NCJ Number
158805
Journal
Studies on Crime and Crime Prevention Volume: 4 Issue: 2 Dated: (1995) Pages: 131-142
Date Published
1995
Length
12 pages
Annotation
After reviewing the areas of agreement in the studies of correlates of delinquency, this article discusses delinquency explanations from control theory and life-course perspectives, along with research directions.
Abstract
Criminologists widely understand that the basic versatility of offenders extends within and beyond the realm of delinquency; apparently, the best available operational measure of the propensity to offend is a count of the number of distinct problem behaviors of a youth. A second area of agreement in the field concerns the stability of individual differences in the propensity to engage in delinquent and deviant acts from childhood to adulthood. A third area of general agreement is a strong and robust association between antisocial behavior and age, with antisocial behaviors tending strongly to peak in late adolescence and to decline precipitously and continuously throughout life. An area of potential agreement in the delinquency literature is in the finding that people involved with prosocial institutions have relatively low delinquency rates; whereas, those involved with antisocial institutions have relatively high delinquency rates. In theory development, the authors view versatility as the primary issue. This involves identifying what apparently diverse behavior have in common that accounts for their tendency to appear together in the behavioral repertoires of individuals. The control theory solution to this problem distinguishes it from alternative theories, including the life-course perspective. The authors favor a control theory that asserts delinquent acts are a subset of acts that produce immediate benefit at the risk of long-term cost, and that such acts tend to be performed by those relatively unlikely to consider the long-term implications of their current behavior. This view is considered in comparison to the life-course perspective, which holds that delinquent or antisocial behaviors are related to various types of experiences that influence individuals in the course of their lives. Implications of this discussion are drawn for research directions. 42 references