Delinquent Recidivism

Abstract

In the next two chapters we shall address a variety of issues surrounding the phenomenon of repeat delinquency. Specifically, in this chapter we shall discuss data pertaining to the probability of recidivism generally and for select offense types without taking into account knowledge of the number or type of prior offenses. We will also investigate the severity and timing of offenses by rank number of offense. We have labelled these analyses as static because we examine the offense by rank number without taking into account information concerning the offender’s prior delinquency. In the next chapter we explicitly explore the extent to which a prior offense type influences the type and severity of the next offense committed. These are dynamic aspects of delinquency and concern the topics of offense specialization or switching and offense severity escalation. Before we present these data, it is useful to review the parameters of the recidivism issue.