NEW Criminology, Section 11.1: Life Course Theories

The age - crime curve is one of the most established facts in the field of criminal justice. It seems to be near universal, applying to every culture in all of recorded human history. Its height can go up and down based on many factors, but the basic shape with crime rising rapidly in adolescence, peaking in the late teens, and then slowly dropping as people age seems to be constant. Life Course theorists are concerned with the onset and desistance of crime, plus a criminal's frequency, intensity, and duration. Why are these events different for different people, and how does age and life events impact those factors? One of the more famous applications of life course theory identifies that there are three kinds of people. Law abiding people who never commit deviance are extremely rare. Adolescent limited offenders are the vast majority of all people, who commit minor deviance as adolescents. A small percentage of people are life course persistent offenders, who have long and varied criminal careers.