The study of desistance from crime is hampered by definitional, measurement, and theoretical incoherence. A unifying framework can distinguish termination of offending from the process of desistance. Termination is the point when criminal activity stops and desistance is the underlying causal process. A small number of factors are sturdy correlates of desistance (e.g., good marriages, stable work, transformation of identity, and aging). The processes of desistance from crime and other forms of problem behavior appear to be similar. Several theoretical frameworks can be employed to explain the process of desistance, including maturation and aging, developmental, life-course, rational choice, and social learning theories. A life-course perspective provides the most compelling framework, and it can be used to identify institutional sources of desistance and the dynamic social processes inherent in stopping crime. Criminological theories are not silent on why most offenders usually stop. For example, Akers argues, "other than one's own prior deviant behavior, the best single predictor of the onset, continuation, or desistance of delinquency is differential association with law-violating or norm-violating peers" (1998, p. 164). Despite a lack of systematic research, there is no shortage of theoretical speculations (see also Agnew 1997; Matsueda and Heimer 1997). This has not always been the case. One of the most powerful critiques of criminological theory was offered by David Matza in his classic book, Delinquency and Drift (1964), in which he introduced the idea of "maturational reform" to explain why most delinquency was transient and situational and why, as adolescents grew up, they simply left delinquency behind. He concluded that "most theories of delinquency take no account of maturational reform; those that do often do so at the expense of violating their own assumptions regarding the constrained delinquent" (Matza 1964, p. 22). Why do they stopIn this essay we examine theory and both quantitative and qualitative research on desistance from crime and other problem behaviors (such as alcohol and drug abuse). From this body of knowledge, it is clear that a number of factors are associated with desistance from crime. Elements such as family formation and gaining employment, for example, appear to predict desistance from crime in adulthood. But the research evidence is not strong or convincing. To cite but one example, in an extensive review of the literature, Wright and Wright (1992, p. 54) concluded that "no clearly confirming set of findings has emerged from research to date that demonstrates that getting married and having children reduces the likelihood of criminal offense." In order to make sense of this small but growing line of research, we organize our overview within several explanatory frameworks. We believe this strategy offers the best hope of making sense of the accumulated research literature. We also present a life-course perspective on desistance based on our long-term study of crime and d...

Prior research on victimization in the United States has generally neglected two key areas—victimization among juveniles and young adults and the connection between offending and victimization. The research presented here fuses these two concerns by examining the effect of delinquent lifestyles on the criminal victimization of teenagers and young adults. An examination of longitudinal data from the first five waves of the National Youth Survey suggests that adolescent involvement in delinquent lifestyles strongly increases the risk of both personal and property victimization. Further, the analysis reveals that a significant proportion of the risk of victimization incurred by different demographic subgroups—especially males—results from greater involvement in lifestyles characterized by delinquency. The authors conclude that victimization patterns among youths cannot be understood apart from criminal and deviant activities.

Analyzing the natural histories of two samples of boys that differ dramatically in childhood delinquency, we test a model of crime and deviance over the life course. The first hypothesis is that childhood antisocial behavior predicts problems in adult development across a wide variety of dimensions. Second, we argue that social bonds in adulthoodto work andfamily-explain changes in crime and deviance over the life span. The longitudinal data were reconstructedfrom the Gluecks' classic study of delinquent and nondelinquent males from childhood to age 32. Childhood delinquency is linked to adult crime, alcohol abuse, general deviance, economic dependency, educational failure, unemployment, divorce, and even charges in the military. Despite this continuity, job stability and strong marital attachment in adulthood inhibit adult criminal and deviant behavior. The results support a model of informal social control that recognizes both stability and change in antisocial behavior over the life course. Sociological criminology has neglected early childhood characteristics, and consequently has not come to grips with the link between early childhood behaviors and later adult outcomes (Caspi, Bem, and Elder 1989; Farrington 1989; Gottfredson and Hirschi 1990). Although criminal behavior peaks in the teenage years, there is substantial evidence of early delinquency as well as continuation of criminal behavior over the life course. By concentrating on the teenage years, sociological perspectives on crime fail to address the lifespan implications of childhood behavior (Wilson and Herrnstein 1985). At the same time, criminologists have not devoted much attention to what Rutter

In this article, the authors present a life-course perspective on crime and a critique of the developmental criminology paradigm. Their fundamental argument is that persistent offending and desistance—or trajectories of crime—can be meaningfully understood within the same theoretical framework, namely, a revised agegraded theory of informal social control. The authors examine three major issues. First, they analyze data that undermine the idea that developmentally distinct groups of offenders can be explained by unique causal processes. Second, they revisit the concept of turning points from a time-varying view of key life events. Third, they stress the overlooked importance of human agency in the development of crime. The authors' life-course theory envisions development as the constant interaction between individuals and their environment, coupled with random developmental noise and a purposeful human agency that they distinguish from rational choice. Contrary to influential developmental theories in criminology, the authors thus conceptualize crime as an emergent process reducible neither to the individual nor the environment.

This article examines conceptual issues relating to continuity and change in crime over the life course. Building on past efforts, we first distinguish self‐selection from a cumulative, developmental process whereby delinquent behavior attenuates adult social bonds (e.g., labor force attachment, marital cohesion). We then conceptualize various types of change and argue that social capital and turning points are crucial in understanding processes of change in the adult life course. These concepts are illustrated by examining person‐based, life‐history data drawn from the Gluecks' longitudinal study of 1,000 men. Although adult crime is clearly connected to childhood behavior, these qualitative data suggest that both incremental and abrupt change are structured by changes in adult social bonds. We conclude with some hypotheses and implications for future research on subjective contingencies, opportunity structures, and chance encounters as potential turning points for change, especially as they interact with race, class location, and historical context.