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Abstract
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PURPOSE: The main aim of this article is to investigate the duration of criminal careers, to assess how many offenders desist from offending (i.e., terminate offending) up to age 61.
METHODS: The Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development is a prospective longitudinal survey of 411 London males originally studied at age 8 in 1961. Their criminal records have been searched repeatedly up to age 61, and their self-reported offending was measured up to age 48, when 93% of males were interviewed.
RESULTS: Forty-four percent of males were convicted, and many criminal careers were very long; 26% of convicted males had a duration of 20 years or more. The probability of being reconvicted was substantial even after a gap of 10 (20%) or 15 years (19%) after the previous conviction, but it was only 8% after a 30-year gap and only 6% after a 40-year gap. Offenders who had been conviction-free for 30 or more years since their last conviction had a similar self-reported offending score to non-offenders at age 48.
CONCLUSIONS: It seems likely that those offenders (49%) who had been conviction-free for 30 or more years had truly desisted. In contrast, those offenders who were conviction-free for less than 10 years (22%) probably had not desisted up to age 61. Desistance is more uncertain for the remainder of the offenders.
Language: en |