TITULO FINAL

The key criminal career variables as discussed and defined previously in Chapter One and Two are described in this section for the sample. The age of onset was the age at which the offender received their first charge. The mean age of onset was 22.38 years (SD= 7.64); the median age of onset was 20.06 years and the mode was 17.26 years. The minimum age of onset was 8.87 years and the maximum was 69.86 years.

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The career length was the number of years between the first charge received and the last. For one-time offenders, the career length was judged to be 0 years. The career length was also judged to be 0 years for those offenders whose charges were all received on the same day. The career length ranged from 0 to 51.72 years. The mean career length was 6.11 years (SD= 7.65); the median career length was 3.30 years and the mode was 0.00 years. In the sample, 32.4% of the offenders had career lengths of 0 years, 58.3% of offenders had a career length of 5 years or less, 76.1% had a career length of 10 years or less, 93.5 % had a career length of 20 years or less, and 98.8% had a career length of 30 years or less. Therefore, only 1.2% of offenders had a career length greater than 30 years.

Chronicity was determined by the total number of charges received. The average total charges received by offenders was 7.08 charges (SD= 10.28); the median chronicity was 3.00 and the mode was 1.00. The chronicity ranged from 1 to 115 charges: 28.2% of the offenders received one charge, 14.4% received two charges, and 9.8% received three charges. Therefore, more than half of the offenders have received three or less charges while 1.2% of the offenders received fifty or more charges. These results highlight the fact that a very small subset of the sample received the greater number of charges (Tracy et al., 1990; West & Farrington, 1973; Wolfgang et al., 1972).

Chronicity was further distinguished by levels of chronicity. This kind of classification has been used in many studies as a way to distinguish between offenders (Svensson, 2002; Wolfgang et al., 1972). Based on this classification, five levels of chronicity were

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devised: one-time, occasional, repeat, chronic, and career offenders. One-time offenders have received one or two charges, occasional offenders have received three to five charges, repeat offenders have received six to ten charges, chronic offender have received more than ten charged and less than twenty, and career offenders have received more than twenty charges. The summary of the levels of chronicity is detailed in the Table 7.3. One-time offenders make up 42.6% of the offenders, 22.2% are occasional offenders, 16.0% are repeat offenders, 10.9% are chronic offenders, and 8.3% are career offenders.

Table 7.3 Summary of Offenders According to Level of Chronicity

Offender Type No. of Offenders Percentage Cumulative Percentage One-time 720 42.6% 42.6% Occasional 376 22.2% 64.8% Repeat 270 16.0% 80.7% Chronic 185 10.9% 91.7% Career 141 8.3% 100.0%

Versatility refers to the number of different offence types the offender has been associated with. Versatility was scored on a scale from one to nine, where a score of one indicates low versatility, and a score of nine indicates high versatility. Each offender received a score based on the number of offence categories they have participated in during their career; therefore, an offender who has offended in the drug, theft and burglary offence category would have a versatility score of three. The mean versatility score was 2.82 (SD= 1.86); the median versatility was 2.00 and the mode was 1.00. The summary of the versatility scores can be found in Table 7.4 where it can be seen that the majority (34.9%) of offenders received a score of one.

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Table 7.4 Summary of Versatility Scores for Offenders

Versatility Score No. of Offenders Percentage of Offenders Cumulative Percentage 1 591 34.93% 34.93% 2 297 17.55% 52.48% 3 252 14.89% 67.38% 4 210 12.41% 79.79% 5 153 9.04% 88.83% 6 109 6.44% 95.27% 7 62 3.66% 98.94% 8 17 1.00% 99.94% 9 1 0.06% 100.00%

Developing a scale of seriousness has been an on-going objective for research for almost a century. Scales of seriousness are often based on the subjective judgment of students or professionals of the crimes committed, though they can also involve criminal punishment codes or crime seriousness scales developed by criminal justice commissions (Gorsuch, 1938; Sellin & Wolfgang, 1964; Broadhurst & Indermaun, 1982). The scale of seriousness in this study was based on the amalgamation of the Crime Seriousness Scale developed by the Oregon Criminal Justice Commission (2004) and the scale of seriousness used in the Spohn‟s (2000) research for the National Institute of Justice study.

The Crime Seriousness Scale is used as part of the sentencing guidelines for the Oregon Criminal Justice system. It is used to classify current crimes of convictions where each category represents crimes of relatively equal seriousness. It is used in conjunction with the Criminal History Scale to determine the length of prison sentence to be given for the crime the offender has been convicted of. Whereas, Spohn‟s (2000) scale of seriousness was developed to determine the level of seriousness for research purposes where the goal

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was to determine the level of seriousness of the crime committed which she then compared to the level of punishment administered. Both systems are based on legal categories and were very similar however Spohn‟s (2000) scale did not adequately represent all of the charge types in this sample and therefore the Crime Seriousness Scale was used to determine the seriousness value of the excluded offence types.

The seriousness of the charge was a nine-category variable as shown in Table 7.5. The offender‟s engagement in a crime type was indicated by a binary measure (engaged or not). This was then multiplied by the level of seriousness of the offence and summed as measure of seriousness for each offender. For example, an offender whose criminal history consisted of drug offences, assault offences and weapon offences would receive a seriousness score of eleven. Seriousness therefore could range from one to forty-five. Overall the data showed a mean seriousness score of 12.29 (SD= 8.72); the median seriousness score was 10.00 and the mode was 2.00.

Table 7.5 Scale of Seriousness of Charge Types

Offence Type Level of Seriousness

Murder/Manslaughter 9 Sex Offences 8 Robbery Offences 7 Assault Offences 6 Burglary Offences 5 Theft Offences 4 Weapon Offences 3 Drug Offences 2

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