Analysis of multiple offences: a contribution to a better socio-statistical understanding of convicted multiple offenders

Crime statistics in France are complicated by the problem of convictions for multiple offences. In these cases, the statistical characterization of the conviction (or of the individual) occurs by selection, from among the total of offences listed, with only one of them named as the “principal offence”. Such a method obscures a certain number of effects that this article intends to underline. The analysis of multiple offences embodies new possibilities, and corrects the problems created by statistics based on the “first rank method”. This article aims at a better understanding of the phenomenon, and to achieve this, will propose several methods.