Co-offending and Criminal Careers in Organized Crime

Abstract The growing research on co-offending over the life course is based relatively small, general offending samples, followed for a short period, and from limited set of countries. This study expands current knowledge by examining relation with age, criminal experience, crime type, seriousness in large sample Italian serious organized offenders careers spanning between age 14 late adulthood. includes 160,262 offenses 10,530 mafia offenders. After preliminary descriptive statistics, random-effects logistic regressions estimate how are independently related to probability. Co-offending decreases only moderately both experience offenders, while more prolific exhibit stable prevalence as their increases. varies significantly it frequent offenses. In line previous research, has relevant functional component even offenders: results suggest instrumental perpetrating specific offense types However, also show that social contexts promote among older experienced