Criminal Recidivism: Explanation, prediction and prevention

Georgia Zara · David P. Farrington

jul 2015 · Routledge

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Criminal Recidivism intends to fill a gap in the criminological psychology literature by examining the processes underlying persistent criminal careers. This book aims to investigate criminal recidivism, and why, how and for how long an individual continues to commit crimes, whilst also reviewing knowledge about risk assessment and the role of psychopathy (including neurocriminological factors) in encouraging recidivism. It also focuses on the recidivism of sex offenders and on what works in reducing reoffending.

At an empirical level, this book attempts to explain criminal persistence and recidivism using longitudinal data from the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development (CSDD). At a psycho-criminological level it joins together quantitative and qualitative analyses, making its content a practical guide to explain, predict, and intervene to reduce the risk of criminal recidivism. The authors present quantitative analyses of criminal careers, as well as qualitative life histories of chronic offenders, in order to bring home the reality and consequences of a life of crime.

The book is aimed not only at advanced students and academics in psychology, criminology, probation studies, social sciences, psychiatry, sociology, political science, and penology, but also at decision makers, policy officials, and practitioners within the realm of crime intervention and prevention, and also at forensic experts, judges and lawyers.

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Georgia Zara, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Criminological Psychology at the Department of Psychology, University of Turin, Italy, and is Head and Programme Leader of the Higher Degree in Criminological and Forensic Psychology in the same Department. She has been a Visiting Scholar of the Institute of Criminology, Cambridge University, UK since 2003. She is also a Chartered Psychologist of the British Psychological Society, a Criminologist, and has been appointed an Honorary Judge in Turin’s Surveillance Court. Her major research interests are criminal careers, criminal persistence and recidivism, neurocriminology, psychopathy, and violent and sexual offending.

David P. Farrington, O.B.E., is Emeritus Professor of Psychological Criminology and Leverhulme Trust Emeritus Fellow in the Institute of Criminology, Cambridge University. He received the Stockholm Prize in Criminology in 2013. He is Chair of the ASC Division of Developmental and Life-Course Criminology. His major research interest is in developmental criminology, and he is Director of the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development, a prospective longitudinal survey of over 400 London males from age 8 to age 56. In addition to over 600 published journal articles and book chapters on criminological and psychological topics, he has published nearly 100 books, monographs and government reports.