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Article 1: Piquero, A. R., Jennings, W. G., & Farrington, D. (2011). The monetary costs of crime to middle adulthood: Findings from the Cambridge study in delinquent development. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 50(1), 53–74.

Abstract: Objectives: Monetary cost estimates of criminal careers have been limited to specific samples, specific ages, and focused on the United States. This article is the first to examine the costs of a life course of crime in the United Kingdom. Method: This study uses longitudinal data from 411 South London males from the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development (CSDD) to derive costs-of-crime estimates from childhood to middle adulthood (ages 10 to 50). Additional features include a calculation of cost estimates across distinct offending trajectories and centering on costs per offender. Results: Offending over the life course imposes a considerable amount of economic and social costs and these costs are differentially distributed across offending trajectories. The cost of high-rate chronic offending is nearly two and a half to ten times greater than the cost of high adolescence peaked offending, very low-rate chronic offending, and low adolescence-peaked offending, respectively. It is estimated that a male high-rate chronic offender on average would impose an annual cost of £18 ($29) per U.K. citizen or a lifetime cost of £742 ($1,185) per U.K. citizen. Conclusions: As the average and total costs of crime were significantly different across offending trajectories, with high-rate chronics imposing the most financial burden, adopting prevention and intervention strategies aimed at reducing the number of high-rate chronics and/or speeding up their eventual desistance will offer many savings to the public and perhaps turn those negative costs into positive contributions.

Questions that apply to this article:

1. What was the purpose of this study?
2. How did the authors use measures of central tendency in their research?
3. Compare and contrast the costs of offending by age and trajectory."
    

Article 2: Bond, J. W., & Sheridan, L. (2008). A novel approach to maximising the detection of volume crime with DNA and fingerprints. International Journal of Police Science and Management, 10(3), 326–338.

Abstract: Decisions concerning which volume crime scenes (such as burglary and auto crime) to examine for forensic material continue to have a significant impact on the detection of these crime types by forensic evidence such as DNA or fingerprints. Previous work has indicated that crime scene attendance by a crime scene examiner (CSE) should be influenced by the likely evidential value of any material recovered from the crime scene rather than focusing attendance on specific crime types. In this paper, we challenge that argument by assessing first the forensic detections obtained from volume crime types over a three-year period in a study police force in England. We then show how a realignment of CSE deployment to crime types that offer the highest potential to detect the crime forensically produced statistically significant increases in the percentage of recorded crime detected. We examine this realignment against the national picture for CSE attendance and forensic crime detection in England and Wales and show how other police forces might benefit from a similar realignment of CSE deployment. Finally, we consider the possible effect on the general public's fear of crime that such a realignment of CSE deployment might have.

Questions that apply to this article:

1. Discuss how the authors used different measures of central tendency.
2. What were the main findings of this article?
3. If this same study were replicated today, how would you expect the findings to differ?