Character, Circumstances, and Criminal Careers: Towards a dynamic developmental and life-course criminology

Session Submission Type: Author meets critics

Abstract

Why do young people embark on criminal careers and how can this be explained? This session introduces and discusses key theoretical arguments and central findings from the book Character, Circumstances, and Criminal Careers, by Per-Olof H. Wikström, Kyle Treiber, and Gabriela D. Roman. This recent addition to Oxford University Press’s Clarendon Studies in Criminology provides the most up-to-date presentation of the on-going longitudinal Peterborough Adolescent and Young Adult Development Study (PADS+), which has followed a random sample of participants in the UK from pre-adolescence into young adulthood; and its guiding theoretical framework, Situational Action Theory (SAT). In this session Kyle Treiber will present the book's key contributions, which include (1) arguing for a more dynamic developmental and life-course criminology; (2) theorising the dynamics of the causes and drivers of individual crime trajectories from the perspective of SAT’s Developmental Ecological Action (DEA) model; (3) testing key hypotheses of SAT and the DEA model through advanced statistical analyses of crime trajectory groups and the relationship between patterns of development of people’s crime propensities, criminogenic exposure, and crime involvement through adolescence and into young adulthood; and (4) exploring the role of the contexts of social disadvantage and social adversity in childhood and their links to future trajectories of crime. The panel welcomes the commentary and critique of leading scholars whose expertise include, among many other topics, developmental and life-course criminological theory development, advanced research design, and innovative theory testing, and whose work encompasses the interactive role of character and circumstances in the explanation and study of crime and criminal careers.

Subtopic

• Topic 1: Perspectives on Crime and Criminal Behavior / Development and Life Course Perspectives (Development and Life Course Criminology WG)

Critics

• Michael Gottfredson, University of California, Irvine

• Dirk Enzmann, University of Hamburg

• Torbjørn Skardhamar, University of Oslo

Book Authors

• Per-Olof H Wikstrom, University of Cambridge (emeritus) and University of Malmö

• Kyle Treiber, University of Cambridge

• Gabriela D Roman, University of Cambridge