The Master Crook

✍ Scribed by T.A. Critchley

• Book ID: 104118960
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Year: 1971
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 133 KB
• Volume: 11
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0015-7368
• DOI: 10.1016/s0015-7368(71)70660-4

✦ Synopsis

This publication which includes a prediction study of young men on probation defines the nature and purpose of prediction studies-the effort to estimate the varying degrees to which people are at risk of committing offences and to identify those most likely to begin or to persist in careers of crime as an aid both to administrators and to penal practitioners. A valuable feature of the report is an assessment of about forty previously published prediction studies, the evidence from which is brought together with the results of the probation study to disclose the limited prediction power of the study. The conclusion is that for a large middle range of offenders it is unlikely that future criminal behaviour can be predicted to a useful extent from past history, and this must imply that for this class at least greater research might be concentrated on treatment or on environment.