Rational Choice and Criminal Behaviour deals with the degree to which criminal behaviour represents a rational choice. This collection of essays by experts in the field of criminal justice examines various aspects of the rational choice framework. The volume answers such questions as how this framework was developed, and how to apply this framework to the study of criminal behaviour. It also covers specific policy approaches that stem from the rational choice framework, an argument that is crucial in the debate over punishment as a deterrent and the role of society in fostering criminal behaviour.

This second edition book advances knowledge about criminal careers throughout life. It presents new results from the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development (CSDD), which is a unique longitudinal study of the development of offending from age 10 to age 61. Previous results obtained in the CSDD are reviewed, and then new findings from official criminal records up to age 61 are presented: on offending at different ages, continuity in offending, ages of onset, and criminal career duration. The number of offenders and offenses between ages 50 and 61 is noteworthy. The book then presents results on self-reported offending in different age ranges up to 48: on prevalence, frequency, continuity, and comparisons with official records that suggest that official records only capture the tip of the iceberg of offending. It then analyzes different trajectories of official offending up to age 61 and shows to what extent they could be predicted by childhood risk factors. New results from the CSDD in the last 10 years are then presented, followed by a discussion of the relevance of all the findings for criminological theories and public policies such as early intervention. This book should be of great interest not only to academics but also to policy makers and practitioners who are concerned with crime.   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .  

Developmental and life-course criminology are both concerned with the study of changes in offending and problem behaviors over time. Developmental studies in criminology focus on psychological factors that influence the onset and persistence of criminal behavior, while life-course studies analyze how changes in social arrangements, like marriage, education or social networks, can lead to changes in offending. Though each perspective is clearly concerned with patterns of offending and problem behavior over time, the literature on each is spread across various disciplines, including criminology & criminal justice, psychology, and sociology. The Oxford Handbook on Developmental and Life-Course Criminology offers the first comprehensive survey of these two approaches together. Edited by three noted authorities in the field, the volume provides in-depth critical reviews of the development of offending, developmental and life-course theories, development correlates and risk/protective factors, life transitions and turning points, and effective developmental interventions from the world's leading scholars. In the first two sections, the contributors provide overviews of specific criminal career parameters, including age-crime curve, prevalence/frequency of offending, and co-offending, and review the main theoretical frameworks in the developmental and life-course criminology areas. They further summarize some of the empirical literature on known developmental correlates and risk/protective factors associated with longitudinal patterns of offending in the next section. The fourth section focuses on life transitions and turning points as they may relate to persistence in-or desistance from-criminal activity into adulthood, while the final section examines the genesis of antisocial, delinquent, and criminal activity, its maintenance, and its cessation. A state of the art overview on the topic, this Handbook aims to be the most authoritative resource on all issues germane to developmental and life-course criminologists and provides next steps for further research.

Quantitative criminology has certainly come a long way since I was ?rst introduced to a largely qualitative criminology some 40 years ago, when I was recruited to lead a task force on science and technology for the President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice. At that time, criminology was a very limited activity, depending almost exclusively on the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) initiated by the FBI in 1929 for measurement of crime based on victim reports to the police and on police arrests. A ty- cal mode of analysis was simple bivariate correlation. Marvin Wolfgang and colleagues were makingan importantadvancebytrackinglongitudinaldata onarrestsin Philadelphia, an in- vation that was widely appreciated. And the ?eld was very small: I remember attending my ?rst meeting of the American Society of Criminology in about 1968 in an anteroom at New York University; there were about 25-30 people in attendance, mostly sociologists with a few lawyers thrown in. That Society today has over 3,000 members, mostly now drawn from criminology which has established its own clear identity, but augmented by a wide variety of disciplines that include statisticians, economists, demographers, and even a few engineers. This Handbook provides a remarkable testimony to the growth of that ?eld. Following the maxim that "if you can't measure it, you can't understand it," we have seen the early dissatisfaction with the UCR replaced by a wide variety of new approaches to measuring crime victimization and offending.

This Brief examines criminal careers by providing the most extensive and comprehensive investigation to date on the official offending, self-reported offending, and trajectories of offending of the Pittsburgh Youth Study (PYS) participants. The PYS is a longitudinal study, which was initiated in 1987, and involves repeated follow-ups on several community cohorts (starting in grades 1, 4, and 7) of inner-city boys in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. This Brief covers the Youngest and Oldest PYS cohorts (which had the most follow-up and most data available) from ages 10-30. It provides the most complete descriptive analyses of the criminal careers of these males to date. The three cohorts are commonly referred to as the Youngest, Middle, and Oldest cohorts, respectively. Consistent with several prior publications with the PYS data (Loeber et al., 2008), this book focuses only on data from the Youngest and Oldest cohorts as these cohorts were followed up the most frequently and have the longest time window of data available. It will be of interest to researchers in Criminology and Criminal Justice, as well as related fields like Sociology, Developmental Psychology, Social Policy, and Education.

This book examines several contentious and under-studied criminal career issues using one of the world's most important longitudinal studies, the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development (CSDD), a longitudinal study of 411 South London boys followed in criminal records to age 40. The analysis reported in the book explores issues related to prevalence, offending frequency, specialization, onset sequences, co-offending, chronicity, career length, and trajectory estimation. The results of the study are considered in the context of developmental/life-course theories, and the authors outline an agenda for criminal career research generally, and within the context of the CSDD specifically.

This book examines several contentious and under-studied criminal career issues using one of the world's most important longitudinal studies, the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development (CSDD), a longitudinal study of 411 South London boys followed in criminal records to age 40. The analysis reported in the book explores issues related to prevalence, offending frequency, specialization, onset sequences, co-offending, chronicity, career length, and trajectory estimation. The results of the study are considered in the context of developmental/life-course theories, and the authors outline an agenda for criminal career research generally, and within the context of the CSDD specifically.

This Brief fills a gap in criminological literature, as there are few empirically-based studies on delinquency of adolescent girls. It provides results of a longitudinal study, The Pittsburgh Girls Study (PGS), which includes 2,451 girls, followed annually from age 10-19, the ages when criminal behavior tends to emerge. This study provides the most extensive and comprehensive investigation into the criminal offending and self-reported trajectories of offending of PGS participants, along with an in-depth examination of other criminal career dimensions. In five chapters, this short volume reviews the limited extent of girls' delinquency literature, presents data on girls' offending patterns (onset, persistence, specialization, and desistence), provides insights on gender differences by comparison with the Pittsburgh Youth Study, which focused on male offenders, and explores the theoretical and practical implications of the results. By understanding the origins and onset of criminal behavior in girls, researchers can begin to understand effective interventions and crime prevention. This Brief will be of interest to researchers in criminology and criminal justice, as well as related fields such as sociology, public policy, and psychology.

Quantitative criminology has certainly come a long way since I was ?rst introduced to a largely qualitative criminology some 40 years ago, when I was recruited to lead a task force on science and technology for the President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice. At that time, criminology was a very limited activity, depending almost exclusively on the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) initiated by the FBI in 1929 for measurement of crime based on victim reports to the police and on police arrests. A ty- cal mode of analysis was simple bivariate correlation. Marvin Wolfgang and colleagues were makingan importantadvancebytrackinglongitudinaldata onarrestsin Philadelphia, an in- vation that was widely appreciated. And the ?eld was very small: I remember attending my ?rst meeting of the American Society of Criminology in about 1968 in an anteroom at New York University; there were about 25-30 people in attendance, mostly sociologists with a few lawyers thrown in. That Society today has over 3,000 members, mostly now drawn from criminology which has established its own clear identity, but augmented by a wide variety of disciplines that include statisticians, economists, demographers, and even a few engineers. This Handbook provides a remarkable testimony to the growth of that ?eld. Following the maxim that "if you can't measure it, you can't understand it," we have seen the early dissatisfaction with the UCR replaced by a wide variety of new approaches to measuring crime victimization and offending.

Criminological Theory: The Essentials, Fourth Edition by Stephen G. Tibbetts and Alex R. Piquero is a brief yet comprehensive overview of the major concepts and perspectives of the key theories in the evolution of criminology. Putting criminological theory in context, the acclaimed authors examine policy implications brought about by theoretical perspectives to show students the practical application of theories to contemporary social problems. The new edition has been thoroughly updated with the latest theoretical extensions and empirical research, with links made to specific theories and recent events.