The Career Criminal Essay, Research Paper

The career criminal, or, more pointedly, those individuals who participate in criminal acts on a

regular basis for both a central and constant source of income has, generally, a specific set of

identifying factors which, while conclusive in laymen’s terms, fail to meet the criteria necessary

for scientific inquiry. While definitions exist as to what a career criminal is, the research

methods employed in determining these definitions are a large point of contention for criminal

justice theorists, especially due to their potential and virtually imminent inclusion to modern

hypothesis on the subject. These research methods include longitudinal data collection and

compilation, cross-sectional data collection and compilation, and, as at least one group of

theorists argue, the most efficient method, informative interviewing.

The longitudinal research method employs a data collection technique which focuses on the

duration of a particular act–in this case, the so-called criminal career–based not upon

specific incidents, but the length of time measured between such acts (Blumstein, Cohen, and

Farrington, 1988). That is, an individual’s propensity for criminal conduct in a so-called

career mode would be measured first by the original act as an origin, then with the succeeding

acts, until a final point became evident. Therefore, such a research method would logically

conclude that an individual who performed or participated in criminal conduct on two

occasions several years apart would be considered a career criminal. It is for this reason, that

criminal justice theorists differ as to the applicability and relevance of the longitudinal research

method (Blumstein, Cohen, and Farrington, 1988).

Since the longitudinal research method could construe two independent–or even two

interdependant–criminal acts as the foundational make-up of a career criminal, theorists may

hypothesize incorrectly as to the actuality of an individual having a career based in criminal

behavior. Because it is widely believed by opponents of the longitudinal research method that

the mere occurrence of two criminal acts spaced out over an individual’s lifetime or testing

window is not indicative of the so-called career criminal modus operandi, the research

method has increasingly lost its popularity and application in such studies, unless, of course, it

is supported or otherwise confirmed by other utilized research procedures (Blumstein,

Cohen, and Farrington, 1988). One of these alternative testing and research methods is the

cross-sectional data collection and compilation model.

The cross-sectional data collection and compilation model, when applied to the criminal

career hypothezation, measures the probability of occurrence of a particular act of criminal

conduct or other so-called criminal behavior. The cross-sectional model allows for a glimpse

into each individual criminal act which may be thought to, when compiled, comprise a

framework which indicates that individual is a career criminal. For this reason, the

cross-sectional model is infinitely more applicable and accurate in determining, or at least

providing indicators which would lead to a determination, of conduct constituting that of a

career criminal. While such assistance is immeasurable for a determination of whether or not

an individual is a career criminal, it still falls short of a definite model for such identification.

For this reason, many criminal justice theorists feel that the individual application of the

cross-sectional model is inappropriate for its unsupported inclusion into relevant scientific

hypothesis. Once again, however, when such data is adequately supported or otherwise

confirmed by other information, inclusion is proper.

Criminal justice theorists have relied on either one, or both models since the inception of

investigation into all areas of criminal behavior. Such data, however, comes under fire if, and

when, other theories surface which either provide additional information, or information which

is more in-depth and in deference to that data already obtained and reported upon

(Gottfredson and Hirschi, 1988). The dilemma, of course, is that regardless of how detailed

and in-depth even the most comprehensive of testing techniques are, there is always one

method which is the most detailed, as it originates from the primary source. This data is called

informative interviewing (Gottfredson and Hirschi, 1988).

Informative interviewing is a method through which criminal justice theorists acquire

information from the primary source (Gottfredson and Hirschi, 1988). In the case of the

present issue, deliberating over the question of what behavior is indicative of a career

criminal, information would most probably be extracted from those individuals who exhibited

the stereotypical traits of what is referred to as a career criminal. These would include

individuals whose primary source of income is derived from the perpetration of crimes, the

acquisition and conversion of cash or property into cash for personal use, and the consistency

of these acts. That is, are they performed on a verifiably consistent basis to the

aforementioned ends of sustaining life for a particular individual (Weis, 1991).

Alternatively, the informative interviewing method would need to address those groups which

other testing methods and their proponents have identified as possible career criminals. These

would include those individuals who perpetrate more than one criminal act in the course of

their lifetime or testing window, and those who perpetrate multiple criminal acts in an effort to

maintain financial stability, as illuminated by the longitudinal research method and the

cross-sectional data collection and compilation model, respectively (Gottfredson and Hirschi,

1988).

In total, the informative interviewing technique is the most inclusive of all the testing measures,

as it does not presuppose the existence of facts or reasoned support thereof, nor rely on a

multitude of secondary sources for its hypothetical theorizations. Opponents, however, argue

that the single, most important drawback to utilization of the informative interview technique

for central reliance in a scientific study, is that there exists no guarantee that the information

being obtained from the individual in question is, indeed, a factual representation of his or her

physical and mental manifestations and reasoning prior to, during, and after performance of

the criminal act (Weis, 1991). Though this seems a wholly valid and relevant argument based

on the stereotypical nature of such individuals who maintain or, at least, are thought to

maintain a life of crime, the scientist-interviewer has a better probability of determining the

truthfulness of the individual when he or she is face to face, rather than viewing so-called

research on a two dimensional document (Gottfredson and Hirschi, 1988). For this reason, it

seems that the informative interviewing technique is the most reliable indicator of an

individual’s propensity to maintain a career firmly rooted in criminal activity.

Finally, the very issue of career criminals cannot be determined by those studies which seek

to apply a virtual cornucopia of variables and other indicators into a multi-tiered graphic

conceptualization of a theory (Weis, 1991). This is so because such a conceptualization,

while attempting to scientifically duplicate the environment which produces career criminals,

cannot, and thus leads the criminal justice theorist on a road wrought with balances and

counterbalances which seek to clarify and provide for those responses which do not

otherwise fall into the neatly, albeit mechanically defined categories (Elliot, 1994). Such is not

the nature of a career criminal, and, ironically, may be indicative to the very mechanisms he or

she seeks to obviate when choosing such an alternative, societally unaccepted posture as to

self-sustenance. As the informative interview points out, asking someone who knows is

infinitely more reliable than relying on text written by someone who thinks they know.