Criminal trajectories in organized crime

This paper investigates criminal trajectories of individuals who are involved in organized crime. A semiparametric group-model is used to cluster 854 individuals into groups with similar developmental trajectories. The most important findings of the study relate to the substantial group of adult-onset offenders (40 per cent) and a group without any previous criminal records (19 per cent), next to a group of early starters (11 per cent) and a group of persisters (30 per cent). Up to date, no trajectory study has discovered such a vast share of adult-onset offenders. Furthermore, the findings turn out to be quite robust, if trajectory analyses are applied to different kinds of criminal activities and to different roles in criminal groups.