1 - Introduction: Crime over the life course (L1, KC1, Elder, Hirschi & Gottfredson, Steffenmeier) Flashcards
Definition criminal career (HC)
Small % of offenders account for majority of the crimes.
What do Hirschi & Gottfredson say about age and crime? (HC)
Only age matters. Crime declines with age: maturation. Criminal career and longitundinal research is NOT needed.
What do Steffenmeier et al. say about crime and age? (HC)
They were wondering why crime declines with age. They say this is about social roles and context. Age-crime curve depends on type of crime.
What are critiques about age crime curve? (HC)
Ignores vairations in shape of age-crime curve. E.g. gender, early vs. late starters and crime types.
What do life-course studies research? (HC)
Within-individual differences, so your own changes over time.
What are life course concepts (Elder; HC)
- Trajectories: the whole line, eg high school to uni
- Transitions: a change, normal stuff that happens
- Turning points: bigger and serious changes
Which three effects do you have with life course concepts? (HC)
- Age effects: as people get older, their behavior change; Hirschi)
- Period effects: general effect, effect in time period that hits everyone (in a country)
- Cohort effects: birth cohort
What are the four aspects of life course research? (Elder?; HC)
- Social historical time and place: when and where you are born matters, includes cohort, historical context and social change
- Human agency: capacity to make own choices
- Linked lives: individuals are linked to others
- Timing: age at which events occur affects trajectories and transitions
Definition Cumulative continuity (HC)
Snowball effect. Past behavior does effect future behavior. Causal effect.
Definition Self-selection (HC)
(Personal) traits explain behavior, comes from genes and environment. people select experiences/groups based on internal trait. Komt overeen met wat Hirschi zegt.
What are four criminal career dimensions? (KC)
- Participation: people who engage in crime during their life course vs those who do not
- Frequency: rate of activity, number of offences
- Seriousness: minor vs serious
- Duration: length in time of criminal activity or career
Definition Lambda (KC)
Rate of activity.
What does the article of Elder states?
Sociologists had to make use of life histories and future trajectories of individuals and groups, emphasizing the need for longitudinal approach to life history. Purpose of article is trace evolution of life course study.
Why is it important to look at social and cultural ecologies? (Elder)
Mixture of various immigrant groups with general population gave greater visilibity.
Defintion concept Social pathways (Elder)
Trajectories of education and work, family and residences that are followed by individual groups through society. Shaped by historical foces and often structured by social institutions.
Definition concept Trajectories (Elder)
Made up of transitions, or changes in state or role. E.g. leaving parental home, becoming a parent, retiring. Long durations enhance behavioral stability through acquired obligations and vested interests.
Definition concept Turning Points (Elder)
Substantial change in direction of one’s life, subjective or objective. May involve returning to school during midlife. Most involve work issues.
Definition concept Time (Elder)
Locating people in cohorts by birth year provide precise historical placements. Cohorts thereby link age and historical time. Historical changes often have different implications for people at different ages.
What are the five paradigmatic principles in life course theory? (Elder)
- Principle of life-span development
- Principle of agency
- Principle of time and place
- Principle of timing
- Principle of linked lives
What does the principle of life-span development mean? (Elder)
Human development and aging are lifelong processes.
What does the principle of agency mean? (Elder)
Individuals construct their own life course through the choices and actions they take within the opportunities and constraint of history and social circumstance. E.g. continuing with study??
What does the principle of time and place mean? (Elder)
The life course of individuals is embedded and shaped by the historical times and places they experience over their lifetime. E.g. COVID period?
What does the principle of timing mean? (Elder)
The developmental antecedents and consequences of life transitions, events, and behavioral patterns vary according to their timing in a person’s life. E.g. moving together with boyfriend at 20?
The way our lives change and how we react to these changes can be different based on when they occur.
What does the principle of linked lives mean? (Elder)
Lives are lived interdependently and socio-historical influences are expressed through this network of shared relationships. our lives are shaped by the people around us and the broader social and historical context in which we live.
What does the paper of Hirschi & Gottfredson state?
They discuss why age distribution of crime is insufficiently invariant over a broad range of social conditions. the way people of different ages are involved in crimes can change depending on the social conditions they are in.
What are six theses what Hirschi & Gottfredson try to defend?
- The age distribution of crime is invariant across social and cultural conditions; Crime Peaks at a Certain Age: Crime rates tend to be highest at a specific age. This pattern applies to different types of crimes, as shown by self-reports.
- Theories of crime that do not explicitly attend to age have no logical or empirical obligation to do so and should not be judged by their apparent ability or inability to account for the age effect; Critiques of Age Theories: Some theories focus on adolescence, the age when crime is highest, but they fail to explain why crime decreases as people get older.
- The age distribution of crime cannot be accounted for by any variable or combination of variables currently available to criminology; Age Effect Is Consistent: Regardless of social factors or conditions, the pattern of crime with age remains the same. Existing theories like David Greenberg’s strain and control do not fully explain this consistency.
- Explanations focusing explicitly on the age effect must be compatible with an apparently direct effect of age on crime; Direct Link Between Age and Crime: Although age affects life events, there is no direct connection established yet between age and criminal behavior.
- The conceptual apparatus that has grown up around the age effect is largely redundant or misleading; Conceptualization Challenges: Focusing solely on the age when crimes begin can be misleading. It’s important to compare offenders with non-offenders to understand this phenomenon better.
- Identification of the causes of crime at any age may suffice to identify them at other ages as well. Longitudinal Studies Not Always Necessary: Studying the causes of crime doesn’t always require long-term studies. Linking age to specific life events doesn’t necessarily predict criminal behavior. The choice of study samples should be based on the complexity of the research.
What do they state with ‘the age effect is invariant’? (H&G)
Crime rates among different age groups stay the same regardless of social or cultural differences.
Crime data suggests consistent age patterns across gender and race. Official data shows personal crimes peak later and decline slower than property crimes, but self-report data contradicts this, indicating simultaneous peaks in mid-teens. Differences in offense seriousness and involvement in primary group conflicts may explain these variations. Theories emphasize youth’s social position in explaining age-related crime patterns, supported by research in controlled environments and analogous data from automobile accidents.
What do they state with ‘the age critique of theory is unjustified’? (H&G)
Theories about crime don’t have to specifically consider age. They shouldn’t be judged based on their ability to explain age-related crime patterns.
Crime theories often focus on adolescence when crime rates peak. Despite this, it remains unclear why delinquents might eventually reduce criminal behavior. Existing theories struggle to explain this decline with age. Research indicates a natural decrease in criminal tendencies as individuals grow older, even with equal exposure to criminal influences.
What do they state with ‘the age effect cannot be explained with available concepts’? (H&G)
The current factors studied in criminology can’t fully explain why crime rates vary with age.Regardless of social factors or conditions, the pattern of crime with age remains the same.
The authors argue that the age pattern of crime remains constant across social conditions. They discuss Greenberg’s theory, which combines strain and control, explaining delinquency in youth due to exclusion and status anxiety. Despite common beliefs, research doesn’t support the idea that employed teenagers are less likely to commit crimes than unemployed ones. Greenberg’s theory emphasizes increasing external costs and social control as explanations for the decline in delinquent behavior with age.
What is Greenberg’s delinquency and the age strcuture of society? (H&G)
By combining strain and control provides a plausible account for the age and other systematic sources of variation in delinquent involvement.
- Strain comes from exclusion of youth from access to means of production
- Control enters through increasing legal penalties and increasing social integration with age
On which four factors about age distribution of crime does Greenberg focusses on? (H&G)
- The peak age of crime is late adolescence
- The peak age declines over time
- The peak age varies by the type of offense
- The offenses decline in number with age
The first 3 explained by strain, the last by control.
What do they state with ‘age has a direct effect on crime’? (H&G)
If a theory talks about how age affects crime, it should be consistent with the idea that age directly influences crime rates.
A direct-effect hypothesis makes sense only in the context of a restricted set of competitive or intervening variables. In current criminological research, such a mechanism has not been found.
What do they state with ‘conceptualization of the age effect is largely redunant or misleading’? (H&G)
Many complex ideas about age and crime are unnecessary or confusing.
Criminology is studying ‘career criminals’ who offend occasionally or consistently. The age of onset theory, linking early offenses to longer criminal activity, is challenged. Comparisons should include non-offenders for accurate understanding.
What do they state with ‘longitudinal study is not required to study the causes of crime’? (H&G)
Understanding the causes of crime at one age can help understand them at other ages too.
The belief that longitudinal research is essential for causal inferences is challenged by the authors. They argue that age’s impact on crime remains consistent regardless of significant life events like leaving school or marriage. The emphasis on longitudinal studies, according to them, is unjustified and potentially misleading.
What does the paper of Steffenmeier et al. examine?
The age/crime distribution is to determine whether there is a single pattern that is constant over time and across crime categories. They say that social processes explain much of the age-crime relationship.
What is the traditional sociological view? (Steffenmeier)
Crime tends to peak in adolescence or early childhood and then declines with age.
Why do certain crimes peak at an early age and decline rapidly, while others show continued high rates of offending into adulthood? (Steffenmeier)
Certain crimes, driven by thrill-seeking and peer acceptance among juveniles, peak early and decline rapidly due to their high risk and low financial gains. In contrast, offenses with higher rewards and lower risks have ‘older’ age curves, indicating they don’t peak early and persist into adulthood. These differences reflect varied motivations and risk-reward ratios in criminal behavior.
What are the three clusters of criminal activities? (Steffenmeier)
- Vandalism, auto theft and bulglary: 50% arrests under 18.
- Arson, liquor violations, larceny
- Robbery and stolen property
What is the conclusion of the study of Steffenmeier et al.?
Results from this study are inconsistent with the invariance hypothesis. They demonstrate that there is considerable heterogeneity in the age distribution.
What explains the increase in youth crime over the 1940-80 span? (Steffenmeier)
- Increased professionalism of police, and development of juvenile units may have contributed toward more formal processing of a larger proportion of youths than may have been the case with earlier generations.
- Changes in police charges filed for specific kinds of criminal behavior may have also contributed to increased youth arrests, without any “real” increase in delinquent behavior.
- Changes in data collection, such as the shift from fingerprint card to arrest-report forms may have resulted in artificial increases in the level of juvenile crime.
