MENTORS AND CRIMINAL ACHIEVEMENT* |
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| Authors: | CARLO MORSELLI PIERRE TREMBLAY BILL MCCARTHY |
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| Affiliation: | 1. Assistant professor at the School of Criminology and researcher at the International Centre for Comparative Criminology at the Université de Montréal. Aside from research on criminal achievement, his current work lies primarily in the fields of criminal networks and organized crime. In 2005 he published his book on these issues, Contacts, Opportunities, and Criminal Enterprise, with the University of Toronto Press;2. Professor at the School of Criminology, Université de Montréal. He received his PhD in criminology from the Université de Montréal. His current interests include size of active offender populations, diffusion of criminal innovations, and linking anomie and criminal achievement theories of crime;3. Works in the sociology department at the University of California, Davis. His current research focuses on the connections between crime, relationships with others, and situational variables. He also studies illegal income and historical variation in homicide. |
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| Abstract: | Much of the research focusing on conventional occupations concludes that mentored individuals are more successful in their careers than those who are not mentored. Early research in criminology made a similar claim. Yet contemporary criminology has all but ignored mentors. We investigate this oversight, drawing on Sutherland's insights on tutelage and criminal maturation and incorporating ideas on human and social capital. We argue that mentors play a key role in their protégés' criminal achievements and examine this hypothesis with data from a recent survey of incarcerated adult male offenders in the Canadian province of Quebec. In this sample, a substantial proportion of respondents reported the presence of an influential individual in their lives who introduced them to a criminal milieu and whom they explicitly regarded as a mentor. After studying the attributes of offenders and their mentors, we develop a causal framework that positions criminal mentor presence within a pathway that leads to greater benefits and lower costs from crime. |
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| Keywords: | criminal achievement mentor co‐offending networks structural holes low self‐control criminal career |
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