The main point of departure for this book is the concept that individuals who commit offences together exert some form of influence over one another and that this influence has significance for their delinquency. It is thus of some interest to obtain more detailed information concerning the bases on which the choice of co-offenders is made and the criteria that affect which individuals commit offences together. In this chapter, the choices of co-offender made by the individuals included in the study will be examined in more detail.

Using the concept ‘choice’ is not entirely without problems in this context. The everyday use of the term implies that the individual in question is free to choose. Whilst such freedom does characterise a number of crime situations, it can be severely limited in others. It is not uncommon for a number of individuals to participate in the same delinquent act without any of them having made a conscious decision to act in concert with others. This may happen in the case of a public-order disturbance, for example, where an individual may decide to participate in the criminal act itself, whilst having no way of choosing which others are going to figure as co-offenders. The concept of choice, then, as it is used in this study with respect to co-offenders, is to be understood in a much wider sense than is the everyday use of this term.

The calculations presented below build on the data in their original condition, that is before they were subjected to the network analysis.