CHAPTER OUTLINE
I. Introduction
A. 1. Kia moves comes to US from Vietnam at age 11.
2. He has problems at school and is referred to Family Court Crisis Intervention.
3. During counseling meant to prevent him from being seriously delinquent his parents reveal to him the reasons why they had left for the US years earlier when he was in the care of his grandmother.
4. In an emotional session, Kia understood that he was not abandoned, that his parents had worked to bring him as soon as possible, and his school problems disappeared.
B. Developmental theory
1. view that looks at the specific aspects of the delinquent career
a. onset
b. continuity
c. termination of delinquency
C. Life course theory
1. people have multiple traits: social, psychological, economic
2. people change over the life course
3. family, job, and peers influence behavior
D. Latent trait theory
1. people have a master trait: personality, intelligence, genetic
makeup
2. people do not change
3. criminal opportunities change; maturity brings fewer opportunities
4. early social control and proper parenting can reduce criminal
propensity
5. criminal careers are a passage
6. personal and structural factors influence crime
7. change affects crime
8. unchanging personal factors are more important determinants of
behavior
II. The Life Course View
A. Perspective
1. conform to social rules and function effectively in society
2. transitions expected to take place in an orderly fashion
a. beginning with finishing school
b. entering the workforce
c.getting married
d. having children
3. some kids are incapable of maturing in a reasonable and timely
fashion
4. in some cases transitions can occur too early
5. sometimes disruption of one trajectory can harm another
6. negative life experiences can become cumulative
7. disruptions in life’s major transitions can be destructive
8. disruptions in life’s major transitions can be ultimately promote
criminality
9. it is a developmental process
10. delinquent careers are interactional
11. as people mature the factors that influence their behavior change
B. Glueck research
1. renewed interest in the research efforts of Sheldon and Eleanor
Glueck
2. they followed the careers of known delinquents
3. made extensive use of interviews and records
4. comparisons of delinquents and nondelinquents
5. focused on early onset of delinquency as a harbinger of a
delinquent career
6. identified a number of personal and social factors related to
persistent offending
7. most important of these factors was family relations
8. quality of discipline and emotional ties with parents
9. did not restrict their analysis to social variables
III.Life Course Concepts
A. Age of onset
1. seeds of a delinquent career are planted early in life
2. early onset strongly predicts more frequent, varied, and sustained
criminality
3. early starters begin offending before age 14
a. poor parenting to
b. deviant behaviors to
c. involvement with delinquent groups
4. late starters, who begin offending after age fourteen
a. poor parenting leads to
b. identification with delinquent groups
c. deviant behaviors
B. Adolescent-limiteds versus life course persisters
1. concepts identified by Moffitt
2. adolescent-limited offenders get involved with antisocial activities
early in life
a. begin to phase out of delinquent behaviors as they mature
b. considered typical teenagers
3. life course persisters remain high-rate offenders into young
adulthood
C. Problem behavior syndrome
1. delinquency is but one of many social problems faced by at-risk
youth
2. behaviors include:
a. family dysfunction
b. substance abuse
c.smoking
d. precocious sexuality and early pregnancy
e. educational underachievement
f. suicide attempts
g. sensation seeking
h. unemployment
D. Multiple pathways
1. delinquents may travel more than a single road in their delinquent
career
2. Loeber and his associates have identified three distinct paths to a
delinquent
3. authority conflict pathway begins at an early age with stubborn
behavior
4. covert pathway begins with minor, underhanded behavior
a. leads to property damage
5. overt pathway escalates to aggressive acts beginning with
aggression
E. Continuity of crime and delinquency
1. best predictor of future criminality is past criminality
2. early delinquent activity is likely to be sustained
3. offenders seem to lack the social survival skills
a. necessary to find work or to develop the interpersonal
relations
IV. Life Course Theories
A. Social development model
1. focus on factors affecting child’s social development over the life
course
2. all children face the risk of delinquent behavior
a. especially those forced to live in the poorest neighborhoods
b. and attend substandard schools
3. child must develop and maintain prosocial bonds
a. developed in the context of family life
b. parents routinely praise children
c. give them consistent, positive feedback
4. parental attachment affects a child’s behavior for life
5. children who cannot form prosocial bonds in their family are at risk
6. adolescents who perceive opportunities and rewards for antisocial
behavior
a. will form deep attachments to deviant peers
b. become committed to a delinquent way of life
7. commitment and attachment to conventional institutions, activities,
and beliefs
a. insulate youths from the delinquency-producing influences
B. Interactional theory
1. onset of delinquent behavior can be traced to a deterioration of the
social bond
a. marked by weakened attachment to parents
b. weakened commitment to school
c. weakened belief in conventional values
2. delinquency is a dynamic developmental process that takes on
different meanings and forms as a person matures
3. delinquency is bidirectional
4. delinquency-promoting factors tend to reinforce one another
5. early and persistent involvement in antisocial behavior generates
consequences that are hard to shake
6. delinquency does not terminate in a single generation
C. Age-graded theory
1. Sampson and Laub identified turning points in a delinquent career
2. reanalyzed the original Glueck data
3. stability of delinquent behavior can be affected by events that
occur later in life
4. two critical turning points are career and marriage
5. at risk adolescents can live conventional lives if they can find good
jobs or achieve successful careers
6. adolescents are able to desist from delinquency if, as adults,
a. they become attached to a spouse who supports and
sustains them
7. spending time in marital and family activities reduces exposure to
deviant peers
8. people build social capital
9. positive relations with individuals and institutions that are life
sustaining
10. a successful marriage creates social capital when it improves a
person’s stature creates feelings of self-worth, and encourages
others to trust the person
D. Testing age-graded theory
1. children raised in two-parent families are more likely to grow up to
have happier marriages than children whose parents were divorced
or never married
2. delinquent youth who enter the military, serve overseas, and
receive veterans’ benefits enhance their occupational status
E Tracking down five hundred delinquent boys in the new millennium
1. Sampson and Laub have located the survivors of the delinquent
sample
2. oldest being 70 and the youngest 62
3. they are reinterviewing this cohort
4. delinquency is strongly related to adult delinquency and drug and
alcohol abuse
5. most antisocial children do not remain antisocial as adults
6. of men in the study cohort who survived to age fifty
a. 24% had no arrests for acts of violence and property after
age 17
b. 48% had no arrests for predatory delinquency after age 25
c. 60% had no arrests for predatory delinquency after age 31
d. 79% had no arrests for predatory delinquency after age 40
7. they conclude that desistance from delinquency is the norm
8. building social capital through marriage and jobs were key
components
9. one important element for “going straight” is the “knifing off” of
individuals
10. former delinquents who “went straight” were able to put structure
into their lives
11. former delinquents faced the risk of an untimely death
12. four significant life-changing events
a. marriage
b. joining the military
c.getting a job
d. changing one’s environment or neighborhood
F. Policy Implications
1. Youth problems such as delinquency, substance abuse, violence, dropping out, and teenage pregnancy often share common root.
2. Intervention strategies must address a broad array of antisocial, criminal, and deviant behaviors not limited to one subgroup of delinquents
3. Prevention strategies would provide both supervision and monitoring as well as new opportunities of social support and growth; and new situations that provide the opportunity for transforming identity.
V. The Latent Trait View
A. Crime and Human Nature
1. Wilson and Herrnstein contend that personal traits influence people
a. choose delinquency over noncrime
2. people have a personal attribute that controls their propensity to
commit crime
3. latent trait is either present at birth or established early in life
a. remains stable over time
b. defective intelligence
c. impulsive personality
d. genetic abnormalities
4. the propensity or inclination to commit delinquency is stable
5. the opportunity to commit delinquency fluctuates over time
6. adult responsibilities provide them with fewer opportunities to do
so
B. General theory of crime
1. Gottfredson and Hirschi’s general theory of crime (GTC)
2. modifies and redefines some of the principles from social control
a. integrates concepts of control with other theories
3. the act and the offender – consider the delinquent offender and the
delinquent act as separate concepts
4. people engage in delinquent acts when they perceive them to be
advantageous
5. delinquency provides easy, short-term gratification
6. delinquency is rational and predictable
7. delinquent offenders are predisposed to commit crimes
8. stable differences in people’s propensity to commit delinquent acts
9. may be inherited or may develop through incompetent or absent
parenting
C. What makes people delinquency-prone?
1.Gottfredson and Hirschi attribute delinquency to a person’s level
of self-control
2. low self-control develops early in life and remains stable into and
through adulthood
3. elements of impulsivity
i. insensitive
- physical (rather than mental)
- risk taker
iv. shortsighted
v. non-verbal
- here-and-now orientation
- refuses to work for distant goals
viii. lacks diligence
ix.lacks tenacity
- lacks persistence
- adventuresome
- active
- self-centered
- have unstable marriages
- have unstable jobs
- have unstable friendships
- less likely to feel shame if engaging in deviant acts
xviii.finds deviant behaviors pleasureable
ixx.more likely to engage in dangerous behaviors
4.Gottfredson and Hirschi trace the root cause of poor self-control to
inadequate child-rearing practices
a. parents who are unwilling or unable to monitor a child’s
behavior
b. fail to recognize deviant behavior when it occurs
c. fails to punish that behavior
- Self-control and delinquency
- theory can explain all varieties of delinquent behavior and all the
social and behavioral correlates of delinquency
- Supporting evidence for the GTC
- dozens of research efforts have tested the validity of Gottfredson and Hirschi’s views
- Analyzing the GTC
- integrating concepts of socialization and criminality helps
Gottfredson and Hirschi explain why some who lack self-control
can escape criminality and vice versa
G. Empirical evidence supporting the general theory of crime
1. offenders lacking in self-control commit a garden variety of
delinquent acts
2. drunk drivers are impulsive individuals with low self-control
3. kids who take drugs and commit delinquency enjoy engaging in
risky behaviors
4. gender differences in self-control explain delinquency rate
differences
5. victims have lower self-control than nonvictims
H.Questions and criticisms
1. circular reasoning
2.personality disorder
3.ecological-individual differences
4.racial and gender differences
5.people change
6.modest relationship
7.cross-cultural differences
VI. Evaluating the Developmental View
A. Developmental view
1. understood as a passage along which people travel
2. events and life circumstances influence the journey
3. emphasize the influence of changing interpersonal and structural
factors
B. Latent trait theories
1. assume that an individual’s behavior is linked changes in the
surrounding world
2. evidence supporting both latent trait and life course theories
3. maintaining positive social bonds helps reduce
C. Developmental Theory and Delinquency Prevention
1. reduce risk factors in children’s school, family, and personal environment.
1. multisystemic treatment
2 targeting youth as early as preschool through elementary school
3. strengthening social-emotional competencies and positive coping skills while at the same time suppressing antisocial aggressive behavior.
4. improving youth’s developing skills to succeed in school, after school, and with the help of the parents, at home.
CHAPTER SUMMARY
Life course theories argue that events that take place over the life course influence delinquent choices. The cause of delinquency constantly changes as people mature. At first, the nuclear family influences behavior; during adolescence, the peer group dominates; in adulthood, marriage and career are critical. There are a variety of pathways to delinquency: some kids are sneaky, others hostile, and still others defiant. According to the concept of problem behavior syndrome, delinquency may be just one of a variety of social problems, including health, physical, and interpersonal troubles.
The social development model theory finds that living in a disorganized neighborhood helps weaken social bonds and sets people off on a delinquent path. According to interactional theory, delinquency influences social relations, which in turn influence delinquency; the relationship is interactive. The sources of delinquency evolve over time. Sampson and Laub’s age-graded theory holds that the social sources of behavior change over the life course. People who develop social capital are best able to avoid antisocial entanglements. Important life events, or turning points, enable adult offenders to desist from delinquency. Among the most important are getting married and serving in the military.
Latent trait theories hold that some underlying condition present from birth or soon after controls behavior. Suspect traits include low IQ, impulsivity, and personality structure. This underlying trait explains the continuity of offending because, once present, it remains with a person throughout the lifetime. The General Theory of Crime, developed by Gottfredson and Hirschi, integrates rational choice theory concepts. Gottfredson and Hirschi trace the root cause of poor self-control to inadequate child-rearing practices. Parents who are unwilling or unable to monitor a child’s behavior, to recognize deviant behavior when it occurs, and to punish that behavior, will produce children who lack self-control. Children who are not attached to their parents, who are poorly supervised, and whose parents are delinquent, are the most likely to develop poor self-control and to become delinquent or deviant themselves. In a sense, lack of self-control occurs naturally when steps are not taken to stop its development.Whereas the propensity for delinquency is stable throughout life, the opportunity for delinquency, that is, the presence of suitable targets and capable guardians, mediates choice.