ABSTRACT
Police have identified serious offenders either from information supplied by the public, forensic techniques, or by the targeting of known offenders. Self-selection policing seeks to identify those minor, often routine, offences which are indicative of more serious current criminality. It is based upon the simple premise that ‘those who do big bad things also do little bad things’ and that increased police scrutiny of certain minor offences will help identify active offenders responsible for more serious crime. The police have limited resources and they can be tempted to prioritise the investigation of more serious crimes and to pay cursory attention to minor ones. A. Blumstein, J. Cohen, J. A. Roth, and C. A. Visher’s classic work Criminal Careers and Career Criminals provided the first major empirical demonstration of how limited was the degree of specialisation in most criminal careers, with other work of the same era confirming the central finding of offence versatility.
