Enduring Risk? Old Criminal Records and Predictions of Future Criminal Involvement

It is well accepted that criminal records impose collateral consequences on offenders. Such records affect access to public housing, student financial aid, welfare benefits, and voting rights. An axiom of these policies is that individuals with criminal records—even old criminal records—exhibit significantly higher risk of future criminal conduct than do individuals without criminal records. In this article, the authors use police contact data from the 1942 Racine birth cohort study to determine whether individuals whose last criminal record occurred many years ago exhibit a higher risk of acquiring future criminal records than do individuals with no criminal record at all. Findings suggest that there is little to no distinguishable difference between these groups.

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