European criminal careers research: an introduction to the special issue

Abstract

Quietly, and in the shadow of numerous studies undertaken in North America, many European countries have been developing their own cohort or longitudinal studies of engagement in crime over the life course. These studies range from the re-analysis of existing data collected for administrative purposes, to studies of groups of adjudicated offenders, to cohort studies as they are more traditionally recognized. This special issue will showcase some of the best of these European studies. The articles collected herein deal with the onset, continuation and desistance from criminal careers, and explore issues such as the use of typologies of offenders, intergenerational transmission of inequality and its relationship to offending, the role of the social environment in the production of crime, and a consideration of the structural changes that some countries in Europe have experienced and that may influence processes associated with desistance. All of the contributors are well-known and respected European researchers who have been engaged in the debates surrounding criminal careers for many years. The collection grew out of a seminar — funded under the European Commission’s 6th Research Framework Programme (FP6) as part of the Assessing Deviance, Crime and Prevention in Europe (CRIMPREV) programme — held at Keele University in 2008.