New frontiers in criminal careers research, 2000–2011: A state-of-the-art review
Research Highlights
► Criminal careers research is increasingly aligning with self-control theory, psychopathy, the developmental taxonomy, and biosocial criminology. ► Criminal careers research is poised to combine with developmental psychopathology research to offer a full life-course understanding of crime. ► Career criminals are analogous to allied constructs in clinical psychology that point to pathological and extreme antisocial conduct for a small subset of criminal offenders.
Introduction
Since the origins of criminology, researchers have been keenly interested in the longitudinal patterning of criminal activity. The emerging knowledge base has come to be referred to as the study of criminal careers, focusing on an individual's involvement in crime to include the dimensions of participation, frequency, specialization, escalation, career length, and desistance. The nature of this research tradition has adopted a life-course perspective that traces the development of individual criminal activity from pre-term to death.
Beginning with the seminal Philadelphia Birth Cohort Studies (Tracy et al., 1990, Wolfgang et al., 1972), the two-volume study by the United States’ National Academy of Sciences (Blumstein, Cohen, Roth, & Visher, 1986), to present day special issues on the topic published by American Journal of Criminal Justice, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Research, Criminal Behaviour and Mental Health, European Journal of Criminology, Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice and International Criminal Justice Review, criminal careers research is among the most highly visible areas of scholarship in criminology. Not surprisingly, the criminal careers literature has generated a voluminous amount of material that has been summarized in several outlets (Blokland, 2005, DeLisi, 2005, Ezell and Cohen, 2005, Kyvsgaard, 2003, Laub and Sampson, 2003, Maruna and Immarigeon, 2004, Moffitt et al., 2001, Piquero et al., 2003, Piquero et al., 2007, Piquero et al., 2011, Savage, 2009, Steffensmeier and Ulmer, 2005, Weisburd et al., 2001, Wright et al., 2008). The current state-of-the-art narrative meta-review of 364 studies crystallizes essential findings published between 2000 and 2011, investigates emerging theoretical and disciplinary extensions that utilize the criminal career framework to inform theory development and broaden its scientific scope, and articulates pressing research needs.
Section snippets
The parameters of the criminal career
The criminal career paradigm is a global research enterprise. Drawing on data from offenders in Australia (Brame et al., 2010, Fitzgerald et al., in press, Mazerolle et al., 2010), Canada (Kazemian and Le Blanc, 2007, Morselli et al., 2006, Williams and Arnold, 2002), China (Chu, 2002), Denmark (Kyvsgaard, 2003), England (Everson, 2003, LeBel et al., 2008, Maruna, 2004), Finland (Junninen, 2006, Kivivuori, 2007, Savolainen, 2009), Japan (Kobayashi et al., 2010), Malta (Clark, 2006), New Zealand
Theoretical and disciplinary explorations
A central question in criminal careers scholarship centers on the etiology of criminal propensity and the degree to which it is borne from constitutional/person-specific constructs, social institutional/context-specific constructs, or a combination of these (Kazemian et al., 2009, Nagin and Paternoster, 2000, Piquero et al., 2003). Although these perspectives historically were pitted as opposites, there is empirical support for both latent trait (population heterogeneity) and life-course (state
Research needs
Although the apparent ubiquity of criminal careers research would suggest that every conceivable area of research is covered, there are important knowledge gaps. We identified 16 pressing research needs (in no particular order of importance) that will provide much-needed information and hopefully spur additional theoretical, empirical, and policy-relevant research.
The first centers on the role and importance of co-offenders. Although peer influence/differential association is a foundational
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