Lifelong Conviction Pathways and Self-Reported Offending: Towards a Deeper Comprehension of Criminal Career Development

Miguel Basto-Pereira and David P Farrington

The British Journal of Criminology, 2020, vol. 60, issue 2, 285-302

Abstract: This article investigates to what extent life-course self-reported offending is related to the four developmental pathways model of criminal careers. Self-reported offending from ages 10 to 48 years is analyzed in the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development, which is a prospective longitudinal survey of the development of offending. Vandalism, shoplifting, assault and fraud were self-reported by more than half of the non-convicted males; however, individuals in convicted pathways had significantly more self-reported offences. In particular, versatile serious recidivists had a large number of self-reported offences, an earlier age of onset and a later age of desistance. A theoretical approach to criminal careers is proposed, which relates childhood vulnerabilities to lifelong self-reported offending and official criminal careers. The findings suggest that the key criminological research issue is how and why any person exceeds normative levels of offending, between the expected beginning in childhood/adolescence and the expected ending during middle adulthood.

Keywords: self-reported offences; criminal career development; longitudinal study; childhood risk factors; developmental criminology (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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