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53 Crime & Delinquency 3 (2007)

handle is hein.journals/cadq53 and id is 1 raw text is: January 2007 3-37 © ,i, 207Sg ublicntons Exam ining the Overall and .11F710011I28706294437 Offense-Specific Criminal hosted at http:/11li ll i l1pub.com Career Lengths of a Sample of Serious Offenders Michael E. Ezell Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN Building on several recent papers that have brought the study of criminal career lengths back to the attention of criminologists, this study used a sample of seri- ous offenders to examine the length of their official criminal career. This study not only examined overall career length, but it also examined the career length for five categories of offenses (serious, violent, serious violent, property, and drug), the residual career length as a function of age, and the correlates of the average career length. The data used consist of a random sample of 1,957 offenders released from the California Youth Authority in 1981-1982 who were followed into their 30s. The results of the study are interpreted in terms of their implications for theory, public policy, and future research needs. Keywords: criminal careers; career length; age of onset; serious offenders A s important as it was 20 years ago, the challenge set down by Blumstein, Cohen, Roth, and Visher (1986) to prioritize and conduct longitudinal research on criminal careers still motivates criminologists. As a consequence, much criminological research addresses (as does this volume) the substance of that challenge through varied theoretical, empirical, and analytical discussions of the dimensions of the criminal career known as onset, persistence, esca- lation, specialization, and desistence (termination), and the dynamic, age- dependent nature of criminal careers across the lifecourse. However, as Author's Note: Alex Piquero, Tony Brown, and the anonymous peer reviewers are gratefully acknowledged for their helpful suggestions, comments, and critiques of earlier versions of this article. The data used in this study were originally collected under a grant from the National Institute of Justice. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Michael E. Ezell, Department of Sociology, VU Station B-351811, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235; e-mail: mike.ezell@vanderbilt.edu. 3

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