EL PARADIGMA DE LOS PROCESOS.

Dutch offenders

An earlier version of this chapter was published in Dutch as: Blokland, A. & Nieuwbeerta, P. (2004).

Recidive en het beëindigen van de criminele carrière over een periode van 25 jaar. Tijdschrift voor

Abstract

This paper describes the criminal careers of over 5,000 individuals who had their crimi- nal case tried in the Netherlands in 1977. Following the criminal career approach six career dimensions were recognized: participation, frequency, crime mix, age of onset, age of termination and career duration. First, recidivism prevalence, frequency and crime- type in the period 1977–2002 were analyzed. Next, these analyses were repeated using data on the entire criminal careers preceding 2002, adding age of onset and career dura- tion. In the 25-year period between 1977 and 2002, 65% of the sample was convicted for at least one subsequent offence, with an average recidivism frequency of 9.4 offences. The distribution of recidivism frequency was found to be highly skewed: a small (3.0%) percentage of individuals being responsible for a disproportionate share (30.0%) of all offences the entire sample was convicted for in the 1977–2002 period. A similar pattern was also found when analyzing the offenders’ entire careers. The average age of onset was 20.5, while the average age of termination was 38.6. Measured over the entire crimi- nal histories the average criminal career spanned 19.4 years. The various career dimen- sions were found to be associated with offenders’ sex, ethnicity and age of onset.

1 Introduction

In his 2002 Sutherland address at the American Society of Criminology meeting, David Farrington indicated that the two main issues of Developmental and Life course Crimi- nology (DLC) are the description of the development of offending with age, and the identi- fication of risk factors and life events that affect the course of that development (Farrington, 2003; see also Loeber & LeBlanc, 1990: 377). In describing various dimen- sions of the development of criminal behavior over the life course, DLC is tributary to the criminal career paradigm that became influential during the latter part of the nineteen eighties and which provided DLC with the basic conceptual tools (Blumstein, Cohen, Roth, & Visher, 1986). In turn, the criminal career paradigm can be traced back to the epidemiological roots of criminology itself, making present day DLC the latest branch on a lengthy pedigree (Piquero, Farrington, & Blumstein, 2003).

Developmental and life course criminology unifies three other perspectives on the development of offending over time: the prevention-orientated risk factor approach (Farrington, 2003), the more theory-driven developmental criminology (LeBlanc & Loeber, 1998; Loeber & LeBlanc, 1990), and the relatively new life course approach to criminal behavior (Sampson & Laub, 1993), which emphasizes the importance of life course tran- sitions in explaining criminal development. Despite its long history in the field of crimi- nology however, the developmental approach has only been fully embraced by criminologists relatively recently (LeBlanc & Loeber, 1998). Longitudinal studies – indis- pensable when studying change in behavior over time –, are both time and money con- suming and therefore usually cover only a limited period of the lifespan. Furthermore, researchers within the risk factor paradigm as well as developmental criminologists ini- tially focused on the childhood and adolescent period (Adams, 1997; Sampson & Laub, 1992). This has contributed to the fact that notwithstanding its long history and the sig- nificant volume of longitudinal research that was published over the last 20 years, the answers to many DLC-questions, especially those regarding criminal development dur- ing the adult period, are far from unequivocal (Farrington, 2003; Piquero et al., 2003; Laub & Sampson, 2003).

Do all individuals start offending young, or are there offenders who start their crimi- nal careers later in life? What types of crime constitute the average criminal career? At what age do offenders terminate their criminal behavior? What is the average duration of the criminal career of active offenders? How is the frequency of offending related to career duration? How do these career dimensions relate to offender characteristics? These and similar questions have remained largely unanswered, especially within a non- Anglo-American context.

In this study we address these and related questions describing the criminal careers of a national representative sample of 5,164 individuals whose criminal case was decided upon by a Public Prosecutor or tried by a Dutch court in 1977. Our data are derived from the Criminal Career and Life course Study (CCLS) that is currently being carried out at the Netherlands Institute of Crime and Law Enforcement (NSCR) and pertain to the entire officially recorded criminal careers of all the individuals in the sample up to the year 2002. Given the long prospective period on which data was collected, this dataset is especially suited to study long-term recidivism, termination, and criminal career dura- tion. Our study contributes to the current state of knowledge in several important ways.

Whereas many studies have been based on either a limited number of individuals, a short time span, or both (Farrington, 2003; Piquero et al., 2003), our study provides data on a large, representative sample over a long period of time. In addition, serious offenders are overrepresented in our sample enabling a more correct estimation of the several career dimensions.1 High-rate offenders are often missing in population samples, thereby possi- bly underestimating true offence rates or career durations (Piquero et al., 2003).

2 Dimensions of criminal careers

Researchers from different backgrounds find concurrence within DLC in the way it looks to individual offending as a career. A criminal career is defined as the trajectory of the individual’s criminal activity from the first to the last offence (Blumstein et al., 1986). The term career refers solely to the longitudinal sequence of crimes committed by an individ- ual offender and does not imply upward mobility. Nor does it mean that criminal activity is the individual’s means of subsistence (Blumstein & Cohen, 1987). One can have a criminal career without making a career out of crime. In their 1986 report the National Academy of Sciences panel on criminal careers argued that the study of criminal careers should focus on four important career dimensions: participation, frequency, crime mix and career duration (Blumstein et al., 1986). Participation refers to the distinction between those who commit crime and those who do not. Frequency, also called lambda, refers to the number of crimes committed by an active offender within a given time period. Crime mix – the combination of crimes committed by an active offender – is important for answering questions regarding specialization (the tendency to repeat crim- inal offences of an particular kind in the course of a criminal career), versatility (the num- ber of different offence types committed), and escalation (the tendency to commit offences of an increased level of seriousness during the course of a criminal career). Finally, career duration refers to the time between onset and termination – the time between the first and last known offence. These dimensions have since been central in studies on criminal careers. Over the years, others have added important dimensions to this list (LeBlanc & Loeber, 1998; Loeber & LeBlanc, 1990). Loeber and Le Blanc (1990) refer to participation, frequency and crime mix as generic concepts, while referring to age of onset, age of termination and career duration as boundary concepts because they rep- resent the temporal boundaries of offending.

Empirical evidence on criminal career dimensions is of importance to both DLC- theory and public policy regarding crime. Different developmental criminological theo- ries offer rival predictions regarding the distribution and associations among the various career dimensions. Current criminological typologies, like Moffitt’s distinction between adolescence limited and life course persistent offenders (Moffitt, 1993), claim that differ- ent types of offenders show different criminal trajectories: a small group of offenders showing an early onset, having higher lambdas and also being more versatile and persis- tent in their criminal behavior (Moffitt, 1993, 1997). The skewness of the offending fre- quency distribution as well as the relationship found between age of onset and career duration have been interpreted as favoring typological theories. In contrast, general 1. This overrepresentation is corrected for by using a weight-factor in all analysis (see method section).

theories predict offending to decrease with age for all active offenders (Gottfredson & Hirschi, 1990; Laub & Sampson, 2003).2 Gottfredson and Hirschi have gone as far as to claim that all dimensions of the criminal career are influenced by the same underlying construct – self-control (Gottfredson & Hirschi, 1986, 1988). Individuals low on self-con- trol would be more likely to participate in crime, more likely to offend frequently and less likely to terminate their careers than individuals high on self control. Knowledge on the correlates of criminal career dimensions and the way these dimensions vary among sub- groups of offenders is relevant for determining whether typological theories are war- ranted to explain individual criminal development or whether more general theories suffice. Better understanding of the career dimensions would also aid policies designed to prevent or redirect an individual’s criminal career (Blumstein, 2004). For example, knowledge on offending frequency, crime mix, age of termination and career duration, speak directly to issues related to incapacitation: the number and type of crime prevented will depend both on the frequency as well as the duration of an offender’s criminal career (Piquero, Brame, & Lynam, 2004).

In this chapter we describe the six dimensions distinguished in the career approach to crime: (1) participation, (2) frequency, (3) crime mix, (4) age of onset, (5) age of termina- tion, and (6) duration. Our analyses have a dual focus, describing both patterns of long- term recidivism in the CCLS sample since 1977 and describing the development of offending over the entire criminal careers of these individuals up to 2002. In the follow- ing, first we describe patterns of long-term recidivism in the CCLS-sample based on data on the period between 1977 and 2002. Participation – or prevalence of recidivism –, recidivism frequency, as well as the mix of crimes committed over this 25 year period will be analyzed. Attention will also be paid to the age at which offenders terminate their criminal careers making use of the long prospective period on which data was collected. Next, we turn to the offender’s entire criminal history and offer a description of all six dis- tinguished career dimensions. The aforementioned analyses on recidivism are repeated within the context of the offender’s entire criminal careers and augmented with analyses of age of onset and career length. Finally, we will explore variations in these career dimen- sions that are associated with offender’s individual characteristics.

3 Prior research

In recent years the developmental approach has gained in popularity, resulting in an increasing amount of longitudinal data on both the generic as well as the boundary con- cepts becoming available (Benson, 2002; Farrington, 2003; Piquero et al., 2003). In this section we will briefly review the main results of prior research on the six distinguished career dimensions, as well as the way they are associated to various individual characteris- tics. In doing so we will limit ourselves to the individual characteristics that have proven to be of substantial influence and are available in the CCLS-data set (for a more elaborate

2. General static differ from general dynamic theories in that the former postulate that the age-crime relationship is invariant, while the latter acknowledge variability around the age of desistance. Both general static as well as general dynamic theories however postulate that crime declines with age (Paternoster, Dean, Piquero, Mazerolle, & Brame, 1997).

review see: Laub & Sampson, 2001; Piquero et al., 2003). Finally, since the effect of age on criminal careers is complex and constitutes one of the key-points in the debate sur- rounding developmental approaches to crime (Blumstein et al., 1986; Gottfredson & Hir- schi, 1986), these effects deserve extensive treatment which would intervene with the general and descriptive nature of the current study. Therefore possible age effects on criminal careers are largely left aside here and treated more comprehensively elsewhere (Chapters 3 and 4).

Participation

Estimates of life-time participation in crime in earlier studies based on official data range from 7 to 50 percent, depending on how participation is defined, on the time period over which participation is measured, and on the characteristics of the sample used (Piquero et al., 2003: 429). During a thirty year follow-up of over 500 American males born between 1925 and 1934, McCord (1978) for example, found that 27.5% of the men was convicted at least once. More recently, Farrington (2001) found that of the high-risk Lon- don boys in the Cambridge study on Delinquent Development 40% had been convicted by age 40. Participation estimates using self-report data are usually higher. In compari- son, 96% of the males in the Cambridge study reported to have committed at least one – mainly less serious – offence up to age 32 (Farrington, 2001).

Participation is higher among men than among women (Blumstein et al., 1986). In the New Zealand Dunedin cohort, consisting of all children born in the Dunedin mater- nity hospital between April 1972 and March 1973, the male to female conviction ratio up to age 21 was 2.5:1 (Moffitt, Lynam, & Silva, 2001). This ratio is even larger when only vio- lent crimes were taken into account. Stattin, Magnusson and Reichel (1989) found that of a representative sample of Swedish juveniles 38% of the males and 9% of the females had been registered for a criminal offence by age 30. Using self-report data from the National Youth Study, Elliott (1994) found that the participation rate up to age 27 for seri- ous violent offending was over twice as high for males than for females – respectively 42% versus 16%. American studies using official data have also reported greater partici- pation for blacks than for whites (Visher & Roth, 1986). In her follow-up of the 1958 Phil- adelphia birth cohort, Kempf (1990) found that regardless of juvenile delinquency, participation among blacks was higher between ages 18 to 26, than it was for whites; the black/white adult ratio in court charges for those without police contacts prior to age 18 being 1.7:1. Self-report studies however find less pronounced differences. For example the aforementioned study by Elliott (1994) found a black-to-white ratio of 1.25:1.

Frequency

Spelman (1994) summarizes findings on individual arrest frequency in both longitudinal and retrospective studies and concludes that the average arrestee is arrested about six times a year. Estimates of offence frequency using official data however are complicated by the fact that official records undercount the total number of offences. Not surprisingly, offence frequencies are much higher in self-reports compared to official records (Blum- stein et al., 1986). Furthermore, individual offence frequencies are found to be highly skewed with a small fraction of the population committing a large fraction of all crimes (Spelman, 1994). Wolfgang, Figlio and Sellin (1972) found that in the 1945 Philadelphia birth cohort 18% of the active offenders in the sample was responsible for 52% of all the

sample’s offences. Similarly, Block and Van der Werff (1991) using Dutch conviction data found that 4.8% of the offenders they labeled ‘career’ offenders accounted for 14.7% of the total number of convictions during the six year follow-up period of the study. These findings suggest that the overall average is highly influenced by the large portion of ‘spo- radic’ offenders being arrested only once or twice.

Offence frequency shows much less variation by gender and ethnicity than does par- ticipation. The aforementioned review by Blumstein (1986) showed that for most crimes the male-to-female ratio was 2:1 or less. Both findings from studies using official data and those from studies using self-reports further suggest that with regard to ethnicity the black-to-white ratio is close to 1:1.

Crime mix

Studies into the mix of crimes committed by individual offenders have often been framed in terms of specialization versus versatility. In general, criminal careers tend to be charac- terized by versatility rather than specialization (Farrington, 2003; Piquero et al., 2003). However, some evidence for property specialization exists (Spelman, 1994). Evidence also suggest that while offence seriousness increases during adolescence, the seriousness of offending tends to stabilize and then decrease as offenders reach adulthood and com- mence further in their criminal careers (Cohen, 1986).

Despite versatility being common, there is some evidence of differences in crime mix across demographic groups (Piquero et al., 2003). For example, using British conviction data, Soothill, Francis and Fligelstone (2000) found women to be less versatile in their offending than men (but see: Mazerolle, Brame, Paternoster, Piquero, & Dean, 2000). Ethnic differences in crime mix seem to be restricted to chronic offenders. Using data from both the 1945 and the 1958 Philadelphia birth cohort Tracy, Wolfgang and Figlio (1990) found that among offenders with at least five arrests white offenders most often repeated theft offences, while non-white offenders repeated more offence types than their white counter parts specializing also in injury offences. No differences in specialization were found for offenders with less than five arrests. Finally, versatility appeared to be unrelated to age of onset when current age was controlled for (Piquero, Paternoster, Mazerolle, Brame, & Dean, 1999).

Age of onset

Most offenders commit their first offence prior to age eighteen (Piquero et al., 2003). As with participation the estimates of age of onset depend on the definition used. The aver- age age at first conviction in the Cambridge study was 18.6 (Farrington, 2001). The peak age of first conviction – measured up to age 32 – was 14. A later study by Farrington and Maughan (1999) using a cohort similar to that of the initial Cambridge study but of boys born seven years later, yielded highly similar results. In the 1945 and 1958 Philadelphia birth cohorts using police records, the peak in the age of onset was at 16 and 15 respec- tively (Tracy et al., 1990). Self-reported ages of onset tend to be somewhat lower. In his study on serious violent delinquency Elliott (1994) found that over half of the violent offenders reported committing their first violent offence between ages 14 and 17.

Men tend to start their criminal careers at a younger age than women. For example, Stattin, Magnusson and Reichel (1989) following a representative sample of Swedish juveniles from age 10 to 30 found the peak age of onset for males was 16–17, while that

for females was 21–23 (see also: Kyvsgaard, 2003). In the National Youth Study blacks reported a lower peak age of onset than did whites, 15 versus 16 respectively (Elliott, 1994). Arrest data from the Philadelphia birth cohort yielded similar findings (Wolfgang, Figlio, & Sellin, 1972).

Age of termination

The estimated peak age of termination is between 20 and 29 (Farrington, 1992). Research into the age of termination is complicated by the truncation of the follow-up period in any longitudinal study that does not follow its subjects until they die, making it difficult to determine when an individual’s criminal career has truly ended (Piquero et al., 2004). This is illustrated by the findings of Farrington, Lambert and West (1998) who collected data on the conviction histories of both the parents and siblings of the boys ini- tially involved in the Cambridge study. Based on data up to age 40 the mean age of termi- nation for the study’s males and siblings was 24–26. However, based on data up to age 70 on average for the male’s fathers and up to age 67 on average for the male’s mothers, the mean age at termination was 36 for the fathers and 38 for the mothers.

Age of termination does not seem to vary strongly with sex. In the Farrington, Lam- bert and West study the wives and sisters of the Cambridge study males were found to