Life course offending trajectories among those convicted of white-collar crimes

This paper joins two strands of the literature that heretofore have not been extensively considered in tandem: the criminal careers of white-collar offenders. We use longitudinal data from a large sample of state prisoners to explore the criminal careers of persons with and without a White-Collar Crime (WCC) history to examine similarities and differences regarding the age–crime relationship. We find that while both groups of persons exhibit similar longitudinal age–crime profiles, peaking in the mid-30s, persons with a WCC history were less likely to be arrested for a violent crime.