The phenomenology of specialization of criminal suspects

A criminal career can be either general, with the criminal committing different types of crimes, or specialized, with the criminal committing a specific type of crime. A central problem in the study of crime specialization is to determine, from the perspective of the criminal, which crimes should be...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2013-05, Vol.8 (5), p.e64703-e64703
Main Authors: Tumminello, Michele, Edling, Christofer, Liljeros, Fredrik, Mantegna, Rosario N, Sarnecki, Jerzy
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Biology
Brain research
Careers
Child & adolescent psychiatry
Crime
Criminology
Female
Fraud
Humans
Juvenile offenders
Male
Mathematics
Older people
Phenomenology
Samhällsvetenskap
Self control
Social and Behavioral Sciences
Social Sciences
Sociologi
Sociologi (exklusive socialt arbete, socialpsykologi och socialantropologi)
Sociology
Sociology (excluding Social Work, Social Psychology and Social Anthropology)
Specialization
Studies
Sweden
Theory
Violent crime
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Summary:A criminal career can be either general, with the criminal committing different types of crimes, or specialized, with the criminal committing a specific type of crime. A central problem in the study of crime specialization is to determine, from the perspective of the criminal, which crimes should be considered similar and which crimes should be considered distinct. We study a large set of Swedish suspects to empirically investigate generalist and specialist behavior in crime. We show that there is a large group of suspects who can be described as generalists. At the same time, we observe a non-trivial pattern of specialization across age and gender of suspects. Women are less prone to commit crimes of certain types, and, for instance, are more prone to specialize in crimes related to fraud. We also find evidence of temporal specialization of suspects. Older persons are more specialized than younger ones, and some crime types are preferentially committed by suspects of different ages.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0064703