2007
Alfred Blumstein
The nature of crime, causes of crime, society’s responses to crime.
Alfred Blumstein was lauded for his research on the long-term development of criminal behaviour, or ‘criminal careers’. Among other things, he has demonstrated that longitudinal tracking of crime patterns in large populations of convicted offenders – in which data is collected from the same individuals over long periods of time – provides important insights into the causes of crime and how findings from this research can be used in crime policy.Alfred Blumstein
Born 1930 in the US. Alfred Blumstein was professor at Carnegie Mellon University (United States) at the time of the award.
Provided the first extensive mapping of offending patterns across large populations of known offenders, including frequency, seriousness, persistence and specialisation.Provided the first extensive mapping of offending patterns across large populations of known offenders, including frequency, seriousness, persistence and specialisation.
Focus on criminal careers
Alfred Blumstein was awarded the 2007 Stockholm Prize in Criminology for his longitudinal studies of the various patterns of crimes reported over an offender’s lifetime.
Blumstein has done groundbreaking research on the patterns of people’s detected criminal behaviour. He has conducted longitudinal studies to discover the age at which sanctioned criminal actions begin, how long and frequently they continue, and how serious they become.
Analyses of crime patterns
Blumstein has pioneered concepts mathematics for comparing crime patterns among offenders identified by the legal system. His analyses of variations of criminal careers in the United States have had a global influence on legal policy and practices.
His research has been instrumental in the formulation of sentencing laws and law enforcement priorities worldwide, and to the rapidly increasing influence of basic research on criminal careers. He has also contributed to the terminology used in describing the main features of criminal careers, such as his concept of ‘lambda’ as the underlying true frequency of criminal acts that can only be estimated based on such indirect measures as arrests by the police, convictions, or self-reported offences.
Greater understanding of criminal careers
As Chair of the US National Academy of Sciences Panel on Research on Criminal Careers reporting in 1986, Blumstein was the lead author and editor of a groundbreaking report on the state of knowledge about ‘criminal careers’. The report emphasised the methodological uncertainty involved in predicting future criminal acts, as well as the ethical limitations of basing sentencing practices on past criminal records. In works co-authored with many of the most prominent contributors to our knowledge on criminal careers, he provided insightful and inspiring guidance for interpreting different patterns of criminal careers – with dramatic implications for public safety and crime prevention.