Critical Debates in Developmental and Life-Course Criminology (McAra and McVie, 2012)

What is developmental criminology?

• Field of study that “explores age-based changes in individual offending behaviour”

  • Focus on crime and anti-social behaviour across the individual’s lifespan

    • i.e. tracks the same individuals

  • Uses longitudinal studies to examine changes over time

• Originated in the mid-nineteenth century

  • Based on the assumption that knowledge is “progressive, perfectible and universalisable”

  • Seeks to measure/quantify human behaviour and identify regularities in conduct

• Bio-psycho-social approach to studying individuals

  • Identified several predictors of criminality based on longitudinal research

  • E.g. Boston research by Glueck (1930s) identified early onset of delinquency, family relationships and social deprivation as important factors

Age-Crime Curve

• Usually shows a peak in offending in the late teens/early twenties, followed by a steep decline into adulthood

• First recorded illustration was by Quetelet (1831)

  • Has been replicated in subsequent research projects

• Peak can be affected by a number of factors (but it will usually be present)

  • Convictions data might show a later peak than self-reported offences

  • Peak has moved to a younger age over time

  • Peaks are generally shallower for females

• Possible reasons for the curve

  • Quetelet: peaks when strength and passion reached maximum levels but ability to reason had not yet developed enough to control those

  • Gottfredson and Hirschi (1990): propensity for crime manifested during teenage years and could later be tempered by self-control

• Farrington (1986): the age-crime curve for individuals didn’t resemble the aggregate curve

  • The peak was largely due to changes in participation (more offenders)

Theories explaining the Age-Crime Curve

Dual Taxonomy Theory

• Proposed by Moffitt (1993, 2003)

• 2 forms of anti-social behaviour

  • Life-course persistent (LCP): could begin in early childhood and the form of behaviour changed according to age

    • Causal factors underpinning their anti-social behaviour are present throughout their lives, so their anti-social behaviour is constant

    • Due to neuropsychological deficit and family-adversity risk factors

  • Adolescence limited (AL): temporary anti-social behaviour

    • Starts in early adolescence and de-escalates after a peak

    • Due to external risk factors and rebellion

• Age-crime curve peaks due to the surge of offending amongst AL offenders, masking the consistent offending of LCP offenders

Age-Graded Theory of Informal Social Control

• Proposed by Sampson and Laub (1993)

• Offending is closely related to social bonds and type/strength of relationship

  • Emphasises human agency rather than structural background

• Offending during teenage years peaks as a result of strong attachment to delinquent peers, which changes in adulthood due to positive relationships resulting from various factors (including marriage and employment)

Interactional Theory

• Proposed by Thornberry (1987, 2005)

• Delinquency is a result of weak bonds to society

• These bonds can be influenced by structural variables

  • E.g. social class position, residential area

  • Delinquency can result from weak bonds but can also cause weakening

Integrated Cognitive Anti-Social Potential (ICAP) Theory

• Proposed by Farrington (2003, 2008)

• Anti-Social Potential (AP): potential to engage in crime

  • Depends on impulsiveness, strain, modelling, socialisation process and life events in the long term (varies between individuals)

  • Short-term AP depends on motivational and situational factors (varies within the same individual over time)

• Cognition: decision-making process

• AP peaks in teenage years due to a change in risk factors

  • E.g. reduced influence of parents, increasing influence of peers

  • Also temporarily increased due to short-term factors and availability of criminal opportunities

Negotiated Order Theory

• Proposed by McAra (2005, 2012)

• Individual identities are built up based on formal and informal regulatory orders

  • Formal regulatory orders: e.g. schools, police, courts

  • Informal regulatory orders: e.g. friends and family

• Exclusion from formal orders might push the individual to seek inclusion in negative informal groups

Methodological Issues

• Self-reporting vs official statistics

  • Official Statistics: limited data

    • Doesn’t cover all offences since most crime doesn’t come to police attention

    • Distorted picture of offending since more serious offences are more likely to be reported

  • Self-reporting (more widely used in recent years)

    • Presents a wider set of data

    • Allows for research into “the characteristics, background, and behaviours of the offender in order to test aetiological theories of crime”

    • Possible issue: validity

      • Need to ensure that respondents report their offending accurately

      • Surveys must be designed without bias and administered well

• Longitudinal vs cross-sectional

  • Greenberg (1991): longitudinal studies are required to examine the causal effects of age on crime, especially since effects of events can be time-lagged

  • Rutter (1995): could confuse age, cohort and period effects

    • Age effects: variations in risk depending on the age

    • Cohort effects: variations in risk that apply to all individuals in a certain group or that shared the same experience

    • Period effects: variations in risk that apply to a whole generation

  • Farrington (1986): better to combine both longitudinal and cross-sectional studies in order to track changes across ages

• Semi-parametric group-based modelling

  • Identify different groups of individuals based on statistical algorithms which can be distinguished based on their trajectories

  • Nagin and Land (1993) identified 4 different classes from the Cambridge Study

    • Long-term, high-rate trajectory (LCP offenders)

    • Short-term, late-onset trajectory (AL offenders)

    • Low-rate chronic offenders (lower IQ offenders)

    • Individuals who were never convicted

  • ISSUES

    • Many different classes might be...

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