Life-course Developmental

Question 1

What was Sampson and Laub’s (1993) goal with their Age Graded Theory of Informal Social Control?

Answer 1

Focused on the role of informal social controls at distinct stage of the life-course, they explain the processes that accounts for continuity and change in offending from:

Childhood (e.g., parents); adolescence (e.g., peers); young adulthood (e.g., marriage/employment).

Question 2

Define three key theoretical constructs of AGTISC

Answer 2

• Trajectory: Long-term pattern of behavior
• Transitions: specific life events, embedded in trajectories & evolve over short spans that can change trajectory
• Turning points: reflect an alteration/deflection in long-term trajectory; Informal social controls manifest in shifting and transformative ways, which all share common social connectivity over time

Question 3

What is the role of adult social bonds according to S&L?

Answer 3

Adult social ties, which are embedded in adult transitions, explain variations in crime unaccounted for by childhood propensities.

Central to this perspective is the idea crime is causally influenced by the strength of attachment one has to informal social controls (i.e., social bonds)

Question 4

What was the Glueck data?

Answer 4

The novel Glueck data followed 500 delinquent White Boston youths and 500 non-delinquent White Boston youths across the life-course; specifically, at ages 14, 25, and 32.

Rich longitudinal tracking of participants in addition to combining official data, parent-teacher reports of youth behavior, in addition to a host of other measures for childhood antisocial behavior and adult outcomes

Question 5

What important data additions did S&L make in 2003?

Answer 5

Data collected on original Glueck participants—criminal records and death records—as they approached 70 years old—thereby creating one of the longest longitudinal studies in criminology’s history.

o A stratified sampled of 52 Glueck men were interviewed for life histories to ensure variability in patterns of persistence and desistance of crime

Question 6

What are the 4 Mechanisms of Desistance as described in Sampson & Laub (2003; article) and Laub & Sampson (2003; book)?

Answer 6

1. New institutions: “knifing off” past delinquency and lifestyle
2. New situations providing
   (1) supervision and growth
   (2) opportunity for social support and growth
3. New situations that change routine activities
4. New situations providing opportunity for identity transformations (i.e., human agency).

Question 7

What important extension did S&L (2003) make to their theory?

Answer 7

Social controls, structured routine activities, and purposeful human agency are causal elements sin explaining persistent offending and desistance from crime in adulthood.

Question 8

What were S&L’s key critiques of Moffit’s dual taxonomy perspective? (3)

Answer 8

1. All men desisted from crime sooner or later
2. Heterogeneity in adult crime career patterns within sample of adolescent inmates was not explained by measures of childhood risk (i.e., prospective prediction).
3. Takes issue with the notion that different stages of the life-course require a different set of predictors to explain crime

Question 9

What two explanations did Nagin and Paternoster (19910 develop to explain the correlation between past and future delinquency?

Provide Examples.

Answer 9

State dependence: the initial act of crime, and perhaps subsequent criminal acts, reduces what may have been reasonably effective inhibitions against future crime.
-EXAMPLE: Attenuated social bonds (Agnew, 1985; Hirschi, 1969).

Population Heterogeneity: individuals differ in unmeasured delinquent propensity and this unmeasured propensity is persistent over time (G&H, 1990).

Question 10

Summarize empirical support for AGTISC

Answer 10

There is strong support for AGTISC (Horney et al., 1995; King et al., 2007; Laub, Nagin, & Sampson, 1998; Sampson, Laub, & Wimer, 2006; Uggen, 2000; Warr, 1998). Specifically, strong studies using advance statistical methodologies to account for self-selection still find the development of adult social bonds is associated with desistance (e.g., Sampson, Laub, & Wimer, 2006, Wright et al., 1999).

Question 11

What did the following find with regard to life-course and developmental theories?

What was the direction of the support?

Horney, J., Osgood, W., Marshall, I. (1995). Criminal careers in the short term: Intra-individual
variability in crime and its relation to local life circumstances. American Sociological Review,
60(5): 655-673.

Answer 11

N=658 convicted felons; with month-to-month variation on crime.

Reported that regardless of overall level of offending, men were less likely to be involved in crime when they were living with a wife or attending school.

Supportive of AGTISC.

Question 12

What did the following find with regard to life-course and developmental theories?

What was the direction of the support?

Laub, J., Nagin, D., & Sampson, R. (1998). Trajectories of change in criminal offending: Good
marriages and the desistance process. American Sociological Review, 63(2): 225-238.

Answer 12

Desistance from crime is facilitated by the development of quality marital bonds, and this influence is gradual and cumulative over time (i.e., having a “good” marriage is important).
- The effect of good marriages is gradual and cumulative; which indicates this is supportive of “turning points.”

Question 13

What did the following find with regard to life-course and developmental theories?

What was the direction of the support?

Rhule-Louie & McMahon (2007)

Answer 13

Literature review

Purpose of this paper is to explore how antisocial behavior and
substance use both influence and are influenced by romantic relationships in late adolescence and early adulthood. Next, we examine how romantic relationships
may promote the desistance of problem behavior.

Strong marital attachment demonstrated an independent deterrent effect on criminality and substance abuse, even after prior antisocial behavior and other measures of potential underlying traits (e.g., self-control, intelligence, personality) were controlled for.

Supportive of AGTISC.

Question 14

What did the following find with regard to life-course and developmental theories?

What was the direction of the support?

Sampson, R., Laub, J., & Wimer, C. (2006). Does marriage reduce crime? A counterfactual approach to within-individual causal effects. Criminology, 44(3): 465-508.

Answer 14

Controlling for self-selection, being married is associated with an average reduction of approximately 35 percent in the odds of crime compared to nonmarried states for the same man; but restricted by White males.

Question 15

What is a key takeaway of:

King, R., Massoglia, M., & Macmillan, R. (2007). The context of marriage and crime: Gender, the propensity to marry, and offending in early adulthood.

Answer 15

Marriage suppresses offending for males, even when accounting for their likelihood to marry.
-Strong support for turning points/AGTISC

Question 16

What is a key takeaway of:

Uggen, C. (2000). Work as a turning point in the life course of criminals: A duration model of
age, employment, and recidivism.

Answer 16

Work thus appears to be a turning point for older, but not younger, offenders.
-Partial support for “employment effect”

Question 17

What is the purpose and key findings of the following?

Bersani, Bianca E., and Elaine Eggleston Doherty. (2013). When the ties that bind unwind: Examining the enduring and situational processes of change behind the marriage effect.

Answer 17

Purpose: we aim to pry open the mechanism “black box” and reinvigorate desistance research by focusing on how marriage affects offending.

Bersani and Eggleston Dougherty (2013) found that divorce had a larger positive effect on the probability of arrest in longer marriages, after hypothesizing that if bonds were the cause of the marriage effect, then the effect of marriage should have any effect that endures and those with longer marriages should be less likely to be arrested after divorce—they interpret their findings as indicating that the effect of marriage may be better conceptualized as an results of situational change operating through a change in routine activities and restricted opportunities.

Partial support for “marriage effect”

Question 18

What is a key takeaway of:

Warr, M. (1998). Life-course transitions and desistance from crime.

Answer 18

Warr (1998) supports turning points, but in a manner inconsistent with Sampson and Laub 1993 (apparent marriage effect actually explained by peers). However, the expanded mechanisms offered by Laub and Sampson (2003) can be conceptualized as accommodating the impact of peers (change in opportunity).

Partial support for AGTISC

Question 19

What are two pieces of evidence that refute AGTISC?

Answer 19

Giordano et al. (2002).
-Neither marital attachment nor job stability were strongly related to female or male desistance
Apel et al. (2007).
-No overall effect for the link between employment/working and criminal desistance nor desistance from substance abuse.

Question 20

What are 3 weaknesses of AGTISC?

Answer 20

1. turning points are due to change in differential association (Warr, 1998).
2. Self-selection (Hirschi & Gottfredson, 1995; Gottfredson, 2006).
3. Glueck data is only white men and a small sample size

Question 21

What is the Dunedin data?

Answer 21

-a detailed study of human health, development and behavior
-The Dunedin Study has followed the lives of 1037 babies -> 5 decades later.

Question 22

What is the key proposition of Moffit’s dual taxonomy?

Answer 22

Moffit’s dual taxonomy is that there are different causal mechanisms for LCPs and ALs that dictate offending patterns across the life-course. Specifically, LCPs are characterized as having early onset, persistent antisocial behavior. In contrast, ALs are characterized as exhibiting later onset, temporary antisocial behavior.

Question 23

What is the causal variable for life-course persistent offenders (LCPs)? Two causal sequences should be addressed.

Answer 23

Source: neuro-psychological deficits (predispositions X environment)
- Cumulative Consequence: early individual differences may set a child on a downhill, snowball effect
- Contemporary Continuity: current/present differences that LCPs maintain (child and adult ill-temperament)

Question 24

What is the causal variable for adolescent-limited offenders (ALs)?

Answer 24

Maturity gap: a period of psychological discomfort during the relatively role-less years between biological maturation & access to mature privileges and responsibilities (see also Steffensmeier, 1989).
-AL is more strongly associated with delinquent peers than LCP

Question 25

What 3 goals does the maturity gap achieve for youths?

Answer 25

Antisocial behavior is an effective means of “knifing off” childhood and providing independence:

(1) demonstrate autonomy from parents, (2) win affiliation with peers, & (3) hasten social maturation

Question 26

What is Social Mimicry?

Answer 26

Social Mimicry: AL adopt/mimic antisocial behaviors from LCPs (i.e., alcohol/sex) as a method of gaining status among peers
o Motivation, Mimicry, Reinforcement

Question 27

What did Farrington (1986) and Steffensmeier (1989) find about age and crime? Which one aligns with life-course theories and which one aligns with developmental theories?

Answer 27

Farrington (1986): Age-crime curve is likely due to: (1) Decreasing parental controls, (2) Peaking of peer influence in teen years, (3) Increasing family and community controls with age

Steffensmeier (1989): Most significant change—explaining rising arrest rates among youth—between 1940 and 1980 has been the progressive concentration of offending among the young, which suggests greater discontinuity in the transition from adolescence and adulthood in modern times.