[...]... apply to persistent and serious offending in particular The inspiration for the present book was to bring together scholars from both criminology and developmental psychology to forward our understanding of the development of persistent criminality In the present chapter, I review some of the related literature to set the context and tone for the rest of the chapters 4 Understanding Persistent Offending... accounted for more than their share of offenses—especially violent ones (10 of the cohort committed 43 of the violent offenses by age 26) the adolescence-limited group certainly weren’t desisters and they committed more than their share of violent offenses, too (26 of the cohort, 43 of the violent offenses) (Moffitt, Caspi, Harrington, & Milne, 2001) Early Onset and Chronic Offending Early onset... correlates of persistent trajectories of offending An explosion of research has emanated from these papers Moffitt’s theory identified two types of offenders Adolescence-limited offenders are marked by no notable history of problem behavior in childhood and, by definition, desist from criminality by the end of their teenage years By contrast, continuity and consistency of antisocial behavior are the hallmarks... view of the criminal career in the context of a “life course.” Le Blanc (1990) adds the concepts of “activation” and “escalation” to our conceptualization of developmental patterns and Loeber (e.g., Loeber, 1988; Loeber & Hay, 1997) has elucidated some of the different pathways of development to delinquency In response, rather than simply looking at correlates of crime, many researchers are asking whether... view of the “personality” issue came to the forefront in criminological theory with the publication of A general theory of crime by Gottfredson and Hirschi (1990) The authors argue that low self-control constitutes a persistent trait that results when there are deficiencies in socialization in early life (for more on Gottfredson and Hirschi’s theory and low self-control, see Chapter 17) 7 The Development. .. studies of very serious offenders almost always reveal experience of significant childhood trauma and abuse (see, e.g., Athens, 1997) Boswell (1996) studied Section 53 11 The Development of Persistent Criminality offenders (adolescents who commit very serious crimes in England) and noted the “unanticipated byproduct” that many of her subjects had been exposed to very serious abuse and that many of them... parents Concentration of Offending in Families Parent criminality is a very strong risk factor in studies of the development of delinquency (e.g., Farrington & West, 1993) Farrington et al (2001) review the literature on the concentration of offenders in families and report that although having a father who has been arrested tends to predict more serious offending (arrest, for example, rather than self-reported... offenders, and tests of Moffitt’s (1993) “adolescence-limited” and “life-course -persistent typology The emphasis has been on distinguishing various types of offending trajectories, methodological issues for doing this type of analysis, and debating some foundational issues, such as the nature of the age-crime curve and the necessity of longitudinal research Meanwhile, in the world of child development, researchers... aspects of the career such as participation, early onset, or persistence (e.g., Farrington & Hawkins, 1991) Piquero et al (2003) provide a review of all major aspects of the literature on criminal careers Moffitt’s Typology Moffitt (1993) developed a now well-known and widely cited theory for distinguishing the life-course -persistent offender from the adolescence-limitedoffender Although most of us probably... ways of looking at criminal offending over time, and we know of many risk factors for aggression and delinquency, it is not clear which factors lead specifically to the persistent and serious patterns of criminality that cause so much harm to society In short, we know there are chronic offenders, and generally agree on many of the risk factors for offending, but we have not yet established which of these .