Unintended Consequences

Abstract

Almost 30 years ago, the National Research Council published Criminal Careers and “Career Criminals.” This report reviewed research on the initiation, continuation, and termination of individual offending patterns over a lifetime, otherwise known as criminal careers. The landmark report set in motion a research agenda focused on how antisocial behavior rises and falls during a lifetime and the antecedents to those patterns. But what about the report’s policy implications for the criminal justice system? Did the report have any impact on criminal justice operations? This article argues that it is difficult to ascertain the report’s direct impact, in part, because of the crime and criminal justice climate that was pervasive at the time of the report’s release. Indirect impacts of the report, however, are plausible. And although unintended, the report may have accentuated short-term attention to individual explanations of criminal behavior and individual-focused crime control policies, to the exclusion of social explanations and community-focused crime control policies.