Patterns of Offending Behaviour: A New Approach

Abstract

The aim of the study This study focuses on developing a typology of criminal activity. It aims to identify a fixed number of types of criminal behaviour separately for males and females. Age profiles for each type of criminal activity are also constructed. Finally, the study probes the notion of criminal pathways. What proportion of offenders are specialists within one sphere of activity? How many tend to migrate from one sphere to another as they become older? The distinguishing feature of the analysis is that it attempts to describe criminal activity over a five-year period rather than the conventional approach of summarising a 'life-time' of crime. The five-year summaries of criminal activity are likely to have a greater practical use, for they will help practitioners, such as the police and probation officers, to understand a recent criminal history. Methods Data from the 1953 and 1958 birth cohorts drawn from the Offenders Index was analysed. Conviction histories for individuals were divided into five-year strips defined by the age of the offender at the date of conviction. Using latent class analysis, and examining males and females separately within each cohort, the approach succeeded in identifying clusters of offending behaviour.

Crime and reactions to crime in 34 Swedish birth cohorts: from historical descriptions to forecasting the future

“…2 The 'Offenders Index', which constitutes the basis of the UK cohort statistics, appears primarily only to have been utilized by Keith Soothill and colleagues (see, e.g. Soothill, Francis, & Fligelstone, 2002;Soothill, Ackerley, & Francis, 2004a, 2004bLiu, Francis, & Soothill, 2011). There are no corresponding Swedish studies based on the database maintained by Statistics Sweden.…”

Specialized Versus Versatile Intergenerational Transmission of Violence: A New Approach to Studying Intergenerational Transmission from Violent Versus Non-Violent Fathers: Latent Class Analysis

“…Studies using the FSC or DI tend to conclude that there is no specialization in criminal careers. More recent research has used either Latent Class Analysis (LCA) (Francis et al 2004;McCutcheon 1987;Soothill et al 2002;Sullivan et al 2009) or Item Response Theory (IRT) in a multilevel regression framework (Osgood and Schreck 2007;Sullivan et al 2009). 1 FSC and DI are relatively basic approaches to analyze the specialization question.…”

Criminal Neighbourhoods: Does the Density of Prior Offenders in an Area Encourage others to Commit Crime?

“…This may reflect the fact that females are less likely to be victims of crime but are also less likely to become offenders (Graham and Bowling, 1995;Soothill et al, 2002;Davies, 2011). It is possible that females, and older females in particular, act as agents of social control and that this helps to explain the significant negative relationships in the …”