Transcript Criminal Careers / Developmental / Life

Criminal Careers / Developmental /
Life-course Criminology
Troubles of Youth
17th November 2008
Lecture Outline
• 4 (groups of) theorists and writers
– Gottfredson and Hirschi
– David Farrington
– Terrie Moffitt
– Sampson and Laub
• Differences
– Persistent Heterogeneity v State dependency
– Explanations for Biological / Social/ Psychological
– Data Used
Gottfredson and Hirschi “A General Theory of Crime”
• Invariant age-crime curve
– No need to invest in investigating age patterns
• A General Theory of All Crime
– “acts of force or fraud undertaken in the pursuit of selfinterest …. provid(ing) immediate, easy, and certain shortterm pleasure”
• Persistent Heterogeneity / propensity caused by
Low-Self Control
• Explains Onset, Desistance and Length of Career and
social correlates of crime (e.g. low engagement at
school; marriage; employment)
• Established early in life (before age of 5)
Critique of Gottfredson and Hirschi
• Tautological
– Crime is defined as short-term, easy, selfinterested, lacking self-control action: it is no
surprise that lack of self-control becomes a
predictor
– Based on individual, mainly cross-sectional
research
• Theory -> methodology -> theory
• Need Longitudinal research to address the possibility of
crime turning points
• Ignores the diversity of crime
The Cambridge Study
• The Cambridge Study in Delinquent
Development
• Headed by Prof David Farrington
• Prospective longitudinal survey addressing
development of offending and antisocial
behaviour in 411 males in a working class
inner city area of South London
• First contacted 1961–62
• Over 150 publications using the data
Farrington’s Theory
• Offending is the end point of a 4 stage process
• energizing
– long term: desires for material good, status and excitement
– short term: boredom, frustration, anger and alcohol consumption
• directing
– how these factors are directed is important: habitually choosing
socially disapproved methods leads to delinquency – strain theories
(not just material strain)
• inhibiting
– scripts of conformity and deviance: internalized beliefs constructed
through social learning, due to rewards and punishments, along with
empathy
• decision making
– the situational position of an individual in his environment –
perceptions of cost and benefits: costs include disapproval by
significant others
Individual Risk Factors
(of Onset)
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Personality
Temperament
Empathy
Impulsiveness
Cognition
Family Risk Factors
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Criminal and Antisocial Parents
Large Family Size
Child-rearing methods
Child Abuse and Neglect
Parental Conflict and Disruption
School Risk Factors
Characteristics of Schools
Low Intelligence and Attainment
Multi-collinearity
• Problem: huge overlap and interrelationships
between factors
• Independent predictors:
– impulsivity
– intelligence / attainment
– poor parenting
– criminal family
– socio-economic deprivation
– child antisocial behaviour
Critique of Farrington
• Methodological
• Logic looks for variation between individuals,
to predict variation within individuals
• Focus on the individual
• Focus on onset: ignores desistance?
• (Not as deterministic as Gottfredson & Hirschi)
Critique of Farrington
• Factors
– Methodology / Theory (?) ignores race and gender
– Assumes consistent “effect”
• over time
• between individuals
– Symptoms or Causes of offending?
– Factors, not turning points: “critical moments?”
Critique of Farrington (2)
• Interpretation
– Over-predictive
• Chronic offenders “might be identified with a reasonable
accuracy at age 10”
– False Positives: “Many are called: few are chosen”
(MacDonald) OR The Robins paradox:
• ”antisocial behavior in children is one of the best predictors
of antisocial behavior in adults, yet most antisocial children
do not grow up to be antisocial adults (Robins 1978)
– Prediction increasingly guiding criminal justice, and
other youth interventions e.g. OASys, Youth Inclusion
Projects
Terrie Moffitt(1993)
• 2 ‘types’ of offenders
– Adolescence-Limited & Life-Course-Persistent (LCPs)
– Addresses
• The Robins Paradox
• The uneven distribution of offending (e.g. 5% of known offenders
accounting for 50% of known offences)
– Explanations / Etiology
• Parental nutrition/ toxicity -> Fetal Brain Development -> Low
Birth Weight / Neuropsychological Capacity -> Impulsivity ->
Antisocial behaviour
• Also parental provision of
– criminogenic environments
– Socialisation patterns
Criticisms of Moffitt
•LCPs also usually
desist (she agrees!)
•Etiological Basis
•More than 2 types
•Still ‘(relatively)
persistent
heterogeneity’
Developmental Pathways
• Life characterised as a series of points of
change / transitions
– Focus on ‘Rites of passage’ in transitions
– Time and Ordering of events important in
determining their impact (e.g. impact of becoming
a parent)
Sampson and Laub (1)
• Methodology tending towards “childhood
determinism”
– “It is all too common for caterpillars to become butterflies
and then maintain that in their youth they were little
butterflies” (George Valliant, 2002)
– Start with adult offenders, you will find childhood
deviance
– However, start with childhood deviants, you will find a
variety of pathways
– Methodological problems confounded by cultural beliefs
about childhood
Sampson and Laub (2)
• Followed up participants in Glueck & Glueck’s
classic study “Unravelling Juvenile
Delinquency”
• 500 men aged c. 70; born Boston, 1920’s &
1930s
• Balance between “reductionism” (focusing on
variables) and “wholism” (focusing on cases)
Sampson & Laub (3)
• “Turning points” are key: changes in life
circumstances (e.g. jobs, marriage, fatherhood)
• Desistance can be a conscious, or unconscious
decision
• Desistance draws on structured routines, social
bonds, formal and informal supervision
• What is different about persistent offenders?
– Not one factor
– A life characterised by instability and chaos
– Dangers of over-determinism
• over-predictive
• self-fulfilling prophecy
• stigmatising
Key References
Piquero, A. R., Farrington, D. P. and Blumstein, A. (2007) Key Issues in Criminal Career Research: New Analyses of the
Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Farrington, D. P., Coid, J. W., Harnett, L., Jolliffe, D., Soteriou, N., Turner, R. and West, D. J. (2006) Criminal Careers up to
age 50 and Life Success up to age 48: New Findings from the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development.
London: Home Office (Home Office Research Study No. 299).
Gottfredson, M., & Hirschi, T (1990). A general theory of crime. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Hirschi, T, & Gottfredson. M. (1983). Age and the explanation of crime. American Journal of Sociology, 89, 552-584.
Homel, R (2005) ‘Developmental Crime Prevention ‘in Tilley, N (2005) Handbook of Crime Prevention and Community
Safety, Cullompton, Willan Publiching
Laub, John, H. and Robert J. Sampson (2003) Shared beginnings, divergent lives: Delinquent boys to age 70. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press.
Moffitt, T (1993) Adolescence-Limited and Life-course Persistent Antisocial Behaviour: A Developmental Taxonomy;
Psychological Review, Vol 100 No 4
Robert J. Sampson and Laub, John H. (2005) A Life-Course View of the Development of Crime , The Annals of the
American Academy, AAPSS, 602