Cover: Criminal Careers of Habitual Felons

Criminal Careers of Habitual Felons

A Summary Report

by Joan R. Petersilia

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Summarizes findings from a project designed to examine the criminal careers of habitual felons. In-depth personal interviews with 49 prison inmates are the primary source of data. Three time periods in criminal careers — juvenile, young adult, and adult — were considered in charting the offender's behavior. Questions covered family relationships, sources of income, employment, frequency of criminal activity, motivations, attitudes, arrests and convictions, methods of planning and executing criminal acts, involvement with drugs and alcohol, use of violence, and post-release behavior patterns. The results are policy-relevant and sometimes counter to traditional criminological thought. On the average, offenders did not exhibit growth in sophistication or skill as criminal careers progressed. Two broad categories of offenders emerged: the intensive and the intermittent. The intensives were more criminally active and more skillful in avoiding arrest. Intensives committed ten times as many crimes as intermittents but were five times less likely to be arrested for any single crime.

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