Criminology Paper

In the article Crime and Deviant in the Life Course, authors Robert Sampson and John Laub examined the “life-course theory”. Their discussion posits the main idea that both continuity and change are present throughout the life-course of people and that changes in the behavior of a person may happen through new experiences or social affairs. Additionally, Sampson and Laub put forward that the emotional attachment of a previous offender to life changing experiences, such as marriage or job, causes them to desist from committing offenses. To discuss further, the theory of Sampson and Laub supposes that the individual characteristics of a person are not the sole reason for his early delinquency and deviant behavior later in his life. There are social circumstances that may modify the behavior of other persons while others proceeds with offending. There are three main components proposed in the age-graded life-course theory of Sampson and Laub. First, the delinquency in childhood and adolescence can be explained by their informal relation with their family as well as the environment they have at school. These informal relations they build within their family and at school as well as the social controls coming from these two [family and school] intervene with the micro-level structural context of the children (Sampson & Laub, 1992). Second, in different realms of life, the antisocial behavior from childhood through adulthood continues. Lastly, the informal social attachments that individuals develop to their family and employment during adulthood explicate modifications in criminality over their life in spite of their early childhood tendencies (Sampson & Laub, 1992). The most crucial findings of Sampson and Laub is that the social attachments that individuals develop during adulthood increase some people's social capital, thus leading them to discontinue from most types of aberrant behavior. The theory further discussed how deviant behavior of individuals