We found a match
Your institution may have rights to this item. Sign in to continue.
- Title
REVIEW ESSAY: DANGEROUS PEOPLE.
- Authors
Messinger, Sheldon L.; Berk, Richard A.
- Abstract
The article throws light on several aspects of crime and criminal behavior. Criminologists given to statistical inquiry have traditionally worked with "aggregate" crime rates. Such rates typically show, for a given time period, the average number of occurrences of some phenomenon indexing crime in a population. It is common knowledge among criminologists that arrest rates in the United States in recent years have been considerably higher per capita for blacks than whites, males than females, and youth than adults, particularly for serious crimes. Although it is useful, and for some purposes essential, to distinguish between the rate at which a population participates in crime and the rate at which those participating do so, it is potentially misleading to call the latter an "individual" crime rate. The criminal career approach decomposes the aggregate rate into these two dimensions--participation and frequency. Participation measures the proportion of the population showing the characteristic of interest in a given period of time. Frequency measures the average number of times during the relevant time period that the characteristic appears among those showing it at all.
- Subjects
UNITED States; CRIMINAL behavior; CRIME; CRIMINALS; CRIMINOLOGISTS; SOCIAL problems
- Publication
Criminology, 1987, Vol 25, Issue 3, p767
- ISSN
0011-1384
- Publication type
Book Review
- DOI
10.1111/j.1745-9125.1987.tb00818.x