Termination of Criminal Careers: Measurement of Rates and Their Determinants: A User's Guide to the Machine- Readable Files and Documentation and Original Codebook

• NCJ Number: 146244
• Author(s): J Cohen; A Blumstein
• Date Published: 1991
• Length: 48 pages
• Grant Number(s): 86-IJ-CX-0047
• Agencies: NIJ-Sponsored
• Publication Type: Measurement/Evaluation Device

Annotation

This report presents background and coding information for a data set collected for a study that examined the length of the criminal careers of criminal offenders. Data set archived by the NIJ Data Resources Program at the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data, located at URL http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/nacjd.

Abstract

Through the use of a maximum-likelihood method, the researchers estimated the average rate at which certain groups of offenders terminate their criminal activities. The study also sought to determine the differences in termination rates across selected offender attributes. The data were derived from official FBI records of 21,004 offenders arrested in the Detroit metropolitan area during 1974-77 for murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, or auto theft. The criminal history of each offender was determined from arrest records from age 17 through the end of the study observation period in 1982. The offender history data includes information on arrest charges, disposition of the arrest, court action and sentences, and custody arrangements. Tables and coding information