Beggarman or thief: Methodological issues in offender specialisation research

Abstract

The problem of offender specialisation is one of the long-standing themes in theoretical and empirical criminology. Specialised offending suggests that there are specific causal factors that give rise to particular kinds of crime, whereas generalised offending is evidence for broader social and economic causes. Criminological research has shown consistent but weak evidence for specialisation. However, studies of offending specialisation entail methodological assumptions about how episodes of offending should be conceptualised and classified. This study examines two aspects of the methodology of offender specialisation research and their impact on specialisation indices like the Forward Speci..