Criminal Career

Do offenders specialize in a single crime type or cluster of similar crime types? Do offenders increase the seriousness of their criminal offenses over the course of their criminal careers? Blumstein et al. (1986, 1988) and LeBlanc and Frechette (1989) have suggested that at the onset of the criminal career, offenders will tend to commit a wide variety of offenses. However, as offenders age, and gain more experience in committing criminal acts, they should become more proficient at some crimes and should be increasingly likely to repeat those crimes where they have been more successful. Alternatively, though not to the exclusion of the notion of specialization, some offenders are also expected to increase the severity of the crimes they commit across their criminal careers, ultimately specializing in a more serious type of crime. The reasoning here is similar: offenders who have gained a certain level of expertise in one type of crime (or cluster of similar types of crime) may be