Criminal Behaviour during the Lifecourse (notes, lectures, workgroups)
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Course
Criminal Behaviour during the Lifecourse
Institution
Universiteit Utrecht (UU)
Notes from all lectures, including comments from a number of working groups in the Criminal Behaviour during the Lifecourse course at the Faculty of Social Sciences. English subject, so notes also English
Literature week 1
Elder Jr., G.H., Johnson, M.K., Crosnoe, R. (2003). The emergence and development of life
course theory. In J.T. Mortimer & M.J. Shanahan (eds.), Handbook of the Life Course (pp.
3-19). Kluwer Academic/Plenum: New York.
- social pathways
- social meaning
- five principles of life course theory
- linked lives
- human agency
- timing
- social historical concepts
- life span development
Hirschi, T. & Gottfredson, M. (1983). Age and the explanation of crime. American Journal of
Sociology, 89(3), 552-584.
- age crime curve debate
- age crime curve is invariant, different places according to Hirschi and Gottfredson,
different time, you don’t need longitudinal research, only age to predict crime
- age is independent, year, background, cultural/historical events nor income do not
matter to predict the crime curve (contradictory to Steffensmeier)
- curve should always be the same (H&G), but Steffensmeier has graphic evidence
that this is wrong
Steffensmeier, D.J., Allan, E.A., Harer, M.D., & Streifel, C. (1989). Age and the distribution of
crime. American Journal of Sociology, 94(4), 803-831
Literature week 2
Dual taxonomy theory (Moffitt, 1993)
Literature week 4
Changing contexts: A quasi‐experiment examining adolescent delinquency and the
transition to high school (wiley.com)
HC1 Intro to the life course (13/9)
Adolescents are more likely to commit crimes, as research was focused on youth
Growing interest in criminal behavior over time
- criminal ‘careers’
- lifecourse changed (lifecourse criminology)
- crime was highly concentrated (55% convictions by .1% of offenders (Sweden/US))
→ unequal distribution in age and offenders
‘age-crime was one of the brute facts of criminology’
→ crime declines with age (maturational reform) (ageing-out)
… why?
- changes in social roles and contexts (becoming parents, rolemodels etc.)
- ‘every adult generation is faced with the task of civilizing those barbarians’ (Ryder
quoted in Steffensmeier et al. 1989)
, - depends on the type of crime (gambling +21, vandalism around 18 etc.)
- age-crime curve
- social factor → age
- how crime is distributed across a population according to the age of a
population
- how distribution varies by crime type or over time
- shared social behaviors over time (who’s involved in what type of crime)
- it does NOT tell us: gender, early/late startes with crime, crime types
(specializations)
age + propensity to crime
implication:
- theoretical frameworks account for age-crime relationship
- target for crime prevention or reduction (adolescents or the elderly?)
- why does crime decline with age? (physically/social roles?, explanations)
Lifecourse research
- (between-individual differences)
- within-individual differences!
- changes over time
social pathways → institutions, educational systems, social norms, lifestructure, … (differ
between countries; ex. US and NL). These influence the tendency toward criminal behaviour.
lifecourse concepts:
- trajectories (middle school → highschool; whole line)
- transition (common change)
- turning points (serious change in behavior; highschool dropout, teenage pregnancy)
- age effects different crimes to commit during youth or older
- period effects effects all ages, groups etc.; general effect
- cohort effects generational effect; gen z, millennials
→ difficult to measure
1. social-historical time and place
- cohort effect; when and where you are born matters
- birth cohort, historical context, social change (ex. coronapandemic, learing
deficit) → affects decisions and how you develop over time
2. human agency
- agency: ‘the capacity to exercise control over our lives’
- intentional choices and actions (turning points?)
- made within societal constraints
3. linked lives
- individuals are linked with others (parents, friends, partners, communities…)
- parents in crime → children higher propensity to crime as well
4. timing
- when something occurs during lifecourse; timing matters
- age at which events occur affects trajectories and transitions
- stage of development
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