A career in delinquency

Abstract

It was during our first Fieldwork placement at the Corradino Correctional Facility that we became interested in the development of a criminal career and the study by established criminologists and deviancy theorists. When we began to do all the necessary research on the development of a criminal career in Malta, we soon came to realise that very little literature on the subject was readily available. Our research involved six inmates at the Corradino Correctional Facility. By the means of interviews, we obtained an insight on how these six individuals became deviants and the contingencies which led them towards criminality. This prepared the ground for ample comparisons and sound generalisation. In writing such a dissertation, documentation and critical analysis of existing studies, making a case for further research on a career in delinquency and criminality certain problems emerged. Our sample has shown that contingencies such as family, school, labelling and mostly drug addiction have great importance in both the initiation and escalation of a criminal career. From this research the following questions emerged: • Does a correctional institute in Malta help to reform an inmate? • What effect upon their character and outlook on life does a correctional institute actually bring about? • Is imprisonment an effective deterrent, both in respect of prisoners and with reference to 'the rest of us'? Although these questions are interesting, our limitations in interviewing only a sample of six out of a general population of over two hundred inmates at the Corradino Correctional Facility, left us with only a few interesting answers as to how our sample's escalation towards a criminal career came about. We seeked to reconstruct the original etiology of delinquency followed by recidivistic criminality later, and the weaknesses in society's official and nonofficial apparatus for coping with deviants as well as originally preventing criminal careers. We hope that this dissertation will make a contribution in the practical problem of management in the realms of delinquency and crime.