ABSTRACT
Knowledge of delinquency careers depends greatly on the type of information on which the career parameters are based. Most knowledge is based on ocial records (oen arrest; see e.g., Blumstein, Cohen, Roth, & Visher, 1986; Sampson & Laub, 1993; Tracy, Wolfgang, & Figlio, 1990). is is understandable because such records are oen available without the considerable cost of contacting individuals to obtain self-reports of oending. Also, many justice services concerned with youth-the police, the courts, and probation and parole services-assess their work load, community impact, and ecacy in terms of the volume of known oenders and the volume of documented oenses. Addressing the criminal career parameters through arrest records is important, because justice ocials need to know whether crime as monitored by them peaks at a certain age and whether and how quickly it then tends to decrease through adolescence and early adulthood. Also important for them is to know whether there are cohort dierences in the downslope of the agecrime curve (see Chapter 4), and whether some cohorts have extended criminal careers while other cohorts have shorter careers.
