IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/anname/v602y2005i1p12-45.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A Life-Course View of the Development of Crime

Author

Listed:
  • Robert J. Sampson

    (Department of Sociology and Henry Ford II; Social Sciences at Harvard University.)

  • John H. Laub

    (Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Maryland at College Park.)

Abstract

In this article, the authors present a life-course perspective on crime and a critique of the developmental criminology paradigm. Their fundamental argument is that persistent offending and desistance—or trajectories of crime—can be meaningfully understood within the same theoretical framework, namely, a revised agegraded theory of informal social control. The authors examine three major issues. First, they analyze data that undermine the idea that developmentally distinct groups of offenders can be explained by unique causal processes. Second, they revisit the concept of turning points from a time-varying view of key life events. Third, they stress the overlooked importance of human agency in the development of crime. The authors' life-course theory envisions development as the constant interaction between individuals and their environment, coupled with random developmental noise and a purposeful human agency that they distinguish from rational choice. Contrary to influential developmental theories in criminology, the authors thus conceptualize crime as an emergent process reducible neither to the individual nor the environment.

Suggested Citation

  • Robert J. Sampson & John H. Laub, 2005. "A Life-Course View of the Development of Crime," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 602(1), pages 12-45, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:anname:v:602:y:2005:i:1:p:12-45
    DOI: 10.1177/0002716205280075
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0002716205280075
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0002716205280075?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. James G. March, 1978. "Bounded Rationality, Ambiguity, and the Engineering of Choice," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 9(2), pages 587-608, Autumn.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Lee N. Robins, 2005. "Explaining When Arrests End for Serious Juvenile Offenders: Comments on the Sampson and Laub Study," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 602(1), pages 57-72, November.
    2. McCuish, Evan & Lussier, Patrick, 2023. "Twenty years in the making: Revisiting Laub and Sampson's version of life-course criminology," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 88(C).
    3. McCarthy, Molly & Ogilvie, James M. & Allard, Troy, 2022. "Exploring trajectories of offender harm: An alternative approach to understanding offending pathways over the life-course," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).
    4. Sophie Pochic & Cécile Guillaume, 2021. "Understanding women’s under representation in union leadership roles: the contribution of a ‘career’ methodology," Post-Print hal-03446856, HAL.
    5. Barnes-Lee, Ashlee R. & Petkus, Amber, 2023. "A scoping review of strengths-based risk and needs assessments for youth involved in the juvenile legal system," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 148(C).
    6. D. Wayne Osgood, 2005. "Making Sense of Crime and the Life Course," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 602(1), pages 196-211, November.
    7. Alfred Blumstein, 2005. "An Overview of the Symposium and Some Next Steps," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 602(1), pages 242-258, November.
    8. Dianxi Wang & Spencer Li, 2024. "Parental Incarceration and School-to-Work Trajectories: A Life Course Perspective," Population Research and Policy Review, Springer;Southern Demographic Association (SDA), vol. 43(2), pages 1-27, April.
    9. Gloria H. Y. Chan & T. Wing Lo & Cherry H. L. Tam & Gabriel K. W. Lee, 2019. "Intrinsic Motivation and Psychological Connectedness to Drug Abuse and Rehabilitation: The Perspective of Self-Determination," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 16(11), pages 1-17, May.
    10. Barbara Maughan, 2005. "Developmental Trajectory Modeling: A View from Developmental Psychopathology," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 602(1), pages 118-130, November.
    11. Mohler, Megan E., 2024. "The influence of spirituality and religious participation on binge drinking: An investigation into subjective and structural mechanisms of desistance," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 92(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Thunström, Linda & Nordström, Jonas & Shogren, Jason F., 2015. "Certainty and overconfidence in future preferences for food," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 101-113.
    2. Freeman, Steven F., 1997. "Good decisions : reconciling human rationality, evolution, and ethics," Working papers WP 3962-97., Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Sloan School of Management.
    3. Pascale Amans & Sylvie Rascol-Boutard, 2006. "Controlling Complex Organizations on the Basis of an Operational Performance Measure," Post-Print hal-01659071, HAL.
    4. Moore, Don A., 1999. "Order Effects in Preference Judgments: Evidence for Context Dependence in the Generation of Preferences, ," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 78(2), pages 146-165, May.
    5. Kieran Donaghy, 2011. "Models of travel demand with endogenous preference change and heterogeneous agents," Journal of Geographical Systems, Springer, vol. 13(1), pages 17-30, March.
    6. Alvesson, Mats & Sveningsson, Stefan, 2011. "Management is the solution: Now what was the problem? On the fragile basis for managerialism," Scandinavian Journal of Management, Elsevier, vol. 27(4), pages 349-361.
    7. Mohammad Reza Nikbakht & Mehrdad Sadr Ara, 2016. "A new experimental model for profit maximization," Journal of Economic and Financial Studies (JEFS), LAR Center Press, vol. 4(3), pages 45-52, June.
    8. Swait, Joffre & Adamowicz, Wiktor, 2001. "Choice Environment, Market Complexity, and Consumer Behavior: A Theoretical and Empirical Approach for Incorporating Decision Complexity into Models of Consumer Choice," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 86(2), pages 141-167, November.
    9. Chu, P. C. & Spires, Eric E. & Sueyoshi, Toshiyuki, 1999. "Cross-Cultural Differences in Choice Behavior and Use of Decision Aids: A Comparison of Japan and the United States," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 77(2), pages 147-170, February.
    10. Augier, Mie & March, James G., 2002. "A model scholar: Herbert A. Simon (1916-2001)," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 49(1), pages 1-17, September.
    11. Raaj Kumar Sah, 1991. "Fallibility in Human Organizations and Political Systems," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 5(2), pages 67-88, Spring.
    12. Ahrum Chang, 2022. "A formal model of street-level bureaucracy," Rationality and Society, , vol. 34(1), pages 6-27, February.
    13. Tom Thomas & Eric Lamm, 2012. "Legitimacy and Organizational Sustainability," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 110(2), pages 191-203, October.
    14. Glover, Steven M. & Prawitt, Douglas F. & Spilker, Brian C., 1997. "The Influence of Decision Aids on User Behavior: Implications for Knowledge Acquisition and Inappropriate Reliance," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 72(2), pages 232-255, November.
    15. Christina Fang & Daniel Levinthal, 2009. "Near-Term Liability of Exploitation: Exploration and Exploitation in Multistage Problems," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 20(3), pages 538-551, June.
    16. Som Sekhar Bhattacharyya & Arvind Sahay & Arunaditya Sahay, 2022. "The Quest for Competitive Advantage: The Role of Technology Depth and Breadth at the Customer Interface," Vikalpa: The Journal for Decision Makers, , vol. 47(4), pages 274-287, December.
    17. Sylvie Rascol-Boutard, 2015. "Le management par le sens : mise en œuvre éventuelle et effets potentiels - Une étude exploratoire dans le secteur public local," Post-Print hal-01634845, HAL.
    18. Dew, Nicholas & Read, Stuart & Sarasvathy, Saras D. & Wiltbank, Robert, 2008. "Outlines of a behavioral theory of the entrepreneurial firm," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 66(1), pages 37-59, April.
    19. Jacobs Martin, 2016. "Accounting for Changing Tastes: Approaches to Explaining Unstable Individual Preferences," Review of Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 67(2), pages 121-183, August.
    20. Augier, Mie, 2001. "Sublime Simon: The consistent vision of economic psychology's Nobel laureate," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 22(3), pages 307-334, June.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:anname:v:602:y:2005:i:1:p:12-45. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.