Criminology

Offenders: Alex and Derek King (12 and 13 when they killed their father)

Theory: Sampson and Laub's Age-Graded Theory of Informal Social Control

One basic premise of the Age-Graded criminology and informal social control theory was that, whilst experiences of childhood and personality traits are vital to comprehending behavioral stability, teenage and adulthood experiences can readdress criminal paths either more negatively or positively. Laub and Sampson discovered, particularly, that marital relationships and employment stability were a key factor in adult criminal change. With increased strength of familial and workplace bonds, deviancy and criminality in the non-delinquent control group as well as in criminals decreased. Further, Laub and Sampson looked keenly into qualitative narratives' ability to facilitate a more individual-centered life course examination. According to them, narratives of life history, together with quantitative techniques may be utilized for creating a more complete and richer image of why certain adult males continue to perpetrate crime while others quit. Narratives aid in unpacking mechanisms which link important life events over the course of life, particularly situational context and personal choice. Life history helps give voice to offsetting the broad array of statistical information data and the overall social sciences (Doherty, 2005).

Whilst initially counterintuitive, Laub and Sampson concluded that the information verified that justification of criminal existence and continual offending are virtually the same thing. With regard to desistance, it was discovered from criminal life histories and narratives that criminals desist due to individual actions combined with structural and situational influences associated with major institutions which facilitate desistance maintenance. Desistance isn't an event but a process which should be constantly renewed. The above underlying premise highlights the necessity of scrutinizing individual motivations and their social contexts. Desistance processes function all together at various levels and over diverse contextual settings. Desistance does not merely occur due to individual predisposition and aging (Sampson & Laub, 2004).

The theoreticians' examination also depicted a difference between individual paths and the cumulative age-crime curve, thereby corroborating a key crime career theory assumption. A salient feature of their findings is heterogeneous adult criminal behavior.... The theorists revealed that criminal activity decreases as the offender ages, even in case of active offenders. Moreover, desistance paths are not prospectively identifiable on the basis of individual differences and typological accounts engrained in childhood. Although childhood projections are fairly correct when it comes to forecasting crime levels between offenders until their twenties, discrete categories, probably valid throughout the course of life, cannot be generated (Sampson & Laub, 2004).

Theorists and Year of Theory Formulation

Laub and Sampson put forward the age-graded informal social control theory in the year 1993, in their book "Crime in the Making: Pathways and Turning Points through Life." The authors essentially claim that powerful social bonds springing from various life events forecast offenders' desistance from crime in their adult years. The last ten years have witnessed a growth of studies corroborating the above-mentioned broad discovery (Doherty, 2005).

Premise of the Theory

The theoreticians came up with their Age-Graded model by employing some of criminology's most fascinating information ever. During the 1940s, Eleanor and Sheldon Gluck carried out a longitudinal research of Boston's disturbed teenaged boys, who had already broken the law and were attending reform school. The researchers gathered comprehensive information on the boys, looking carefully at them through their teenage years. This research was ignored until it was discovered by Laub and Sampson in a Harvard Library box. The two reconstructed the Glucks' data, following-up with their study subjects, who had now reached their late 50s. Some subjects (i.e., troubled Boston boys) remained law breakers even into adulthood, whereas others led highly ordinary lives and did not have any legal issues (Wright, 2008).

Laub and Sampson's answer made use of life-course developmental principles. In specific, they discovered that, problematic children who were set right in adulthood underwent a turning point -- some life circumstance or event like marriage, a stable, respectable job, or a military post, which transformed them from delinquents to responsible, law-abiding citizens. Military service brought discipline and structure into the boys' lives. Matrimony and employment brought stability as well as a need to follow the straight course if they wished to sustain their marriage and employment. The significance of the age-graded model…