ABSTRACT
Offense seriousness has a very volatile quality even among serious career offenders. Although there are continuities in delinquency and crime, what a person will do next after any contact or after all prior contacts is not predictable. This is why the police, probation, court workers, judges, parole boards, etc., have so much difficulty. Furthermore, the assumption that how persons on the firing line deal with miscreants enables them or others to predict what the offender will do next is probably the most fallible. At the opposite corner of each segment of the table, those with Referred Felonies who had been institutionalized, there were more who had Referred Felonies in the following period than expected, but the pattern was not as consistent or clear cut. Cohort members were examined, case by case, to determine if there was a link between discontinuity or complete desistance and institutionalization; in most cases where desistance could have followed, it did not.
