What do developmental perspectives contribute to explanations of crime and delinquency?

Each contributor articulates a developmental or life course perspective in explaining how people become involved in delinquency and crime. Not only does it explain initiation into, maintenance of, and desistance from involvement in crime, it offers insight into why crime flourishes during adolescence.

What is the developmental theories of crime causation?

Developmental theory focuses on minor offenders and their life circumstances. This theory posits that the continuity of circumstances and its change over time contribute greatly to risk of offending or resistance to offending.

What is developmental theory in criminology?

Developmental theories are explanatory models of criminal behavior that follow individuals throughout their life course of offending, thus explaining the development of offending over time.

Why are developmental and life course theories of crime important?

Their research aims to investigate the development of offending and antisocial behavior throughout life; risk and protective factors that predict this development; the effects of life events; and the intergenerational transmission of offending and antisocial behavior.

Where did the theory of Delinquent Development come from?

Farrington’s Theory of Delinquent Development. Farrington’s theory of delinquent development derived from research conducted as part of a Cambridge study of delinquent development, which followed the offending careers of 411 London boys born in 1953.

How does the theory of Criminology overcome reductionism?

By integrating a variety of ecological, socialization, psychological, biological, and economic factors into a coherent structure, such theories overcome the shortcomings of older theories that may be criticized on the grounds of reductionism.

What are the two developmental pathways to delinquency?

In summary, Moffitt argues that there are two distinct developmental pathways to delinquency: life-course-persistent anti-social development and adolescent-limited antisocial development.