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Abstract
The study of criminal careers has resulted in important descriptive information about the longitudinal patterns of offending over the life-course. Much of this research has examined more common patterns of general offending, typically among street offenders. An under-explored question is the extent to which distinct types of offenders display similar patterns on key criminal career dimensions. The current study examines this particular issue with a focus on sex offenders using longitudinal data from a cohort of South London males participating in the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development. Results show that, contrary to popular opinion, sex offending is quite rare, with less than 3% of the Cambridge males being convicted for 13 sex offenses through age 50. Further, there was no continuity in sex offending from the juvenile to adult periods and very few recidivist sex offenders. Directions for future research are addressed.
Notes
1. Since (at least until the 1970s) conviction in London was very likely after arrest, the requirement of conviction in London does not represent a major distinction from the arrest data, which are the more commonly available official record data in the US. The minimum age of criminal responsibility in England is 10.
2. In 1994 and earlier, microfiche records were consulted in Scotland Yard. From 1995, the microfiche collection was discontinued and all convictions (and cautions) were recorded on the Police National Computer (PNC). There was only limited copying of old records to the PNC, generally when a person received a new conviction.
3. Many records of old convictions were not found in the PNC and several convictions before 2002 were not found until the 2004 search, which covered the National Identification Service (NIS) as well as PNC. The earliest date listed in the PNC was counted as the date on which an offense was committed. It was decided to count officially recorded cautions as well as convictions in the PNC, since cautions were routinely recorded on a national basis from 1995. In this study, then, convictions after age 40 include cautions. Also, the definition of what is a ‘standard list' offense changed over time. In particular, drunk driving offenses were added to the standard list from 1996 and 12 convictions for this offense were recorded. Due to changes in categorization over time, motoring offenses were excluded from analyses.
4. We also compared the average values of the two risk indexes across non-offenders, non-sex offenders, and sex offenders. One‐way analyses of variance were significant for both indexes, with sex offenders having the highest averages, followed by non-sex offenders and then non-offenders, respectively.
