Later Stages of Ordinary Property Offender Careers

• NCJ Number: 92662
• Journal: Social Problems Volume: 31 Issue: 2 Dated: (December 1983) Pages: 208-218
• Date Published: 1983
• Author(s): N Shover
• Length: 11 pages
• Grant Number(s): 80-IJ-CX-0047
• Agencies: NIJ-Sponsored

Annotation

Few sociologists have studied the later stages of careers in deviance and criminality. This paper describes how 36 ordinary property offenders, released from confinement from 4 months to 28 years earlier, changed their perspectives toward life and criminal behavior as they got older.

Abstract

Temporal and interpersonal occurrences in the men's lives caused changes in their criminal behavior. Some of the age-related changes differ little from those experienced by nonoffenders. Consequently, the findings challenge critical assumptions about offenders employed by proponents of the death penalty and other repressive crime control measures. Footnotes and over 30 references are supplied. (Author abstract modified)