Criminal Behavior during the Lifecourse
Lecture 1: Introduction to the life course .............................................................................. 2
Benson (2013)
Sutton (2010)
Lecture 2: Developmental and life course theories ............................................................... 5
Moffit (1993)
Laub & Sampson (1993)
Lecture 3: Situational theories and crime .............................................................................. 9
Sidebottom & Wortley (2015)
Farrel et al. (2011)
Lecture 4: Childhood: Individual and family risk factors ................................................. 13
Novak (2022)
Besemer et al. (2017)
Lecture 5: Adolescence: school and peers ............................................................................ 18
Freelin et al. (2022)
Rees & Pogarsky (2011)
Lecture 6: Adulthood: Marriage, employment, and desistance......................................... 23
Copp et al. (2020)
Thomas et al. (2023)
, Week 1: Introduction crime over the life course
The goals of this week
• Knowing the key principles and concepts of life course research.
• How a life course perspective can help us better understand criminal behavior and the prevention of it.
Compulsory reading
• The Benson chapter provides an overview of life course research, as well as arguments about key
assumptions in criminology about change over time.
• The Sutton article provides an overview of benefits and limitations of the life-events calendar (or life
history calendar) method, which is often used in life course research.
Lecture: Age and crime
Major observation in criminology research is that there is a relationship between age and crime: Adolescents and
young adults commit a disproportionate amount of crime.
• Official data: Arrests peak in late teens/early 20s (universal observation).
• Self-report: Teens and young adults report more criminal behavior than other age groups.
• Victim surveys: Victims most commonly report offenders to be teenagers/young adults.
Example: arrest data on age and crime
• Youths aged 13-17 make up about 6% of the US population, but they account for about 20% of all
“index crime” arrests: homicide, assault, robbery, rape, arson, burglary, larceny, motor vehicle theft.
• Adults over 45 make up 32% of the population but account for only 8% of index crime arrests.
Setting the stage
• Until 1970s/80s, much research on crime focused on adolescents and individual differences.
• Around the 80s there was a growing interest in criminal behavior over time: “Criminal careers”
– Small percentage of offenders account for majority of crimes 6% → 52% of all crimes.
Enter the villains of criminology
Hirschi & Gottfredson (1983): After the ‘Criminal careers’ came out, they express criticism:
• They state that the age-crime curve is a “brute fact of criminology”: we see it everywhere. So do we
actually need longitudinal research and ‘criminal careers’ to explain crime over the time?
• They state: Crime declines with age – ‘maturational reform’ - people age out of crime. If someone has a
high propensity to commit crime, that is all you need to now. So you need to know the age and the
propensity. Long research is expensive, takes a long time, so we must not use it.
The ‘great debate’ - Counterarguments: there really is a change in the age-crime curve, so there is a difference
over time and we need to study it!
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, Age-crime curve: Arguments against Hirschi & Gottfredson (1983)
Why does crime decline with age?
• Changes in social roles and contexts: all play a role in socializing people into their behavior.
• Depends on the type of crime: Burglary, fraud and gambling differ over the life course; they peak at
different ages. Burglary is done by mostly youthful offenders; gambling by older people because of
their environment they encounter at that age (and the same with fraud).
• The latter require more skills, income, being employed.
Age crime curve - What does it tell us?
• How crime is distributed across a population according to age;
• How distribution varies by crime type or over time;
• Shared social behaviors over time.
Critiques of aggreagate age-crime curves - What does it NOT tell us?
Ignores (small) variations in the shape of the age-crime curve, e.g.: Gender - Early v. late starters - Crime types.
Implication: Why does this matter?
• (Criminological) theoretical frameworks should be able to account for the age-crime relationship: the
changes in crime over time (hen those frameworks hold stand).
• Who is the target for crime prevention/reduction? → Implications for interventions.
Benson (2013): Crime and the life course
Concepts
• Life course research: The study of patterns and variations in people’s experiences as they age. The
patterns that we experience are shaped by many factors: family, friends, (historical) context etc.
• It is focused on within-individual differences instead of between-individual differences, and focus on
why people change over time and take diverse paths through life.
• Social pathways we grow up in. Those experiences shape our trajectories and how we view them. All
of these are within social context, with social roles as social constructed and normative defined.
Other life course concepts
• Trajectories: common behavior (education): a sequence of linked events within a conceptually defined
domain of behavior/experience, have consequences for how individuals develop. Three important
dimensions are: entrance (yes/no), success and timing (of entering of leaving it).
• Transitions: happen within trajectories or out of trajectories (from high school to university, from being
in a relationship, to not be in a relationship). Stages within a trajectory are linked by transitions.
• Turning points: are less common than transitions; lead to a sustained change and may not be expected
(accident, divorce).
o A cohort is defined as a group of individuals who experience ‘the same events within the same
time interval’. A cohort effect is said to be present when members of different cohorts vary
significantly in some characteristic. In this you can think about age and period effects.
o Social age is about norms and expectations upon people at different ages; historical age about
meaning and implications of events and transition depending on when they are experienced.
Four core principle of life course research that guide research and theorizing
1. Social-historical place and time: When and where you are born matters to how we as individuals
develop and on the life course that we follow; it has profound effects on our development, our social
pathways and opportunities, and therefore various life outcomes.
– Important concepts: Birth Cohort & Historical context & Social change
2. Human agency: “the capacity to exercise control over our lives”
– Important to consider intentional choices/actions made within societal constraints.
3. Linked lives: Our individual lives are linked to the lives of others in the sense that changes and events
in the lives of persons around us can have an impact on our own trajectories
– Parents, peers, partners, siblings, communities
4. Timing: The age at which events occur, affects life patterns, trajectories and transitions. For example:
timing of arrest, interventions, parental incarceration, negative life events.
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