Integrated Developmental and Life-course Theories of Offending

David P. Farrington, David P. Farrington

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351512220
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sciences sociales
• Subtopic: Criminologie

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.

1
Introduction to Integrated Developmental and Life-Course Theories of Offending

David P. Farrington

Developmental and life-course criminology (DLC) is concerned with three main issues: the development of offending and antisocial behavior, risk and protective factors at different ages, and the effects of life events on the course of development. DLC is especially concerned to document and explain within-individual changes in offending throughout life. The main aim of this volume is to advance knowledge about DLC theories, which have been developed only in the last twenty years. These recent theories aim to integrate knowledge about individual, family, peer, school, neighborhood, community, and situational influences on offending, and to integrate key elements of earlier theories such as strain, social learning, control, and differential association.

Criminological Theories

Traditionally, criminological theories have aimed to explain between-individual differences in offending, such as why lower-class boys commit more offenses than upper-class boys. Hence, most classic criminological theories are essentially static theories. This is true of, for example, strain theory (Agnew, 1992; Cloward & Ohlin, 1960), social disorganization theory (Shaw & McKay, 1969), differential association theory (Sutherland & Cressey, 1974) and social control or bonding theory (Hirschi, 1969). Often, these theories were concerned with between-individual differences because they were trying to explain results obtained in cross-sectional surveys. For example, Causes of Delinquency (Hirschi, 1969) tested social control or bonding theory using a cross-sectional survey and was one of the most frequently cited works in criminology in the next twenty-five years (Cohn & Farrington, 1996; Cohn et al., 1998). Nevertheless, it is possible that some of these theories could be adapted to explain within-individual variations in offending over time (e.g., Agnew, 1997).

Some criminological theories are more dynamic in nature, such as labelling theory (Lemert, 1972) and social learning theory (Akers, 1998). However, these more dynamic theories rarely address many of the key DLC issues (see later), and the same is true of theories that aim to explain why offenses are committed rather than differences between offenders and non-offenders, such as rational choice theory (Clarke & Cornish, 1985) or routine activities theory (Cohen & Felson, 1979). Also, some of the more recent integrated theories do not address many of the key DLC issues, such as the integration of strain, control, and learning theories by Elliott et al. (1985, 1989) and the reintegrative shaming theory of Braithwaite (1989). As a final example, Tittle (1995: 241-249) discusses how control balance theory explains variations in offending at different ages but otherwise does not address many of the key DLC issues.

In my theoretical exposition a decade ago (Farrington, 1992b), I complained that previous criminological theories tended to neglect the overlap between offending and antisocial behavior, the continuity from childhood to adulthood in offending and antisocial behavior, and the importance of biological and psychological factors. Previous theories focused primarily on offending during the teenage years when it is most prevalent, and hence emphasized constructs that are particularly applicable to the teenage years, such as status frustration (Cohen, 1955) and the strain between aspirations and what can be achieved by legitimate means (Cloward & Ohlin, 1960). In short, while they have made important contributions to knowledge, many previous criminological theories were not developmental.

Gottfredson and Hirschi’s (1990) self-control theory is interesting because in many ways it is explicitly anti-developmental. They deny the need to address many of the key DLC issues and the need for prospective longitudinal research. Their crucial argument is that the relative ordering of people on their key underlying construct of self-control is established in childhood (depending primarily on socialization processes) and is then largely stable throughout life. Hence, they say, the causes of offending (when these are based on between-individual correlations between risk factors and offending) are the same at all ages and can be studied cross-sectionally at any age. This argument depends on the implicit assumption that within-individual correlations between risk factors and offending are the same as between-individual correlations between risk factors and offending, which is not necessarily true (Farrington et al., 2002). To the extent that within-individual correlations are different from between-individual correlations, or to the extent that between-individual correlations vary with age, longitudinal studies are needed. Correlations between low self-control and offending are greater in cross-sectional than in longitudinal studies (Pratt & Cullen, 2000).

Gottfredson and Hirschi (1990) argue that it is unnecessary to investigate why people start, continue or stop offending, because all criminal career parameters reflect their underlying theoretical construct of self-control. Hence, the predictors and correlates of onset, continuation, frequency, seriousness, and desistance are the same. They also argue that since the age-crime curve is universal in all places and times, it essentially reflects universal biological processes associated with ageing (e.g., maturational reform in the twenties). Hence, life events such as getting married and getting a satisfying job have no effect on offending, and events following the commission of a crime (e.g., reinforcement or stigmatization) do not change the propensity to commit crimes in the future. They argue that offending is essentially a rational decision and that whether people commit offenses depends on opportunities and routine activities. All of these arguments are discussed in this chapter and illuminated by empirical evidence.

Developmental and Life-Course Criminology

Developmental and life-course criminology (DLC) is a further elaboration of the criminal career paradigm that became prominent in the 1980s (Blumstein et al., 1986), by adding in the study of risk factors and life events. This para-digm enormously advanced knowledge about the measurement of criminal career features such as onset, continuation, and desistance, but it paid less attention to risk factors and life events that influenced these features, or to theories that might explain development, risk factors, and life events (see Piquero et al., 2003). To some extent, the DLC theories were a reaction to what was perceived as a largely atheoretical criminal career paradigm.

DLC incorporates three other paradigms with slightly different emphases that became prominent during the 1990s. The risk factor prevention paradigm focuses on identifying the key risk factors for offending and implementing prevention methods to tackle these risk factors (Farrington, 2000; Hawkins & Catalano, 1992; Loeber & Farrington, 1998). Developmental criminology focuses especially on the development of offending but also on risk factors (Le Blanc & Loeber, 1998; Loeber & Le Blanc, 1990). Life-course criminology focuses especially on the effects of life events and life transitions on offending but also on development and risk factors (Sampson & Laub, 1993). Since all four paradigms (including the criminal career paradigm) are essentially concerned with the same interlinked set of issues, I will incorporate them all under the heading of “developmental and life-course criminology,” in the hope of including everyone. This book focuses mainly on fundamental theoretical issues, but there are also important policy implications of DLC, such as risk/needs assessment or risk-focused prevention.

The main reason why DLC paradigms became important during the 1990s was because of the enormous volume and significance of longitudinal research on offending that was published during this decade. Particularly influential were the three Causes and Correlates studies originally mounted by OJJDP in Denver, Pittsburgh, and Rochester (Huizinga et al., 2003; Loeber et al., 2003; Thornberry et al., 2003). Other important longitudinal projects that came to prominence in the 1990s were the Seattle Social Development Project (Hawkins et al., 2003), the Dunedin study in New Zealand (Moffitt et al., 2001), the important Montreal surveys by Le Blanc (1996) and Tremblay et al. (2003), and the further analyses by Sampson and Laub (1993) of the classic Gluecks’ study.

DLC theories are more wide-ranging than previous theories because they integrate knowledge about individual, family, peer, school, neighborhood, community, and situational influences on crime, and also integrate key elements of earlier theories. Many DLC theories aim to explain both the development of offenders and the commission of offenses. Before the integrative efforts of researchers such as Per-Olof Wikström (Farrington et al., 1993; Wikström et al., 1995), developmental, ecological, and situational scholars tended to be highly compartmentalized and rarely influenced each other’s work.

At the outset, I should say that I do not expect any DLC theory to be proved or disproved as a result of comparing its predictions with key existing and future DLC findings. However, I do hope that this comparison will encourage researchers to modify their theories to make them more adequate in explaining a wider range of DLC findings. Like Tittle (1995: 270), I am more than willing to modify my own theory (see Chapter 4) if any part of it appears to conflict with existing or future DLC findings.

Typically in the past, researchers have proposed their own theories and then investigated the adequacy of these theories in explaining their own and other people’s empirical results (see Moffitt, 2003, for an excellent example). However, I believe that a great deal can be learned from comparing several theories with each other and with empirical results. This book is intended to facilitate such comparisons, which are also made in chapter 10. In future, these comparisons may lead to a widespread consensus about key elements that should be included in any DLC theory.

DLC theories aim to explain offending by individuals (as opposed to crime rates of areas, for example). “Offending” refers to the most common crimes of theft, burglary, robbery, violence, vandalism, minor fraud, and drug use, and to behavior that in principle might lead to a conviction in Western industrialized societies such as the United States and the United Kingdom. These theories should explain results on offending obtained from both official records and self-reports. Generally, DLC findings and theories apply particularly to offending by lower-class urban males in Western industrialized societies in the last eighty years or so. How far they apply to other types of persons (e.g., middle-class rural females) or offenses (e.g., white collar crime or sex offenses against children) are important empirical questions that generally are not addressed in this book (see e.g., Weisburd et al., 2001).

What Do We Know?

I begin with ten widely accepted conclusions about the development of offending that any DLC theory must be able to explain. First, the prevalence of offending peaks in the late teenage years—between ages 15 and 19 (Farrington, 1986; Wolfgang et al., 1987). Second, the peak age of onset of offending is between 8 and 14, and the peak age of desistance from offending is between 20 and 29 (Farrington, 1992a). Third, an early age of onset predicts a relatively long criminal career duration and the commission of relatively many offenses (Farrington et al., 1998; Le Blanc and Frechette, 1989).

Fourth, there is marked continuity in offending and antisocial behavior from childhood to the teenage years and to adulthood (Farrington, 1989, 1992a; Tracy and Kempf-Leonard, 1996). What this means is that there is relative stability of the ordering of people on some measure of antisocial behavior over time, and that people who commit relatively many offenses during one age range have a high probability of also committing relatively many offenses during another age range. However, neither of these statements is incompatible with the assertion that the prevalence of offending varies with age or that many antisocial children become conforming adults. Between-individual stability in antisocial ordering is perfectly compatible with within-individual change in behavior over time (Farrington, 1990; Verhulst et al., 1990). For example, people may graduate from cruelty to animals at age 6 to shoplifting at age 10, burglary at age 15, robbery at age 20, and eventually spouse assault and child abuse later in life. Generally, continuity in offending reflects persistent heterogeneity (the persistence of between-individual differences) more than state dependence (a facilitating effect of earlier offending on later offending), although both processes can occur (Nagin & Farrington, 1992b; Nagin & Paternoster, 2000).

Fifth, a small fraction of the population (the “chronic” offenders) commit a large fraction of all crimes (Farrington & West, 1993; Wolfgang et al., 1972). In general, these chronic offenders have an early onset, a high individual offending frequency, and a long criminal career. Sixth, offending is versatile rather than specialized. For example, violent offenders are indistinguishable from frequent offenders in childhood, adolescent, and adult risk factors (Capaldi & Patterson, 1996; Farrington, 1991b; Piquero, 2000). Seventh, the types of acts defined as offenses are elements of a larger syndrome of antisocial behavior, including heavy drinking, reckless driving, sexual promiscuity, bullying, and truancy. Offenders tend to be versatile not only in committing several types of crimes but also in committing several types of antisocial behavior (Farrington, 1991a).

Eighth, most offenses up to the late teenage years are committed with others, whereas most offenses from age 20 onwards are committed alone (McCord & Conway, 2002; Reiss & Farrington, 1991). This aggregate change is not caused by dropping out processes, or group offenders desisting earlier than lone offenders. Instead, there is change within individuals; people change from group offending to lone offending as they get older. Ninth, the reasons given for offending up to the late teenage years are quite v...