Not all repeat offenders are made alike: Dimensions of criminal history in practice

• In Event: Exploring horizons of sentencing research with new data and methods

Abstract

Criminal history in empirical research is often reduced to a binary (recidivist/first offender) or a simple number of previous offences. Dimensions of history represent more complex ways to understand criminal history while remaining possible to operationalize. In non-guideline systems in particular, the adjudicator has great discretion in interpreting criminal history when sentencing. By mapping dimensions of criminal history, future sentencing research could overcome current limitations when considering past convictions.

Inspired by Wasik (2010), we define the following general dimensions: (i) multitude of previous offences, (ii) recency of previous offences, (iii) relative seriousness to the current offence, (iv) similarity to the current offence, and (v) previously incurred punishment. Several alternative ways of defining these dimensions are explored.

The magnitude of each dimension is then identified for individual cases. This is done by utilizing an extensive dataset of Czech criminal records spanning several decades combined with relatively detailed case-level data from the past two decades. Archetypal criminal histories are identified based on the dimensions of criminal history (e.g. penitentiary recidivists, single-offence “specialists”, escalating offenders) for different offences.

The final result is a first-of-its-kind case-level dataset enhanced by detailed data regarding the offender’s criminal history.

Author

• Martin Košatka, Charles University, Faculty of Law