Criminal Careers in Organised Crime and Social Opportunity Structure.

This paper presents the main findings of quantitative and qualitative research into the criminal careers of about a thousand offenders who were involved in eighty extensively analysed cases of organised crime. The paper analyses how and when offenders become known to the criminal justice authorities, it studies in depth the criminal careers of 'starters', and analyses in detail the criminal careers of (ring)leaders and 'nodal' offenders. As social ties play an important role in organised crime, the paper emphasises that the social opportunity structure - social ties providing access to profitable criminal opportunities - is extremely important for explaining involvement in organised crime. It explains why certain offenders 'progress' to certain types of organised crime and why several offenders only become involved later on in life. Social opportunity structure may also explain interesting phenomena such as 'late starters' - people without any appreciable criminal history - and legally employed people switching careers.Keywords: criminal careers; developmental and life course criminology; organised crime; qualitative research; social network analysis; social opportunity structure. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]