What seems clear is that while not all criminality is stable, those people who begin offending at relatively young ages are generally those who are lifelong offenders. In this way, it can be said that some criminality is stable over time.

The stability of criminal behavior can have a significant impact on criminal justice policy. When rehabilitation efforts proved largely unsuccessful, there was a conservative swing back towards incarceration to drive down crime rates. While incarceration does not have the blanket effect of reducing crime rates, it does reduce crime rates when high-rate offenders are incarcerated. "Moreover, the incarceration of high-rate offend-ers is cost-effective, meaning that the financial cost of keeping them locked up off-sets the costs of the crimes they would commit if free. The same cannot be said of locking up low-rate offenders" (Wright et al., 2008). There is the idea that understanding the stability of criminal behavior...
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