Long-Term Patterns of Offending in Women

Abstract

The empirical and theoretical knowledge base on criminal careers is heavily influenced by data on boys and men.What pathways do women follow in and out of crime through their adulthood? With data from the Criminal Career and Life-Course Study, this article describes the criminal careers of 432 women and 4,180 men, a representative sample of all those who had a criminal case adjudicated in 1977 with retrospective criminal histories up to age 12 and prospective data to death or 2003. Comparing women and men, this article describes life-span patterns of prevalence, onset, duration, termination, frequency, crime mix, and overall trajectories and discusses implications for practice and for developmental and life-course theory.