Criminal Career Paradigm
The criminal career paradigm is a framework for studying offending as a longitudinal sequence in an individual's life rather than as undifferentiated aggregate crime. Codified by Blumstein, Cohen, Roth, and Visher in the 1986 National Academy of Sciences report, it decomposes crime into distinct dimensions — whether someone offends (participation), how often active offenders offend (frequency, λ), and the onset, seriousness, and duration of the career — each potentially with different causes.
Read the full method
Sign in with a free account to read this section.
Method map
The neighbourhood of related methods — select a node to explore.
Sources
- Blumstein, A., Cohen, J., Roth, J. A., & Visher, C. A. (Eds.). (1986). Criminal Careers and 'Career Criminals' (Vols. 1–2). National Academy Press. ISBN: 9780309036887
How to cite this page
ScholarGate. (2026, June 22). Criminal Career Paradigm for the Study of Offending Over the Life Course. ScholarGate. https://scholargate.app/en/criminology/criminal-career-paradigm
Which method?
Set this method beside its closest kin and read them side by side — the library lays the books on the table; the choice is yours.
- Age-Crime Curve ModelingCriminology↔ compare
- Group-Based Trajectory ModelCriminology↔ compare
- Recidivism Survival AnalysisCriminology↔ compare
- Self-Report Delinquency ScaleCriminology↔ compare