Crime Reduction - Helping to Reduce Crime in Your Area

This study focuses on developing a typology of criminal activity. It describes criminal activity in five-year age groups rather than the conventional approach of summarising a lifetime of crime. It also tries to identify criminal 'pathways' - how offenders in one age group might progress to a different type of crime as they become older.

Title: Patterns of offending behaviour: a new approach - Home Office Research Study 171
Authors: Keith Soothill, Brian Francis and Rachel Fligelstone
Number of pages: 105
Date published: 2002

Title: Patterns of offending behaviour: a new approach - Home Office Research Findings 171
Authors: Keith Soothill, Brian Francis and Rachel Fligelstone
Number of pages: 6
Date published: 2002

Key points

• Using criminal conviction data, criminal activity within five-year age bands (or 'strips') was examined so that types (or clusters) of offending behaviour can be identified.

• Patterns of offending behaviour for a set of offenders born in 1953 vary markedly between males and females. Male offending (with nine identified types) shows greater diversity than female offending (with three identified types). There is evidence of greater diversity for offenders born in 1958, for both males and females.

• For the males, each type of offending had a distinct age profile. For example, clusters of offending which were termed 'non-violent property' and 'shoplifting' were most popular with the 10–15 age group. The types of offending for females showed much less variation with age.

• Changes in criminal activity as offenders grow older can be assessed using this methodology and there is evidence of increasing specialisation in older age groups.

• One type of male offending, identified as 'aggressive property offending and wide-ranging car crime', has a particularly strong likelihood of recurrence in every age group.

• This research provides the basis for a tool with which practitioners can assess recent offending behaviour, the chances of reconviction and shifts in crime patterns.

Contents

A summary of the intensity of offending for males, from the age of criminal responsibility to around the age of 30, has shown that there are similarities in the patterns of offending among young males in different cities (D'Unger et al, American Journal of Sociology Volume 103, No. 6, May 1998).

However, that study concentrated on the amount of offending and does not consider its nature. It provides a summary of offenders' most active years but does not provide guidance on the earlier chapters of an offender's life.

Instead of considering rates of offending over an active life-span, the present study has taken a different approach by finding 'types' (or clusters) of criminal activity within fixed five-year periods of the offender's criminal history.

An offender, if criminally active in more than one five-year period, can change from one form of offending activity to another and this will influence which cluster of offending will be appropriate for each five-year period. The methodology aims to provide scope for understanding a more circumscribed period of an offender's life, such as the previous five years and guidance as to what is likely to happen in the next five years.

Getting a copy

Home Office Research Study 171 - Patterns of offending behaviour: a new approach PDF 570 Kb

Home Office Research Findings 171 - Patterns of offending behaviour: a new approach PDF 87 Kb