Criminal careers and life success: new findings from the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development r281

The Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development is a prospective longitudinal survey of 411 South London males first studied at age eight in 1961. The main aims of this report are to advance knowledge about conviction careers up to age 50 and life success up to age 48, at which age 93 per cent of the males were personally interviewed. Forty-one per cent of the males were convicted, with an average nine-year conviction career containing five convictions for standard list offences (excluding motoring offences). A small fraction (7%) of the males accounted for over half of all convictions among the Study males. Just over a quarter (29%) of the men had been convicted for one of eight offence types in four age ranges, compared with 93 per cent who self-reported at least one of these offence types. There were on average 39 self-reported offences per conviction. The males who were first convicted at the earliest ages tended to have the most convictions and the longest criminal careers.

Nine criteria of life success were measured comparably at ages 32 and 48. The proportion of men leading successful lives increased, from 78 per cent at age 32 to 88 per cent at age 48. Men who had desisted from offending before age 21 were very similar to the unconvicted men in their life success at age 48, and the persistent offenders were the least successful.

The most important childhood (age 8–10) risk factors for later offending were measures of family criminality, daring, low school attainment, poverty and poor parenting. Based on these results, risk assessment instruments could be developed and risk-focussed prevention could be implemented. Cognitive-behavioural skills training programmes, parent training, pre-school intellectual enrichment programmes and home visiting programmes are effective.