Criminal Recidivism ─ Explanation, Prediction and Prevention

This book aims to investigate criminal recidivism, the process involved in continuing offending and in delaying desistance from a criminal career. It focuses on why, how and for how long an individual continues committing crimes. It aims to explain both the development of a persistent criminal career and the commission of offences. The challenge is to address persistent criminal behaviour within the paradigm of criminal careers, and to extend this analysis in the realm of criminological psychology and developmental and life-course theories of offending. We suggest that the commission of crimes depends partly on the individual, partly on the situation, and especially on the interaction between the individual and the situation, although little is known about this.

This book intends to fill a gap in the criminological psychology literature by examining the processes underlying persistent criminal careers. At an empirical level it attempts to explain criminal persistence and recidivism issues using longitudinal data from the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development (CSDD). At a psycho-criminological level it joins together quantitative and qualitative analyses, making its content a practical guide to explain, predict, and intervene to reduce the risk of criminal recidivism.

The book is aimed not only at advanced students and academics in psychology, criminology, probation studies, social sciences, psychiatry, sociology, political science, and penology, but also at decision makers, policy officials, and practitioners, within the realm of crime intervention and prevention, and also forensic experts, judges and lawyers. It provides essential, systematically summarised, and evidence-based information on understanding, explaining, predicting and reducing criminal persistence and recidivism. The authors compare official and self-reported delinquency data, analyse the intergenerational continuity of antisocial behaviour, and include case material, so as to make its content closer to the reality of crime experienced by those people who see crime as a way of life.

David P Farrington is Professor of Psychological Criminology at the Institute of Criminology, Cambridge University.

Georgia Zara is Associate Professor at the Centre for Cognitive Science at the University of Turin, Italy.