Criminal Careers and "Career Criminals," Volume I (1986) / Chapter Skim
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4. Methodological Issues in Criminal Career Research
4. Methodological Issues in Criminal Career Research
Pages 96-108
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From page 96... ...
research strategies to reduce potential biases arising from sampling anct measurement problems. OBSERVATIONAL APPROACHES: SELF-REPORTS AND OFFICL\L RECORDS The two main observational approaches for obtaining data on individual criminal careers-self-reports and official records of contacts with the criminal justice system-invoke longitudinal data for individuals.
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From page 97... ...
Towsaliency events. Further reducing the recall period to less than a year, however, could jeopardize precision in estimates of the number of reported criminal events, especially for more serious offense types that occur infrequently.
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From page 98... ...
These cIassification differences can also occur when Tocally recorclecl criminal events, based on the crime categories found in local statutes, are transformed to some other crime classification scheme in centrally maintained official records. Within a single jurisdiction, classification is likely to be fairly consistent, but inconsistencies may be introduced in records that reflect cIassifications from multiple jurisdictions or .
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From page 99... ...
But however complete the recording may be, officially recorded arrests still account tor only a small portion of all crimes committed. In addition to the crimes clirectly associated with an arrest (or a conviction)
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. Potential for Synthesis of Observational Methods Self-reports and official records are currently the best avaflable methods for obtaining longitudinal data on individual criminal careers.
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From page 101... ...
Official records might also be used to help reduce response errors by invoking events in the official record during selfreport interviews, both as a means of triggering recall of events and time neriods for respondents and of reducing respondent inclinations to intentionally misrepresent their criminal activities. an opportunity to directly link self-reported crimes to both self-reported ant]
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From page 102... ...
Stratified sample designs can increase CRIMINAL CAREERS AND CAREER CRIMINALS all community-based samples exclude offenders who are incarcerated at the time of sampling, who tend to be disproportionately high-rate offenders. If high-rate offenders are more likely to drop out of school, they will be underrepresented in school-based samples.
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From page 103... ...
There is also a greater concentration of more serious offense types in convictee and inmate samples than in other offender samples. Processing cases through the criminal justice system typically involves increased filtering and selectivity as many less serious cases are dropped.
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From page 104... ...
In addition to the consid CRIMINAL CAREERS AND CAREER CRIMINALS erable cost involved, the historical environment in which the cohort is observed may no longer be relevant at the time the results become available. Thus, for example, a cohort that reached maturity before the sharp rise in drug use ofthe late 1960s would yield no information on the influence of drug use on involvement in other criminal activity.
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From page 105... ...
be augmented by retrospective longituclinal data whenever available. PROBLEMS OF CONFOUNDED EFFECTS A number of factors may confound estimates of criminal career dimensions.
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From page 106... ...
For example, if an individual initiates or terminates a career midway through an observation period, then the estimate of his offending frequency, when distributed over the entire period, would be only halfhis true rate cluring his active periocl. A similar distortion could occur in analyzing the effects of covariates on criminal career dimensions.
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From page 107... ...
the sensitivity of results to those assumptions. Models of incliviclual offending have moved from treatments of offending based on traditional aggregate measures such as per capita crime rates and recidivism rates to more detailed characterizations that partition offending levels among the various aspects of a criminal career.
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From page 108... ...
represent conceptual advances over the simple model of criminal careers representec! in Figure 1-2 that underlies most available estimates of the various career dimensions.
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