NCJ Number
126663
Date Published
1989
Length
114 pages
Annotation
The paper presents the results of a study of adult arrest histories of male criminal offenders arrested in the Detroit SMSA between January 1974 and December 1977 to determine the rate at which offenders terminate criminal activity and how this rate varies based on offenders' prior criminal record.
Abstract
The research used the criminal career approach which focuses on the longitudinal analysis of individual offenders' criminal activity plus the termination rate, which is defined as the probability an offender terminates criminal activity in a given year. The study then analyzed how the termination rate varied across offender attributes. The arrestees were divided into demographic and prior criminal record groups. Average termination rates were then estimated, using maximum likelihood techniques, for each group based on criminal activity after the particular arrest timeframe. Clusters of offender groups with both similar attributes and similar termination rates were identified. The analysis for this particular data pool yielded six clusters with race-specific and age-specific findings. In general, termination rates decrease as the number of prior arrests increase for white, 17-29 year-old offenders; black and white, 30-39 year-old offenders have a lower termination rate than offenders who are 17-29 or over 40 years old at the time of arrest. Several areas of further research and applications of these results are discussed. The paper includes eight appendixes that specifically deal with the data and refinements in it. 48 footnotes, 13 figures, 13 tables, and 31 references (Author abstract modified)