Developmental criminology

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Developmental criminology is an international research area in criminology that examines stability and change in the lives of offenders . Their results are in contrast to the stability postulate in the general theory of crime by Michael R. Gottfredson and Travis Hirschi (1990). According to Gottfredson / Hirschi, a tendency to criminality resulting from poor self-control is a personality trait that persists over long periods of time . This postulate contradicts empirically proven evidence that fewer crimes are committed with increasing age .

Developmental criminological theories

Greenberg's theory of old age

The American sociologist and criminologist David F. Greenberg ( New York University ) develops his age theory on the basis of the criminal- sociological anomie theory and believes that the anomic pressure varies depending on age. It is particularly high in adolescence, which explains the high crime rate among adolescents. Young people are strongly consumption-oriented, but only have limited financial resources. This is how property crimes can be explained. Greenberg explains alcohol and drug consumption , resistance to authorities and also violent crime with the non-material pressure that young people are exposed to as part of their status acquisition and their efforts to achieve autonomy . This situation also leads to the formation of youthful subcultures with their own rules and role expectations .

Greenberg explains the decrease in the crime rate at the beginning of the adult phase with the fact that, firstly, more financial resources are available, which reduces the material anomic pressure and, secondly, one has more to lose through criminal behavior ( reputation , profession, partnership). With this cost-benefit calculation, Greenberg approaches the criminological theory of rational decision-making .

Thornberry's interaction theory

The American sociologist and criminologist Terence P. Thornberry ( University of Colorado Boulder ) assumes, in accordance with Hirschi's theory of the four ties , that a person's propensity to commit crimes is related to the weakness of his integration into society. According to Thornberry, however, influences on these bonds change with age.

The delinquency in early adolescence (from the age of 11) is favored by a lack of social constraints of a small attachment to parents ( attachment to parents ), a low commitment to school ( commitment to school conventional) and the lack of faith in Values ​​( belief in conventional values ) result. This is in middle adolescence (from age 15) reinforced by contact with delinquent peers adolescents ( associations with delinquent peers ) and the acquisition of delinquent values ( delinquent values ). Finally, delinquent behavior itself develops a reinforcing function and leads to the consolidation of corresponding behavioral patterns. Thornberry does not assume a clear cause structure, but rather a different interaction between the factors described.

According to Thornberry, there are also anti-crime factors in adulthood: involvement in conventional activities such as work, studies, military service ( commitment to conventional activities ) and partnership or family obligations ( commitment to family ). These attachment variables are essential for breaking off criminal careers at the beginning of adulthood. The exit will be made more difficult if old attachment variables are still in effect.

Sampson and Laub's theory of age-related informal social control

The American sociologists and criminologists Robert J. Sampson ( Harvard University ) and John H. Laub ( University of Maryland ) assume that there is a strong connection between crime in adolescence and in adulthood, but that it can be at any point in time a person's life, a turning point ( turning point ) are achieved.

Sampson / Laub are also based on Hirschi's theory of the four bonds , but focus particularly on the fact that the intensity of such bonds varies over the course of a lifetime. In addition, individual life events and experiences (such as the transition to full-time employment, entering into a partnership, starting a family or starting military service) could lead to new bonds with strong social capital and thus promote exit.

Empirical research on developmental criminology

Sampson and Laub (USA)

To empirically back up their theory of the turning points, Sampson and Laub subjected the long-term study by the Glueck couple to a reanalysis. With great effort, test subjects were identified who were now around 70 years old. Sampson / Laub were able to confirm their assumptions about the turning points in life and found three test subject types: Persisters (continuation of the criminal career also in adulthood), desisters (termination of the criminal career in adulthood) and subjects with a zigzag criminal career (discontinuous delinquency courses) .

Stelly and Thomas (Germany)

The German criminologists Wolfgang Stelly and Jürgen Thomas (both from the University of Tübingen ) have worked through the life stories of 200 former prisoners and 200 comparative subjects from the Tübingen comparative study of young offenders (started in the 1960s) from birth. For a large part of the test persons, the résumés could be reconstructed up to the middle of the fifth decade of life. As a result, the assumptions of the theory of the four bonds and the inflection point approach of Sampson and Laub were confirmed.

David P. Farrington (Great Britain)

The British psychologist and criminologist David P. Farrington ( University of Cambridge ) examined together with colleagues the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development from the 1960s. The result showed that criminal careers generally do not have a front-end course , but are limited on average to the period between the ages of 19 and 28. From interviews with the 48-year-old test persons , it emerged that in all of them (including the persisters ) the social abnormalities had decreased and this corresponds to increasing social integration.

Terrie E. Moffitt (New Zealand)

The focus of the interest of the British psychologist Terrie E. Moffitt ( King's College London ) was the chronic offenders ( chronical offenders or career criminals ), who already commit crimes in early adolescence and continue into adulthood, and the episodic juvenile offenders ( adolescence -limited antisocial behavior ) whose criminal activities end with adolescence. Moffit wanted to find a separate explanation for each of these forms.

For this purpose, she mainly examined the already available results of an ongoing long-term study from New Zealand ( Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study ). In this study, 1037 children born in 1972 and 1973 from the New Zealand district of Dunedin are explored at two-year intervals.

The number of chronic offenders is rather small. In this group, crimes start at the age of 7 and increase continuously into adulthood. According to Moffitt, life-course persisters show considerable deficits in the areas of social, moral, emotional and cognitive competence. In the course of life, this leads to growing problems ( dropping out of school, unemployment , early fatherhood, divorce, imprisonment ), which increase the propensity to commit crimes. The psychologist Moffitt attributes such processes to neuropsychological dysfunctions from early childhood (such as linguistic deficits, inattention, hyperactivity , aggressiveness , impulsivity ), but denies a biological determination of crime. Only in interaction with an unfavorable social environment could the dysfunctionalities develop into an antisocial syndrome .

Episodic juvenile offenders are far more common . Their criminogenic abnormalities only begin with the age of maturity and mostly end with it. In addition, the abnormalities do not affect the entire social area, but only parts of it, especially the leisure area. Moffit finds explanations of pressure and learning theory for this form of development, similar to Thornberry .

Ongoing German long-term studies

Berlin CRIME study

The Berlin CRIME study (chronic relapse delinquency in individual human development) is based on a sample of 397 male, adult and German-speaking prisoners in the Berlin penal system, which was collected from 1976 under the direction of Wilfried Rasch . A comparison group was not formed. The investigation is being continued by Klaus-Peter Dahle and his colleagues, analyzing delinquent developments in the life cycle on the one hand and checking crime forecasting methods on the other . After their release from prison, the further development of delinquency in the subjects was observed on the basis of extracts from the Federal Central Register . There were also personal follow-up examinations. Up to 2001 five types of course could be determined:

Casual offender

47 percent of the sample were classified as casual offenders, 80 percent of them dropped out of their criminal career during the period under investigation. A significant part of the group of occasional offenders only appeared one to three times under criminal law, whereby violent crimes hardly played a role. The majority of their crimes were breaches of maintenance obligations and property offenses. Another part of this group was conspicuous more frequently, but with minor offenses.

Late entry

13 percent of the sample were classified as late entrants . These test persons hardly appeared under criminal law in their adolescence, their delinquency increased significantly up to the age of 40 and then only slowly fell off again. The average length of detention of these test persons was ten years, the range of offenses mostly includes serious property crimes as well as acts of violence.

Young active

16 percent of the sample were classified as young active . These subjects reached the highest level of delinquency by the age of 25. After that, their criminal irregularities decreased significantly, although the majority of them continued to lead to slight norm violations, which were punished with fines or suspended sentences.

Age-limited intensive offenders

Eleven percent of the sample were classified as age-limited intensive offenders . They increased the frequency and severity of their delinquent conspicuousness up to about the age of 30, but ended this abruptly by the age of 35. Most of them remained unpunished after years of imprisonment.

Persistent intense offenders

13 percent of the sample were classified as persistent intensive offenders. These subjects stood out from the other subjects in every phase of life with regard to the severity and frequency of their offenses. Each of them had around 20 entries in the federal central register and was imprisoned for an average of 17 years. Only one fifth of this subgroup managed to live a life free of punishment during the observation period.

Duisburg progress study

In contrast to the Berlin CRIME study , which only evaluates registered crime, the Crime in the Modern City project, led by Klaus Boers and Jost Reinecke , is based on dark field surveys of schoolchildren in the cities of Münster and Duisburg . At the beginning of the study in Duisburg in 2002, 61 percent of all 7th grade students were reached. After eight waves of surveys, six characteristic paths were identified in 2009: Around 50 percent of the students belonged to the group of non-delinquents ; 19 percent to the group of minor offenders ; 13 percent showed delinquency in adolescence , increased their criminal offenses up to the age of 15 and reduced them up to the age of 17; 9 percent were among the persistent intensive-care offenders. Their delinquency increased sharply up to the age of 14, after which only a slight decrease was reported, especially for acts of violence; four percent are considered early dropouts and reduced the intensity of their crimes to the level of non-delinquents from the age of 15; five percent were late starters , and from the age of 15 they showed a steadily increasing crime rate.

Criminological appreciation of developmental criminology

Michael Bock considers the newer developmental criminology to be a turning point in the research of crime:

  • “Because typical of criminal progression patterns is less continuity than discontinuity; it is not stability and constancy that dominate the development of crime, but breaks and changes. The vast majority of criminal careers end again at some point, some earlier and spontaneously, others later and despite a long downward spiral of imprisonment, worsening opportunities and renewed crime. In contrast, the continuous criminal career spanning several phases of life can only be found in a small proportion of the offenders and is rather the exception in the overall picture of the course of crime. "

According to Bernd-Dieter Meier ( University of Hanover ), the practical relevance of the development criminological findings is considerable:

  • “By classifying crime as part of an overarching, dynamic development process, they make it clear that there are numerous starting points for preventive interventions. Supporting and helping early interventions, which strengthen family ties in particular in the early phase of development, as well as special treatment measures aimed at reintegration and the creation of new ties in the prison system can be considered. "

Between 2006 and 2010, the representatives of developmental criminology were the most cited criminologists internationally; more recent citation rankings are not available.

literature

General developmental criminology

  • Michael Bock: Kriminologie , 4th edition, Munich: Vahlen, 2013, ISBN 978-3-8006-4705-7 , pp. 85-105.
  • Wolfgang Stelly, Jürgen Thomas: Once a criminal - always a criminal? Wiesbaden, Westdeutscher Verlag, 2001, ISBN 3-531-13665-8 .

Special developmental criminologies and empirical studies

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Presentation is based on: Michael Bock , Kriminologie , 4th edition, Vahlen, Munich 2013, p. 88 f.
  2. ↑ Presentation is based on: Michael Bock, Kriminologie , 4th edition, Vahlen, Munich 2013, p. 89 ff.
  3. ↑ Presentation is based on: Michael Bock, Kriminologie , 4th edition, Vahlen, Munich 2013, p. 91 ff.
  4. ↑ See also Christian Wickert, Age Graded Theory / Turning Points (Sampson and Laub) , SozTheo , accessed on June 8, 2018.
  5. ↑ Presentation is based on: Michael Bock, Kriminologie , 4th edition, Vahlen, Munich 2013, p. 93 ff.
  6. ↑ See also: Christian Wickert, Age Graded Theory / Turning Points (Sampson and Laub) , SozTheo , accessed on June 8, 2018.
  7. ↑ Wolfgang Stellny, Jürgen Thomas: Crime in the life course. A reanalysis of the Tübingen young offender comparative study (TJVU) , University of Tübingen 2005.
  8. ↑ Presentation is based on: Michael Bock, Kriminologie , 4th edition, Vahlen, Munich 2013, p. 95 f.
  9. ↑ Presentation is based on: Michael Bock, Kriminologie , 4th edition, Vahlen, Munich 2013, p. 96 f.
  10. ↑ Presentation is based on: Michael Bock, Kriminologie , 4th edition, Vahlen, Munich 2013, p. 97 ff.
  11. ↑ Chronic relapse delinquency in individual development: Berlin CRIME study
  12. ^ Project page of the Berlin CRIME study ( Memento from October 14, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
  13. ↑ Presentation is based on: Michael Bock, Kriminologie , 4th edition, Vahlen, Munich 2013, p. 99 ff.
  14. ^ Project page of the Duisburg progress study: Crime in the modern city
  15. ↑ Presentation is based on: Michael Bock, Kriminologie , 4th edition, Vahlen, Munich 2013, p. 102 ff.
  16. ↑ Michael Bock: Kriminologie , 4th edition, Munich 2013, p. 86.
  17. ↑ Bernd-Dieter Meier: Kriminologie , Munich 2003, p. 81.
  18. ↑ Who are the most cited criminologists (2006–2010)? , Criminologia, blog of the Institute for Criminological Social Research (IKS) at the University of Hamburg , published on June 29, 2016, accessed on June 29, 2016.