Citation

Youngs D, Canter DV, Cooper J. Behaviormetrika 2004; 31(2): 99-111.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2004, Behaviormetric Society of Japan)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

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Abstract

In order to establish if criminals carried out distinct sub-sets of criminal activity as opposed to being widely versatile in the type of crime that they committed, 54 female and 49 male offenders completed a self-report questionnaire that asked about their criminality in two modes:Convictions and actual commission. MDS analysis of the resulting data supported the hypothesis that there is a subset of general criminal activities that most offenders have been involved in, but that there is also a tendency for offenders to evince thematic foci to their activities that relate to dishonesty, violence or antisocial crimes. These three core themes are present both in male and female offenders and across data modalities, emerging in the crimes for which the offender has been convicted as well as those to which s/he admits. 1. Introduction 1.1 Criminal career research A long standing debate in criminal actions research has focused on the question of whether offenders are either specialised, offending in specific crime types, or versatile, with no discernible patterns within their crime repertoire. Historically, most studies on this issue have focused on juvenile offenders and have tended toward the view that offenders are versatile (see Klein 1984 for a review). More recently, Farrington, Snyder and Finnegan's (1988) major study of 70,000 juveniles also pointed to a small degree of specialisation only, superimposed on a great deal of versatility. The consensus has emerged then that juvenile criminal careers reflect a single underlying construct of delinquent tendency displayed in an overall versatility of offending. Studying juveniles as the basis of criminal career research is however problematic due to the over inclusion of misdemeanour offences that are unrepresentative of involvement in the penal system. Moreover, as Stattin, Magnusson and Reichel (1989) point out 25% of males and 52% of females do not receive their first conviction until the age of 21. Certainly, studies of adult offenders do tend to find increased levels of specialisation.