NCJ Number
196211
Journal
International Journal of Comparative and Applied Criminal Justice Volume: 26 Issue: 1 Dated: Spring 2002 Pages: 53-83
Date Published
2002
Length
31 pages
Annotation
This article reviews the six strategies used by criminologists to study quantitative and qualitative changes during the course of delinquent offending.
Abstract
In criminology, changes in individual offending are often represented by the notion of escalation. There is no broad consensus on the measurement of the cycle of offending and the data is still insufficient on the correlates and predictors of escalation and de-escalation. Escalation is the tendency for offenders to move to serious offense types as offending continues. The six strategies to study quantitative and qualitative changes during the course of offending are transition matrices, ad hoc classification, group detection, developmental sequence, growth curve, and cross-lagged analysis. The transition matrices strategy is concerned with the sequence of individual offenses from the first to the last. In the ad hoc categorization procedure, measurements of offending are cross-tabulated in a turnover table or dynamic typology. The group-detection approach identifies distinctive types of individual offending trajectories and profiles the characteristics of individuals in these trajectories. The development sequence strategy tries to consider the entire course of offending, or at least its main period from childhood through youth. The growth-curve perspective is where the age-crime curve is amply documented with aggregate data. The cross-lagged analysis has two or more waves of data collected during adolescence and social and self-control variables. These six strategies reach a common conclusion. They document a cycle of offending, composed of escalation and de-escalation. Every strategy identifies the offending cycle in spite of the fact that the validation of the results of each strategy is still insufficient. The fundamental challenges of criminological research include undertaking different descriptors of offending, such as variety and velocity; and verifying the authenticity and subtlety of the offending cycle with sophisticated techniques. There is a need for a descriptive theory of the development of offending, and an explanatory theory of the development of offending which links independent and dependent variables. 1 table, 1 note, 106 references