BRIDGING CRIMINAL CAREERS, THEORY, AND POLICY THROUGH LATENT VARIABLEMODELS OF INDIVIDUAL OFFENDING

Our goal is to build bridges between theoretical criminology, the stud y of criminal careers, and policy-relevant research. Insights from the criminal career and propensity positions lead us to seek (1) a compre hensive means of incorporating theoretical variables in research on cr iminal careers, (2) statistical models that yield meaningful projectio ns relevant to public policy issues, and (3) methods for comparing fin dings for different measures of offending. We present a conceptual fra mework accomplishing this by applying the general linear model to the study of crime and criminal careers. This framework differentiates the elements of (1) a curvilinear function linking the scale of the linea r model and the scale of the measure of offending, (2) a probabilistic relationship between a latent tendency to offend and the measure of o ffending, (3) a probability distribution of individual differences on the latent dimension, and (4) relationships among repeated observation s for the same individual. We describe numerous versions of the genera l linear model that do not require special statistical expertise and a re appropriate for the full range of measures of offending. We conclud e by addressing strategies for comparing results across measures.