Desisting from Crime:
Continuity and Change in Long-Term Crime Patterns
of Serious Chronic Offenders

By Mike E. Ezell and Lawrence E. Cohen
Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2005

Criminology is full of great debates, especially those surrounding the identification of brute facts of crime. Two of these facts—and related disagreements—concern the relationship between age and crime and the relationship between past and future criminal activity. Explanation about these facts bears import for matters of theory and policy, and serious students of crime make it a point to carefully consider these issues.

In Desisting from Crime: Continuity and Change in Long-Term Crime Patterns of Serious Chronic Offenders, Mike Ezell and Lawrence Cohen address thee key questions: (1) are there two (or more) discrete groups of offenders with distinct age-crime curves concealed within the aggregate age-crime curve?; (2) how stable are individual differences in the propensity to commit criminal acts across the life course?; and (3) does the relationship between offending at one time period and a subsequent period endure when time-stable individual differences in criminal propensity are controlled? These questions speak to the heart of current theoretical debates about the nature of the age-crime curve, the extent to which typological theories are necessary, and whether theories need to consider individual differences, state dependent effects, or some combination. To do so, the authors employ three different samples of serious youthful offenders paroled from California Youth Authority institutions in 1981/1982, 1986/1987, and 1991/1992, each of whom were followed through June 2000. Not only do they represent a very policy-relevant group, but they also form some of the field’s longest longitudinal data on serious offenders.

Although space permits a detailed review of their book, several key analytic findings emerged. First, across all three samples there were multiple (six) distinct offender groups, suggesting a significant amount of heterogeneity in the propensity to offend among serious youthful offenders. Second, there appeared to be an adolescence-limited (peaked) group in the three samples. Third, the analysis failed to support the age-crime invariance hypothesis proffered by Gottfredson and Hirschi. Fourth, even after controlling for persistent individual differences, there was a strong, positive association between past and subsequent offending, thus supporting Sampson and Laub’s mixed-model theory. Contrary to Gottfredson and Hirschi, this state dependence finding did not disappear after controlling for persistent individual differences. And contrary to Moffitt, state dependence appeared to matter for all offenders equally. Finally, the results from the trajectory-based analysis indicate that by the early 30’s, many serious youthful offenders either had virtually stopped offending or were well on their way, suggesting that long-term prison sentences will likely lead to wastage of scarce correctional resources.

The results of this study suggest that continuity and change are important in understanding the longitudinal patterning of crime over the life course among over 4,000 serious youthful offenders followed from age 7 into their late 20’s/early 30’s. Although the data were limited to official records from the State of California for male offenders, the authors are careful to recognize what their data can and cannot say. That is why Mike Ezell and Lawrence Cohen’s book is so important. It tackles these great debates with a theoretical and policy relevant data set comprised of three cohorts of serious youthful offenders and employs a multi-method approach to the questions at hand. As such, it serves as an exemplar to all criminologists as to not only how to conduct sound research on key criminological questions, but also to do so in a way that is careful not to go beyond the reach of data.