Table Of ContentCRIMINAL CAREERS
Criminal Careers follows the lives and criminal behaviours of 2,397 people in 
Poland who as juveniles committed a crime and received a form of punishment 
from the juvenile court between the late 1980s and the year 2000. Through 
combining quantitative and qualitative research, their criminal careers, the dif-
ferences between men and women, risk factors, and reasons for nondesistance 
are analysed.
Uniquely, the authors have used an extensive database of former juveniles, in 
which as many as 40% were women. This book therefore makes a comparison 
between women and men in terms of their future life paths. Additionally, the 
researched group consisted of teenagers from two different periods: the 1980s 
(the transition generation) and 2000 (the millennial generation), which in the 
context of Central and Eastern European countries means that they entered 
adulthood in completely different realities. These differences are therefore also 
explored in depth within the book.
By focusing on Poland, the book provides a different perspective to criminal 
career research, which is generally limited to a few countries in Western Europe 
and the United States.
The book will be of great interest to academics and students who are devel-
oping their own research in the fields of criminal careers, juvenile delinquency, 
and antisocial behaviours by young people. It will also appeal to professionals, 
including juvenile judges, probation officers, staff in correctional facilities and 
social rehabilitation institutions, and social workers and employees of nonprofit 
organisations that support juveniles, people in crisis, and prisoners or exprisoners.
Witold Klaus is a Professor at the Institute of Law Studies, Polish Academy of 
Sciences (Head of the Department of Criminology and of the Migration Law 
Research Centre) and Research Fellow in the Centre of Migration Research at
the University of Warsaw. He is a Lawyer, Criminologist, Migration Researcher, 
and NGO activist. He is a former Executive Secretary of the Polish Society of 
Criminology (2008–2018) and currently serves as Editor-in-Chief of the oldest 
Polish criminological journal, Archiwum Kryminologii [Archives of Criminology]. 
He held scholarships from the British Academy (UK), the Max Planck Institute 
for the Study of Crime, Security and Law (Germany), and the US government. 
His main areas of academic interest include refugee and immigrant rights, depor-
tation studies, crimmigration, victimology, and victimisation of underserved 
groups in society. He is a member of the European Society of Criminology, 
where he coleads the Working Group of Immigration, Crime, and Citizenship.
Irena Rzepli ska is a Criminologist and Lawyer. She is a Professor Emeritus at 
ń
the Institute of Law Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences (PAS). She is an author 
of research on deviance, recidivists, self-report surveys, crime, and historical and 
contemporary crime policy. She is an author of the first criminological research 
and the first monograph on the crime of foreigners in Poland. Furthermore, in 
the last decade, she conducted research on youth crime with a focus on the past 
and present as well as life-course research of young criminals. She was the Prin-
cipal Investigator of the project titled ‘The Mechanisms Behind the Formation 
and Development of Criminal Careers’, financed by the Polish National Science 
Centre. Her latest publications concern criminality at the time of COVID-19 
in Poland as well as the death of the right to asylum in Poland (in the wake 
of the situation on the Polish-Belarusian border). Between 2004 and 2016, she 
was Vice-Director in the Institute of Law Studies of the PAS. Currently, she 
is Chair of the Editorial Committee of the oldest criminological journal in 
Poland—Archiwum Kryminologii [Archives of Criminology]— and President of 
the Polish Society of Criminology. She is a member of the Presidency of the 
Committee of Legal Sciences of the PAS.
Dagmara Wo niakowska-Fajst is an Assistant Professor in the Department 
ź
of Criminology and Criminal Policy at the Faculty of Applied Social Sciences 
and Resocialisation at the University of Warsaw and an Assistant Professor at 
the Institute of Law Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences. She holds the posi-
tion of Secretary of the Board of the Polish Society of Criminology and is a 
member of the European Society of Criminology and the Association for Legal 
Intervention. Her main areas of academic interest include victimology, deviant 
behaviours of juveniles and women, stalking, media coverage of crime, crimes 
perpetrated by foreigners, and judicial policy. Currently, she leads a project on 
juvenile delinquency and antisocial behaviours in contemporary Poland (funded 
by the National Science Centre, Poland).
Routledge Studies in Criminal Behaviour
Empathy Versus Offending, Aggression and Bullying
Advancing Knowledge Using the Basic Empathy Scale
Darrick Jolliffe and David P. Farrington
The Life Course of Serious and Violent Youth Grown Up
A Twenty-Year Longitudinal Study
Evan C. McCuish, Patrick Lussier, and Raymond Corrado
Killer Data
Modern Perspectives on Serial Murder
Enzo Yaksic
Homicide
Towards a Deeper Understanding
Sara Skott
Politico-Ideological Mobilisation and Violence in the Arab World
All In
Ahmed Ajil
Psychology of Gang Involvement
Jane Wood, Jaimee S. Mallion, and Sarah Frisby-Osman
Criminal Careers
Life and Crime Trajectories of Former Juvenile Offenders in Adulthood
Witold Klaus, Irena Rzeplińska, and Dagmara Woźniakowska-Fajst
For more information about this series, please visit https://www.routledge.com/
Routledge-Studies-in-Criminal-Behaviour/book-series/RSCB.
CRIMINAL CAREERS
Life and Crime Trajectories of  
Former Juvenile Offenders 
in Adulthood
Edited by Witold Klaus, Irena Rzeplin′ska and
Dagmara Woz′niakowska-Fajst
Cover image: Getty Images/Tara Moore
First published 2023
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2023 selection and editorial matter, Witold Klaus, Irena Rzeplińska, 
and Dagmara Woźniakowska-Fajst; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Witold Klaus, Irena Rzeplińska, and Dagmara 
Woźniakowska-Fajst to be identified as the authors of the editorial 
material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been 
asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, 
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced 
or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other 
means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and 
recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without 
permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks 
or registered trademarks and are used only for identification and 
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-1-032-36540-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-36543-5 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-33256-5 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003332565
Typeset in Bembo
by KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd.
CONTENTS
List of Tables  ix
List of Figures  xii
List of Contributors  xv
Acknowledgment  xviii
 1  Introduction: Or why it is important to study criminal  
careers and how it can be done  1
Witold Klaus and Dagmara Woźniakowska-Fajst
 2  Accessing information on criminal activity of individuals: 
Methodological aspects of our research on criminal careers  16
Monika Szulecka
 3  Crime structure of former juvenile offenders during  
their adulthood: The transition generation and the  
millennial generation  43
Konrad Buczkowski and Paulina Wiktorska
 4  How long and how much? An empirical analysis of  
criminal activity over the life course of the subjects  67
Justyna Włodarczyk-Madejska and Dominik Wzorek
 5  Different paths, different patterns: Typologies of criminal  
trajectories  86
Justyna Włodarczyk-Madejska and Dominik Wzorek
viii  Contents
 6  Women’s criminal careers  114
Dagmara Woźniakowska-Fajst
 7  No roots, no wings: Risk factors in the assessment of  
chronic offenders  146
Olga Wanicka and Dagmara Woźniakowska-Fajst
 8  Snares and pains, or what stands in the path to  
desistance from crime  211
Witold Klaus
Index  279
TABLES
 2.1  Characteristics of the studies that were the source of the  
initial datasets  20
 2.2  Data collected after harmonising the datasets from the  
four studies  21
 2.3  Data collected from the NCR for the analysis of the criminal  
activity of individuals  24
 2.4  Information collected in the study of recent criminal cases  
of multiple offenders  27
 2.5  Subjects discussed during one-on-one interviews with  
multiple offenders incarcerated in penitentiary institutions  30
 2.6  Basic characteristics of the studied population   34
 3.1  Categories of acts and types of offences attributed to them  48
 3.2  Specialisation in crime in juvenile life and adulthood  62
 4.1  Description of the study population by gender  69
 4.2  Description of the community of former juveniles by  
generation  70
 4.3  The beginning of each life stage for the transition and  
millennial generations  72
 4.4  Age at first conviction versus trajectory length in years  
(N = 962)  77
 4.5  Age at first act versus trajectory length (N = 962)  77
 4.6  Serving a prison sentence versus length of the trajectory  
(N = 962)  78
 4.7  Completed and dormant trajectories (N = 962)  79
 4.8  Intensity of acts in life stages  82
 5.1  Proportion of men and women in the population  88