By Don Weatherburn, Michael Farrell, Wai-Yin Wan, Sara Rahman

Background: Very few studies have examined the criminal careers of drug traffickers. Our aim in this study was to determine (a) the percentage of drug traffickers who cease involvement in crime following their first conviction for drug trafficking, (b) the factors that affect the likelihood and speed of re-offending among drug traffickers, (c) the factors that affect the rate of reoffending among drug traffickers and (d) the scale of drug trafficker involvement in crimes other than drug trafficking.

Methods: We characterize the criminal careers of a sample of 30,020 cases of offenders convicted of drug trafficking in New South Wales (NSW), Australia over the 29-year period between 2000 and 2023, focussing on how drug charge, trafficker type, and drug and alcohol use affect the risk and frequency of offending. We use a combination of descriptive statistics, cure fraction regression and negative binomial regression. Our controls in the regression analyses consist of age, age of first conviction and number of prior convictions.

Results: The 'cure' rate among males aged 30-39 who were first convicted between 19 and 35 years of age, whose principal offence is trafficking in a non-commercial quantity of heroin, who have three prior convictions and who score 'moderate' in terms of the LSI-R drug/alcohol scale is 31 per cent. The instantaneous risk of re-offending among ATS, heroin, cannabis and ecstasy traffickers ranges between 62 and 82 per cent higher than among cocaine traffickers. Convicted drug traffickers commit a wide variety of offences but only a small proportion are convicted of drug offences before or after their first conviction for drug trafficking.

Conclusions: The present study raises two important questions for future research. The first concerns whether those involved in drug trafficking in Australia rely on it as a primary source of income or whether it is just one of several income-generating criminal activities they switch between in the course of a criminal career. The second question is why there are such marked differences in the risk, speed and frequency of offending among traffickers of different drugs.

International Journal of Drug Policy; 2024, 10p.

National Research Council.

Volume II takes an in-depth look at the various aspects of criminal careers, including the relationship of alcohol and drug abuse to criminal careers, co-offending influences on criminal careers, issues in the measurement of criminal careers, accuracy of prediction models, and ethical issues in the use of criminal career information in making decisions about offenders.

Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. 1986. 416p.

National Research Council.

By focusing attention on individuals rather than on aggregates, this book takes a novel approach to studying criminal behavior. It develops a framework for collecting information about individual criminal careers and their parameters, reviews existing knowledge about criminal career dimensions, presents models of offending patterns, and describes how criminal career information can be used to develop and refine criminal justice policies. In addition, an agenda for future research on criminal careers is presented.

Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. 1986. 458p.

By Clarence Darrow

An Address Delivered to the Prisoners in the Chicago County Jail. “Some of my good friends have insisted that while my theories are true, I should not have even them to inmates of a jail. Realizing the force of the suggestion that the truth should not be spoken to all people, I have caused these remarks to be printed on rather good paper and in a somewhat expensive form. In this way the truth does not become cheap and vulgar, and is only placed before those whose intelligence and affluence will prevent their being influenced by it. “ Clarene Darrow, Preface.

Chicago: Charles H. Kerr & Co., 1910. 36p.

By John F. Macleod, Peter G. Grove and David P. Farrington

Implications for Justice Policy. Explaining Criminal Careers presents a simple quantitative theory of crime, conviction and reconviction, the assumptions of the theory are derived directly from a detailed analysis of cohort samples drawn from the “UK Home Office” Offenders Index .

Clarendon Press (2012) 273 pages.