When a suspect is mentioned in a case file transferred to the Public Prosecutor’s office, it generates a new entry in a criminal record data base. This paper first proposes a retrospective analysis of this sequence of events for a sample of 1996 suspects in one jurisdiction of the Greater Paris Area, it then presents a follow up study of the “re-occurrence” of these events. Using social and penal variables several hypotheses are formulated and tested to understand these sequences of events. The results are discussed from the perspective of institutional trajectories.