Key Issues in Criminal Career Research

Alex R. Piquero, Ph.D. is Professor of Criminology, Law and Society at the University of Florida. He currently serves on the editorial boards of eleven journals including: Criminology, the Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, the Journal of Quantitative Criminology, etc. He has been recognized as the leading publisher of articles in criminology/criminal justice from 1996–2000 and again from 2000–4 by articles published in the Journal of Criminal Justice. David P. Farrington, OBE, is Professor of Psychological Criminology at the Institute of Criminology, Cambridge University. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, of the Academy of Medical Sciences, of the British Psychological society and of the American Society of Criminology, and an Honorary Life Member of the British Society of Criminology and of the Division of Forensic Psychology of the British Psychological Society. Alfred Blumstein is a University Professor and the J. Erik Jonsson Professor of Urban Systems and Operations Research and former Dean (from 1986 to 1993) at the H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management of Carnegie Mellon University.

• 1. Introduction; 2. Literature review: A. General criminal careers; B. Organize around contentious issues; 3. Data overview; 4. Prevalence and incidence; 5. Onset age and incidence; 6. Specialization; 7. Onset sequences; 8. Co-offending; 9. Chronicity; 10. Offending trajectories; 11. Career length; 12. Discussion.

'This is the 5th book reporting the world-renowned Cambridge longitudinal Study of Delinquent Development, and in my view the best! We senior scientists who learned our first criminology facts from the CSDD will want to own this book, as will students newly learning criminology. This book is organised for busy readers' convenience, chapters are very concise, and each is summarised with a list of its new findings. Each chapter ends with a list of as-yet unanswered questions about crime; giving readers great ideas for new research projects! This book is brilliant on theory, it masterfully integrates developmental, life-course, and crime-careers theories, making sense of them all. 'Key issues' systematically examines fresh data on onset age, offender prevalence, violence specialization, crime seriousness, career duration, offending frequency, co-offending, chronicity, and developmental trajectories of crime careers. 'Key issues' is the best book about crime I have read in 5 years.' Terrie Moffitt, Institute of Psychiatry