Criminal Careers: Life and Crime Trajectories of Former Juvenile Offenders in Adulthood

303 Pages·2022·7.411 MB·English

by  Witold Klaus, Irena Rzeplińska, Dagmara Woźniakowska-Fajst

CRIMINAL CAREERS
Criminal Careers follows the lives and criminal behaviours of 2,397 people in
Poland who as juveniles committed a crime and received a form of punishment
from the juvenile court between the late 1980s and the year 2000. Through
combining quantitative and qualitative research, their criminal careers, the dif-
ferences between men and women, risk factors, and reasons for nondesistance
are analysed.
Uniquely, the authors have used an extensive database of former juveniles, in
which as many as 40% were women. This book therefore makes a comparison
between women and men in terms of their future life paths. Additionally, the
researched group consisted of teenagers from two different periods: the 1980s
(the transition generation) and 2000 (the millennial generation), which in the
context of Central and Eastern European countries means that they entered
adulthood in completely different realities. These differences are therefore also
explored in depth within the book.
By focusing on Poland, the book provides a different perspective to criminal
career research, which is generally limited to a few countries in Western Europe
and the United States.
The book will be of great interest to academics and students who are devel-
oping their own research in the fields of criminal careers, juvenile delinquency,
and antisocial behaviours by young people. It will also appeal to professionals,
including juvenile judges, probation officers, staff in correctional facilities and
social rehabilitation institutions, and social workers and employees of nonprofit
organisations that support juveniles, people in crisis, and prisoners or exprisoners.
Witold Klaus is a Professor at the Institute of Law Studies, Polish Academy of
Sciences (Head of the Department of Criminology and of the Migration Law
Research Centre) and Research Fellow in the Centre of Migration Research at
the University of Warsaw. He is a Lawyer, Criminologist, Migration Researcher,
and NGO activist. He is a former Executive Secretary of the Polish Society of
Criminology (2008–2018) and currently serves as Editor-in-Chief of the oldest
Polish criminological journal, Archiwum Kryminologii [Archives of Criminology].
He held scholarships from the British Academy (UK), the Max Planck Institute
for the Study of Crime, Security and Law (Germany), and the US government.
His main areas of academic interest include refugee and immigrant rights, depor-
tation studies, crimmigration, victimology, and victimisation of underserved
groups in society. He is a member of the European Society of Criminology,
where he coleads the Working Group of Immigration, Crime, and Citizenship.
Irena Rzepli ska is a Criminologist and Lawyer. She is a Professor Emeritus at
ń
the Institute of Law Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences (PAS). She is an author
of research on deviance, recidivists, self-report surveys, crime, and historical and
contemporary crime policy. She is an author of the first criminological research
and the first monograph on the crime of foreigners in Poland. Furthermore, in
the last decade, she conducted research on youth crime with a focus on the past
and present as well as life-course research of young criminals. She was the Prin-
cipal Investigator of the project titled ‘The Mechanisms Behind the Formation
and Development of Criminal Careers’, financed by the Polish National Science
Centre. Her latest publications concern criminality at the time of COVID-19
in Poland as well as the death of the right to asylum in Poland (in the wake
of the situation on the Polish-Belarusian border). Between 2004 and 2016, she
was Vice-Director in the Institute of Law Studies of the PAS. Currently, she
is Chair of the Editorial Committee of the oldest criminological journal in
Poland—Archiwum Kryminologii [Archives of Criminology]— and President of
the Polish Society of Criminology. She is a member of the Presidency of the
Committee of Legal Sciences of the PAS.
Dagmara Wo niakowska-Fajst is an Assistant Professor in the Department
ź
of Criminology and Criminal Policy at the Faculty of Applied Social Sciences
and Resocialisation at the University of Warsaw and an Assistant Professor at
the Institute of Law Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences. She holds the posi-
tion of Secretary of the Board of the Polish Society of Criminology and is a
member of the European Society of Criminology and the Association for Legal
Intervention. Her main areas of academic interest include victimology, deviant
behaviours of juveniles and women, stalking, media coverage of crime, crimes
perpetrated by foreigners, and judicial policy. Currently, she leads a project on
juvenile delinquency and antisocial behaviours in contemporary Poland (funded
by the National Science Centre, Poland).
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Criminal Careers
Life and Crime Trajectories of Former Juvenile Offenders in Adulthood
Witold Klaus, Irena Rzeplińska, and Dagmara Woźniakowska-Fajst
For more information about this series, please visit https://www.routledge.com/
Routledge-Studies-in-Criminal-Behaviour/book-series/RSCB.

CRIMINAL CAREERS
Life and Crime Trajectories of
Former Juvenile Offenders
in Adulthood
Edited by Witold Klaus, Irena Rzeplin′ska and
Dagmara Woz′niakowska-Fajst
Cover image: Getty Images/Tara Moore
First published 2023
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2023 selection and editorial matter, Witold Klaus, Irena Rzeplińska,
and Dagmara Woźniakowska-Fajst; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Witold Klaus, Irena Rzeplińska, and Dagmara
Woźniakowska-Fajst to be identified as the authors of the editorial
material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been
asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other
means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and
recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-1-032-36540-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-36543-5 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-33256-5 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003332565
Typeset in Bembo
by KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd.
CONTENTS
List of Tables ix
List of Figures xii
List of Contributors xv
Acknowledgment xviii
1 Introduction: Or why it is important to study criminal
careers and how it can be done 1
Witold Klaus and Dagmara Woźniakowska-Fajst
2 Accessing information on criminal activity of individuals:
Methodological aspects of our research on criminal careers 16
Monika Szulecka
3 Crime structure of former juvenile offenders during
their adulthood: The transition generation and the
millennial generation 43
Konrad Buczkowski and Paulina Wiktorska
4 How long and how much? An empirical analysis of
criminal activity over the life course of the subjects 67
Justyna Włodarczyk-Madejska and Dominik Wzorek
5 Different paths, different patterns: Typologies of criminal
trajectories 86
Justyna Włodarczyk-Madejska and Dominik Wzorek
viii Contents
6 Women’s criminal careers 114
Dagmara Woźniakowska-Fajst
7 No roots, no wings: Risk factors in the assessment of
chronic offenders 146
Olga Wanicka and Dagmara Woźniakowska-Fajst
8 Snares and pains, or what stands in the path to
desistance from crime 211
Witold Klaus
Index 279
TABLES
2.1 Characteristics of the studies that were the source of the
initial datasets 20
2.2 Data collected after harmonising the datasets from the
four studies 21
2.3 Data collected from the NCR for the analysis of the criminal
activity of individuals 24
2.4 Information collected in the study of recent criminal cases
of multiple offenders 27
2.5 Subjects discussed during one-on-one interviews with
multiple offenders incarcerated in penitentiary institutions 30
2.6 Basic characteristics of the studied population 34
3.1 Categories of acts and types of offences attributed to them 48
3.2 Specialisation in crime in juvenile life and adulthood 62
4.1 Description of the study population by gender 69
4.2 Description of the community of former juveniles by
generation 70
4.3 The beginning of each life stage for the transition and
millennial generations 72
4.4 Age at first conviction versus trajectory length in years
(N = 962) 77
4.5 Age at first act versus trajectory length (N = 962) 77
4.6 Serving a prison sentence versus length of the trajectory
(N = 962) 78
4.7 Completed and dormant trajectories (N = 962) 79
4.8 Intensity of acts in life stages 82
5.1 Proportion of men and women in the population 88