A life-course view of the development of crime

被引:509
作者
Sampson, RJ [1 ]
Laub, JH
机构
[1] Harvard Univ, Dept Sociol, Cambridge, MA 02138 USA
[2] Univ Maryland, Dept Criminol & Criminal Justice, College Pk, MD 20742 USA
关键词
crime; development; trajectories; life course; typologies; prediction; desistance;
D O I
10.1177/0002716205280075
中图分类号
D0 [政治学、政治理论];
学科分类号
0302 ; 030201 ;
摘要
In this article, the authors present a life-course perspective on crime and a critique of the developmental criminology paradigm. Their fundamental argument is that persistent offending and desistance-or trajectories of crime-can be meaningfully understood within the same theoretical framework, namely, a revised age-graded theory of informal social control. The authors examine three major issues. First, they analyze data that undermine the idea that developmentally distinct groups of offenders can be explained by unique causal processes. Second, they revisit the concept of turning points from a time-varying view of key life events. Third, they stress the overlooked importance of human agency in the development of crime. The authors' life-course theory envisions development as the constant interaction between individuals and their environment, coupled with random developmental noise and a purposeful human agency that they distinguish from rational choice. Contrary to influential developmental theories in criminology, hie authors thus conceptualize crime as an emergent process reducible neither to the individual nor the environment.
引用
收藏
页码:12 / 45
页数:34
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