Criminal Careers Up to Age 50 and Life Success Up to Age 48: New Findings From the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development

• NCJ Number: 216170
• Author(s): David P. Farrington; Jeremy W. Coid; Louise M. Harnett; Darrick Jolliffe; Nadine Soteriou; Richard E. Turner; Donald J. West
• Date Published: September 2006
• Length: 94 pages
• Sale Source: Great Britain Home Office Research Development and Statistics Directorate
• Publication Format: Document (Online)
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)
• Language: English
• Country: United Kingdom
• Note: Home Office Research Study 299; downloaded November 7, 2006.

Annotation

This report presents the results of a prospective longitudinal survey of 411 men in London on their conviction careers up to age 50 and their life success up to age 48.

Abstract

Results indicated that 41 percent of the men were convicted and had an average of five convictions for standard offenses spanning 9 years. Seven percent of the men accounted for over half of all the convictions among the study participants. While only 29 percent of the men had been convicted, a full 93 percent of the men self-reported committing at least one type of offense during their lifetime. An average of 39 self-report offenses was recorded for every 1 conviction. The men who were convicted at the youngest ages tended to have the most convictions and the longest criminal careers. Nine criteria for measuring a successful life were evaluated at ages 32 and 48. At age 32, the proportion of men living successful lives was 78 percent compared with 88 percent of men who were living successful lives at age 48. Persistent offenders were the least successful men while the men who had desisted from offending before age 21 were similar in their life success to the men who had no convictions. The most important childhood risk factors for later offending were family criminality, daring, low school attainment, poverty, and poor parenting. The findings suggest that since almost half of the offenses were committed by unconvicted men, primary prevention efforts should target the entire community rather than only high-risk groups. Participants were 411 London males aged 8 to 48 who were enrolled in the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development, a prospective longitudinal study that followed children in a community sample for 40 years to study the development of criminal career patterns. The study included more than five personal interviews beginning at age 8; 93 percent of the males who were still alive were interviewed at age 48. Participant’s convictions were recorded from age 10 to 50. Tables, references, appendixes