Antisocial Behavior Using various measures of antisocial behaviors in the elementary school or preadolescent years, many investigators have examined the association of early antisocial behavior with later serious delinquency and adult criminal activity. With few exceptions, the evidence indicates that such conduct as aggressive behavior, "troublesomeness" in school, dishonesty, and stealing are all related to a record of arrest or court conviction in later years (see Loeber and Dishion, 1983~.
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From page 47... ...
excessive elementary school absences were similarly associated with criminal activity at oIcler ages (Reckless, Dinitz, and Kay, 1957; Robins, 1966; Robins and Wish, 1977; Ouston, 19841.~2 Further evidence of a strong association between preadolescent antisocial behavior and delinquency appears in some research that has examined the importance of various categories of variables in predicting delinquency. In a review of more than 20 studies, child problem behavior including stealing, Tying, and truancy- was second only to poor family management practices as a predictor of later juvenile and adult criminal involvement (Loeber and Dishion, 19831.
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From page 48... ...
CRIMINAL CAREERS AND CAREER CRIMINALS 1961; Gold, 1966; for another review, see Tittle, Villemez, and Smith, 19781.~5 Recent evidence, however, is limited because individual official records usually do not include individual-level social class measures, and arrest statistics are not clisaggregated by this variable. Some existing data sets presumably contain official-record data that would provide further information about the relationship between participation in serious offenses and social class (e.g., McCorc3, 1979; Hindelang, Hirschi, and Weis, 1981; Shan non, 1982a; Thornberry and Farnworth, 1982)
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From page 49... ...
argued that census tracts a common unit of analysis in ecological studies are typically quite diverse with regard to family income, and especially so during the 1950s and 1960s when most ofthe ecological research was carried out. In summary, individual social class may be empirically related to some types of serious clelinquency and adult criminal behavior when participation is measured either by self-reports or official records, but relevant research is limited, especially that based on recent samples.
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From page 50... ...
, but any causal structure among these factors is not yet established. Substance Abuse The relationship between substance abuse and criminal activity is widely thought to be firmly established, supportecl by empirical research as well as CRIMINAL CAREERS AND CAREER CRIMINALS informal observations of criminal justice operations.
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From page 51... ...
This study concluded that both substance abuse and criminal behavior may be a result of similar social and individual factors, principally ineffective socialization in the home, involvement with clelinquent peers, and school-related clifficulties (see also Elliott, Huizinga, ant] Ageton, 19851.
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From page 52... ...
. In particular, the association of unemployment with criminal participation appears to be different for adults than for school-age youths, possibly because unemployment may have different mean CRIMINAL CAREERS AND CAREER CRIMINALS ings for the two age groups.
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From page 53... ...
Indeed, this concept lies at the heart of one major theory of delinquency, differential association theory (SutherIancI and Cressey, 19781. Several longitudinal studies report that association with delinquent friends is clearly related to participation in serious criminal behavior at later ages (Farrington, 1983a; Polk et al., 19811.
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From page 54... ...
Of more theoretical and policy significance is the fact that research on other factors associated with participation in serious offending consistently points to the same variables that have long been associated with crime: ineffective parenting, poor school performance, Tow measured IQ, drug use, and parental criminal CRIMINAL CAREERS AND CAREER CRIMINALS ity. It is extremely difficult, however, to develop reliable measures of the relative influence of each of these variables, largely because of the complexity of the underlying relationships among them and because different studies highlight only one or a few of the variables rather than all of them.
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