2022
CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR DURING THE
LIFE COURSE
,LOREM IPSUM DOLOR
Aantekeningen Elders
Social pathways are the trajectories of educa on and work, family and residences that are followed
by individuals and groups through society.
Trajectories, or sequences of roles and experiences, are themselves made up of transi ons, or
changes in state or role.
The me between transi ons is known as a dura on.
Turning points involve a substan al change in the direc on of one’s life, whether subjec ve or
objec ve.
When historical change di eren ates the loves of successive birth cohorts, it generates a cohort
e ect.
History also takes the form of a period e ect when the impact pf social change is rela vely uniform
across successive birth cohorts.
Five general principles, derived from research in the social and behavioral sciences, provide
guidance for such pursuits.
1. The Principle of Life-Span Development: Human development and aging are lifelong processes
2. The Principle of Agency: Individuals construct their own life course through the choices and
ac ons they take within the opportuni es and constraints of history and social circumstance
3. The Principle of Time and Place: The life course of individuals is embedded and shaped by the
historical mes and places they experience over their life me
4. The Principle of Timing: The developmental antecedents and consequences of life transi ons,
events, and behavioral pa erns vary according to their ming in a person’s life
5. The Principle of Linked Lives: Lives are lived interdependently and socio-historical in uences are
expressed through this network of shared rela onships
Aantekeningen Hirschi —> Age
(1) the age distribu on of crime is invariant across social and cultural condi ons; (2) theories of
crime that do not explicitly a end to age have no logical or empirical obliga on to do so and
should not be judged by their apparent ability or inability to account for the age e ect; (3) the
age distribu on of crime cannot be accounted for by any variable or combina on of variables
currently available to criminology; (4) explana ons focusing explicitly on the age e ect must be
compa ble with an apparently direct e ect of age on crime; (5) the conceptual apparatus that
has grown up around the age e ect is largely redundant or misleading; (6) iden ca on of the
causes of crime at any age may su ce to iden fy them at other ages as well; if so, cohort or
other longitudinal designs are not necessary for the proper study of crime causa on.
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,LOREM IPSUM DOLOR
Hoorcollege1
INTRO
Age and crime
Fact: Adolescents and young adults commit a disproportionate amount of crime
Data:
- O icial data: arrests peak in late teens/early 20s
- Self-report: Teens and young adults report more criminal behavior than other age
groups
- Victim surveys: Victims most commonly report o enders to be teenagers / young
adults
Age-crime curve
- Hirschi & Gottfredson (1983): Age-crime curve one of the “brute facts of criminology”
- Crime declines with age: “maturational reform”, “ageing-out”
- Invariant
- Consistent explanations across age
- Difference in degree
- So…why do we need criminal careers and longitudinal research?
—> The great debate, not only age is important, life course (career) is important!
- Why does crime decline with age?
- Changes in social roles and contexts
- “Society at large is faced perennially with an invasion of barbarians…[and] every
adult generation is faced with the task of civilizing those barbarians” (Ryder, quoted in
Ste ensmeier et al. 1989)
- Depends on the type of crime
- What does the age crime curve tell us?
- 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
- What does it NOT tell us?
- Ignores variations in the shape of the age-crime curve, e.g.
- Gender
- Early v. late starters
- Crime types
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, LOREM IPSUM DOLOR
Implications
Why does this matter?
- Our theoretical frameworks should be able to account for the age-crime
relationship
- Who is the target for crime prevention/reduction?
- Why DOES crime decline with age??
Life course research
- Between Individual differences vs within-individual differences
- Why do someone commit crime and another one not? Age, childhood characters
(between)
- Why do people change over time? How does that changes over time? (Within)
- Which factors does also change?
Life course concepts
- Trajectories, sequence of events over time, social pathway, educational pathway
- Transitions, one point to another
- Turning points, outside of transitions or during, effect on your process (marriage,
education, to prison, out of prison, divorce) subjective or objective characteristics
- Ages effects, as you get older, behavior changes
- Period effects, regardless of when you are getting older, effect of period of time,
right now, pandemic
- Cohort effects, birth cohort, when they were born, social context in which you’re
born, people who were born a long time ago, pandemic hit differently for older people
then for younger people
Life course research
1. Social-historical time and place
- When and where you are born matters
- Birth cohort
- Historical context
- Social change
2. Human agency
- Agency: “The capacity to exercise control over our lives”
- Intentional choices/actions
- Made within societal constraints
“Not because of my mother and father. Because of me. I’m the one that made it shitty.”
3. Linked Lives
- Individuals are linked with others
- Parents, peers, partners, siblings, communities can effect your beliefs,
behavior.
4. Timing
- The age at which events occur affects trajectories and transitions
- e.g. timing of arrest, interventions, parental incarceration, negative life event
- stage of development
- social norms
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