ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with measuring two dimensions of the criminal career: residual duration and frequency. It shows that the results from estimating the parameters of a model in which offenders have a probability of desisting from further participation in crime following a conviction and, if they persist, a rate of crime commission. The probability of desisting and the rate of commission are seen as varying with offenders' personal characteristics and criminal records. The chapter discusses the difficulty of estimating models in which failure to commit a new crime might be attributable either to termination of the criminal career or to a censored follow-up period. It presents both successful and unsuccessful estimation attempts and also discusses complications when distinguishing empirically between duration and frequency. The chapter addresses the problem of "selectivity bias," in the criminal careers, and also presents a statistical model of residual duration and desistence that corrects for selection bias.
