DOES SERIOUS OFFENDING LEAD TO HOMICIDE? EXPLORING THE INTER-RELATIONSHIPS AND SEQUENCING OF SERIOUS CRIME Keith Soothill 1 , Brian Francis 2 and Jiayi Liu 3 1 Emeritus Professor of Social Research, Department of Applied Social Science, 2 Professor of Social Statistics, 3 Research Officer, Centre for Applied Statistics, Lancaster University, UK Word count of manuscript – 7,393 words (including references, footnotes, tables and figures). Corresponding Author: Brian Francis Address for correspondence: Brian Francis, Centre for Applied Statistics Fylde College Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YF UK Tel: +44 (0)1524 593061 Fax: +44 (0)1524 592681 E-mail: B.Francis@Lancaster.ac.uk November 2007 Revised March 2008 Final version April 2008 1