A LONGITUDINAL PERSPECTIVE ON PATTERNS OF CRIME |
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| Authors: | JOAN McCORD |
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| Institution: | Joan McCord, Professor of Sociology at Drexel University. received her Ph. D. from Stanford University. She is coauthor of Psychopathy and Delinquency, Origins of Crime, Origins of Alcoholism, and The Psychopath. She is author and coauthor of articles appearing in The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, American Psychologist, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Journal of Studies on Alcohol, Behavioral Science, and Child Development, andin variousedited books. Her interests includestudying effects of dfferent forms of child-rearing and investigating problems related to personality change. |
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| Abstract: | This article addresses the possibility of prospectively identfying chronic criminal offenders using identifiers available to the criminal justice system. Data were collected as part of a longitudinal study of the lives of men who were in a delinquency prevention program in the early 1940s. For the half who were randomly assigned to the treatment group, a discriminant function correctly identified 67% of the men as recidivists or nonrecidivists. When tested on the control group, it correctly sorted 76% of the men. The author argues that although prospective identification of recidivists may be possible, legal action based on predictions would be wrong. |
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