There have been few efforts to conceptually and empirically distinguish persistent and chronic offenders, despite the prominence of these concepts in the criminological literature. Research has not yet examined if different childhood risk factors are associated with
offenders who have the longest criminal careers (persistent offenders), commit the most offences (chronic offenders), or both (persistent-chronic offenders). We address this gap using data from the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development (CSDD). Poverty, poor school attainment, and family stress had a pervasive impact on all forms of offending in correlational analyses. Longer criminal career durations were associated with fewer childhood risk factors than was the case for chronic offenders. Chronic offenders were significantly more likely than persistent offenders to experience many environmental risks in childhood. When controlling for all other risk factors, hyperactivity and parental separation uniquely predicted persistent offending, while high daring and large family size uniquely predicted chronic offending. Our analyses point to the need for responses based on a
philosophy of ‘proportionate universalism,’ where universal multisystemic crime prevention strategies that benefit all children incorporate program components that are known to
influence the unique risk factors for both persistent and chronic offending, such as family criminality.
4.2 INTRODUCTION
Developmental and Life-Course criminology (DLC) is primarily concerned with the development of criminal and related behaviours, the influence of risk and protective factors, and the impact of life events on the course of development (Farrington, 2005). One common underlying idea in DLC is that offenders can be categorised into defined groups, each
characterised by a set of risk factors that can be prioritised in developmental crime prevention interventions. It is generally agreed that persistent and chronic offenders represent the
smallest groups responsible for the majority of offences, and therefore should be at the forefront of intervention and incapacitation efforts (Blumstein et al., 1986; Moffitt, 2018). However, there is much confusion regarding how chronic and persistent offenders should be defined and measured.
Chronic offenders have received considerable empirical attention since Wolfgang and his colleagues (1972) published their seminal study on a birth cohort of 9,945 Philadelphia boys. Chronic offenders were identified as those responsible for five or more offences
between the ages of 10 and 18. They comprised six per cent of the birth cohort, or 18 per cent of the offenders, and were responsible for over half of the cohort’s recorded crimes. The study by Wolfgang and colleagues (1972) was influential in demonstrating that a small percentage of people were responsible for a large proportion of crime. This finding has led to many follow up studies on chronic offending.
Most studies on chronic offending have adopted Wolfgang and colleagues’ (1972) original definition as a small group of offenders responsible for the most crimes (e.g., Piquero, 2000; McGloin and Stickle, 2011). Others have defined chronic offenders as the small group of offenders with the longest criminal careers (Wikström and Treiber, 2009; Remschmidt and Walter, 2010). Adopting this definition requires chronic offending to be measured by the duration of offending, and not by the number of offences committed. This
divergence in the definition of chronic offending has led to the use of two distinct measures (the number of offences and the duration of offending) to identify the same offender type.
Part of the confusion surrounding the concept of chronic offending may be due to Wolfgang and colleagues’ (1972) use of the word ‘chronic’, which denotes continuity and recurrence, to instead mean a large number of offences. If interpreted literally, the concept of chronic offending would imply a long criminal career. However, most studies that identify chronic offenders use some measure of offence frequency, while studies identifying persistent offenders generally use some measure of offending duration. Indeed, as others have argued, the terms ‘chronic’ and ‘persistent’ reflect two distinct offending dimensions, the former being the number of offences, and the latter being criminal career duration (Jolliffe et al., 2017a; Whitten et al., 2017).
Although there have been recent efforts to conceptually distinguish persistent and chronic offenders, the historic inconsistent use of these terms has led many researchers to use them interchangeably (e.g. Sampson and Laub, 2003; Moffitt, 2018). Both terms have been used to describe offenders who commit a large number of offences (e.g., Piquero et al., 2007; Jones et al., 2001), offend over a long duration (e.g., Remschmidt and Walter, 2010; Werner and Smith, 1992), or both (e.g., Piquero, Sullivan, & Farrington, 2010). Indeed, Wikström and Treiber (2009: 390) assert that “the term chronic offender refers, in principle, to a persistent offender, one who has committed repeated acts of crime over a longer period of time”. This interpretation conflicts with the original definition of Wolfgang and colleagues (1972), which was based on offences by adolescent boys before age 18; far too short a timeframe to claim that chronic offenders offend over a longer period of time. Numerous subsequent studies have identified chronic offenders solely by measures of offending in the adolescent years (e.g., Mullis et al., 2005; Johansson and Kempf-Leonard, 2009). While one can accurately identify chronic offenders during adolescence based on the number of offences
committed, limiting observations to such a small period of the life-course would make it impossible to accurately distinguish persistent from non-persistent offenders.
Much of the definitional and empirical confusion surrounding the concepts of chronic and persistent offending can be attributed to a single question that has largely remained unanswered: do offenders with the longest criminal careers (persistent offenders) have
different criminal careers and childhood risk factors from offenders with the most convictions (chronic offenders)? A related question is whether these differences extend to offenders who have the longest criminal careers and most convictions (whom we call persistent-chronic offenders). Our study uses data from the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development (CSDD) to: (1) clarify which childhood risk factors are associated with more convictions and longer criminal careers; (2) identify the criminal career statistics associated with persistent, chronic, and persistent-chronic offenders, and; (3) identify the childhood risk factors that distinguish these groups from one another, and uniquely predict them in comparison to one- time and non-offenders.