NCJ Number
205223
Date Published
2004
Length
78 pages
Annotation
This study examined a sample of frequent offenders in the Netherlands during a 5-year time period to determine and conclude a working definition of frequent offender.
Abstract
In developing a profile of frequent offenders in the Netherlands, past research has used police statistics. An offender’s total number of contacts with the police was used to define a cut-off point which was usually more than 10. This study attempted to provide a more useful definition of a frequent offender for the criminal justice system. It included accessing judicial records which made it possible to describe the information recorded about offenders who had been proven guilty, offenses prosecuted in which the public prosecutor or the court made legally-binding decisions, and background characteristics which included gender, age, age at onset of criminal behavior, type of offense, and country of birth. In addition, the study used a fixed time window of 5 years, 1997 to 2001, which yielded a sample of 626,000 offenders. The offender sample had more than 1 million convictions during the 5-year period. The cut-off value to define a convicted offender as a frequent offender was three or more convictions in the 5-year period. Overall, the study was largely descriptive and contained a first attempt to classify frequent offenders with respect to their disposals. It was recommended that social-demographic characteristics be included in the analyses and that more information is necessary to better describe the relationship between personal characteristics and the criminal career.