Content area
Full Text
Introduction
A paradigmatic methodological issue in criminology centers on the distinctions and overlap between official records of crime, such as those indicated by arrest and conviction data, and self-reported records of crime as revealed by offenders themselves. Official records have several advantages including their systematic collection and compilation by the criminal justice system, standardization and electronic storage and retrieval, and immunity to obfuscation or deception from criminal offenders who are potentially motivated to lie about their criminal activity. Self-reports have the advantage of providing the “true” amount of offending that occurs in the event that the police were unaware or unresponsive to the incident, but have validity threats relating to memory deficits, inaccurate recall, exaggeration, and minimization (Farrington, 1973; Hindelang et al., 1979; Thornberry and Krohn, 2000).
Generally, it is understood that the official record of arrest is smaller in magnitude than self-reports and is likely a sampling of the offender’s true criminal activity. The amount of crime that self-reports reveal vis-à-vis official records is known in criminology as the dark figure of crime (Biderman and Reiss, 1967). Both sources of data are valid proxies of an individual’s antisocial history, however. Despite the potential differences in these sources of data, there nevertheless is evidence that they substantially overlap and the overlap is often moderate to strong (Emmert et al., 2015; Hindelang et al., 1979; Huizinga and Elliott, 1986; Maxfield et al., 2000; Piquero et al., 2014; Sutton et al., 2011; Thornberry and Krohn, 2000). For instance, a recent study of self-reported vs official recorded arrests using data from the National Youth Survey Family Study found that self-reported and official records of arrest were concordant for more than 80 percent of offenders (Pollock et al., 2015).
These measurement issues are heightened when considering the most violent and chronic offenders. The most severe offenders usually have extensive official records of arrests, convictions, and incarcerations but it is recognized that their official RAP sheet is at best a facsimile of their true criminal activity. Moreover, the most severe offenders tend to have more unreliable self-reports in part because there is significantly more criminal activity to recall (e.g. dozens or arrests spanning decades of offending), in part because their interpersonal and personality...