In Developmental Theories of Crime and Delinquency, Terence P. Thornberry and his contributors show that criminal behavior is not a static human attribute, but ebbs and flows over the life course of the individual. Criminal behavior tends to follow a distinct psychological pattern. It is relatively uncommon during childhood, is initiated by most offenders during adolescence, flourishes during late adolescence and early childhood, and usually diminishes or disappears by the mid-twenties. This pattern is not characteristic of all people--some never commit crimes and others become career criminals--but it is a general description of the developmental pattern of criminal offenders. This pattern has profound implications for theories of crime and delinquency. Not only does it explain initiation into, maintenance of, and desistance from involvement in crime, it offers insight into why crime flourishes during adolescence. Traditional theories of crime and delinquency have often failed to distinguish among different phases of criminal careers. They tend to ignore developmental changes that occur across a person's life course, changes that coincide with and can explain the causes and patterns of criminal behavior. This paperback edition of the seventh volume of the distinguished series Advances in Criminological Theory moves us from static identifications of the criminal by presenting a broad range of developmental explanations of crime. Each contributor articulates a developmental or life course perspective in explaining how people become involved in delinquency and crime. Each covers a wide range of theoretical territory and reveals how a developmental perspective enhances the explanatory power of traditional theories of crime and delinquency. This volume is an invaluable tool for criminologists, sociologists, psychologists, and other professionals seeking to teach how crime and violence can be understood in our culture.

In Developmental Theories of Crime and Delinquency, Terence P. Thornberry and his contributors show that criminal behavior is not a static human attribute, but ebbs and flows over the life course of the individual. Criminal behavior tends to follow a distinct psychological pattern. It is relatively uncommon during childhood, is initiated by most offenders during adolescence, flourishes during late adolescence and early childhood, and usually diminishes or disappears by the mid-twenties. This pattern is not characteristic of all people--some never commit crimes and others become career criminals--but it is a general description of the developmental pattern of criminal offenders. This pattern has profound implications for theories of crime and delinquency. Not only does it explain initiation into, maintenance of, and desistance from involvement in crime, it offers insight into why crime flourishes during adolescence. Traditional theories of crime and delinquency have often failed to distinguish among different phases of criminal careers. They tend to ignore developmental changes that occur across a person's life course, changes that coincide with and can explain the causes and patterns of criminal behavior. This paperback edition of the seventh volume of the distinguished series Advances in Criminological Theory moves us from static identifications of the criminal by presenting a broad range of developmental explanations of crime. Each contributor articulates a developmental or life course perspective in explaining how people become involved in delinquency and crime. Each covers a wide range of theoretical territory and reveals how a developmental perspective enhances the explanatory power of traditional theories of crime and delinquency. This volume is an invaluable tool for criminologists, sociologists, psychologists, and other professionals seeking to teach how crime and violence can be understood in our culture.

For the past twenty to thirty years, control theories of crime have been at the center of theoretical development in criminology. Key to the control theory perspective is the notion that crime is an inherently individual act, and its explanation requires that we focus on the characteristics of individuals who commit crimes. Consequently, control theory focuses on such issues as self-control and social control. The contributions to this volume explicate and extend the application of control theory. It is divided into three general areas. Part 1 focuses on key assumptions and components of control theories. Contributors discuss the notion of learning, or socialization, in the context of control theory and the effects that families, peers, and the criminal justice system have on self-control, social ties, and criminal behavior. Part 2 applies control theory to areas typically assumed to be out of the domain of self-control theory and social control theory, such as gender differences in crime, domestic violence, and group crime. Considering control theory's emphasis on explaining individual criminal acts, these chapters suggest an interesting area of development by highlighting the possibility that differences in crime across or within groups may begin with individual characteristics and then making inferences about groups and group processes. Part 3 approaches the explanation of crime cross-nationally and at the macro-level. Although the authors take different approaches, they all illustrate that a theory of crime does not require culture-specific elements in order to be a valid cross-cultural explanation. Contributors to this volume include: Robert Agnew, Todd Armstrong, Leana Allen Bouffard, Augustine Brannigan, Chester Britt, Barbara Costello, Maja Dekovic, Matt DeLisi, Michael Gottfredson, Henriette Haas, Kelly H. Hardwick, Travis Hirschi, Marianne Junger, Martin Killias, Helen Mederer, Kevin Thompson, and Alexander Vazsonyi.

Even though youth crime rates have fallen since the mid-1990s, public fear and political rhetoric over the issue have heightened. The Columbine shootings and other sensational incidents add to the furor. Often overlooked are the underlying problems of child poverty, social disadvantage, and the pitfalls inherent to adolescent decisionmaking that contribute to youth crime. From a policy standpoint, adolescent offenders are caught in the crossfire between nurturance of youth and punishment of criminals, between rehabilitation and "get tough" pronouncements. In the midst of this emotional debate, the National Research Council's Panel on Juvenile Crime steps forward with an authoritative review of the best available data and analysis. Juvenile Crime, Juvenile Justice presents recommendations for addressing the many aspects of America's youth crime problem. This timely release discusses patterns and trends in crimes by children and adolescentsâ€"trends revealed by arrest data, victim reports, and other sources; youth crime within general crime; and race and sex disparities. The book explores desistanceâ€"the probability that delinquency or criminal activities decrease with ageâ€"and evaluates different approaches to predicting future crime rates. Why do young people turn to delinquency? Juvenile Crime, Juvenile Justice presents what we know and what we urgently need to find out about contributing factors, ranging from prenatal care, differences in temperament, and family influences to the role of peer relationships, the impact of the school policies toward delinquency, and the broader influences of the neighborhood and community. Equally important, this book examines a range of solutions: Prevention and intervention efforts directed to individuals, peer groups, and families, as well as day care-, school- and community-based initiatives. Intervention within the juvenile justice system. Role of the police. Processing and detention of youth offenders. Transferring youths to the adult judicial system. Residential placement of juveniles. The book includes background on the American juvenile court system, useful comparisons with the juvenile justice systems of other nations, and other important information for assessing this problem.

The developmental and life-course perspective in criminology came to prominence during the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s a number of theories were developed to explain offending behavior over the life-course. This volume brings together theoretical statements, empirical tests and debates of these major theories within the developmental and life-course criminology perspective. In the first section of the book, original theoretical statements are provided and this is followed by a section which includes empirical tests of each of these theories conducted by researchers other than the original theorists. The final section of the book provides a summary of the major debates both within the developmental and life-course perspective and also between this perspective and others within criminology. This comprehensive volume provides an informative overview of the developmental and life-course perspective in criminology.

Developmental and life-course criminology aims to provide information about how offending and antisocial behavior develops, about risk and protective factors at different ages, and about the effects of life events on the course of development. This volume advances knowledge about these theories of offender behavior, many of which have been formulated only in the last twenty years. It also integrates knowledge about individual, family, peer, school, neighborhood, community, and situational influences on offender behavior, and combines key elements of earlier theories such as strain, social learning, differential association, and control theory.Contributors Benjamin B. Lahey and Irwin D. Waldman focus on antisocial propensity and the importance of biological and individual factors. Alex R. Piquero and Terrie E. Moffitt distinguish between life-course-persistent and adolescent-limited offenders. David P. Farrington presents the Integrated Cognitive Antisocial Potential (ICAP) theory, which distinguishes between long-term and short-term influences on antisocial potential. Richard F. Catalano, J. David Hawkins, and their colleagues test the Social Development Model (SDM).Marc Le Blanc proposes an integrated multi-layered control theory, in which criminal behavior depends on bonding to society, psychological development, modeling, and constraints. Robert J. Sampson and John H. Laub hypothesize that offending is inhibited by the strength of bonding to family, peers, schools, and later adult social institutions such as marriage and jobs. Terence P. Thornberry and Marvin D. Krohn propose an interactional theory, of antisocial behavior. Per-Olof H. Witkstrom's developmental ecological action theory emphasizes the importance of situational factors: opportunities cause temptation, friction produces provocation, and monitoring and the risk of sanctions have deterrent effects.

This volume marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of Travis Hirschi’s seminal work Causes of Delinquency. The influence of Hirschi’s book, and the theory of social control it described, can scarcely be overstated. Social control theory has been empirically tested or commented on by hundreds of scholars and is generally regarded as one of the three dominant theories of crime. The current work highlights the impact that social control theory has had on criminological theory and research to date. Agnew’s contribution highlights the role that Hirschi’s tests of control versus strain theory had in contributing to the "near demise" of classic strain theories, and to the subsequent development of general strain theory. Serrano-Maillo relates control to drift, and Tedor and Hope compare the human nature assumptions of control theory to the current psychological literature. Other contributions return to Hirschi’s original Richmond Youth Survey (RYS) data and demonstrate the robustness of Hirschi’s major findings. Costello and Anderson find strong support for Hirschi’s predictions in an analysis of a diverse group of youths in Fayetteville, Arkansas, in 1999; Nofziger similarly finds support for Hirschi’s predictions with an analysis of the girls in the RYS, and explores the criticisms of social control theory that were the result of Hirschi’s failure to analyze the data from the girls in the sample. Kempf-Leonard revisits her seminal 1993 survey of control theory and reviews the current empirical status of control theory. Other contributions explore new directions for both social control theory and self-control theory. The contribution by Cullen, Lee, and Butler holds that one element of the social bond, commitment, was under-theorized by Hirschi, and the authors present a more in-depth development of the concept. Quist explores the possibility of expanding social control theory to explicitly incorporate exchange theory concepts; Ueda and Tsutomi apply control theory cross-culturally to a sample of Japanese students; and Felson uses control theory to organize criminological ideas. Vazsonyi and Javakhishvili’s contribution is an empirical analysis of the connections between social control in early childhood and self-control later in life; Chapple and McQuillan’s contribution suggests that the gender gap in delinquency is better explained by increased controls in girls than by gendered pathways to offending. Oleson traces the evolution of Hirschi’s control theory, and suggests that, given the relationships between fact and theory, a biosocial model of control might be a promising line of inquiry. Fifty Years of Causes of Delinquency: The Criminology of Travis Hirschi describes the current state of control theory and suggests its future directions, as well as demonstrates its enduring importance for criminological theory and research. The volume will be of interest to scholars working in the control theory tradition as well as those critical of the perspective, and is suitable for use in graduate courses in criminological theory.