Twenty-five Years of Developmental Criminology

Abstract

This chapter takes a fresh look at developmental criminology and examines the extent to which deviant behavior in general conforms to findings from developmental criminology. Drawing on his lifelong research on a population of young people and a sample of known delinquents, it is argued that the age-crime curve applies to many other deviant behaviors as well and that qualitative and quantitative changes known from developmental criminology also apply to various forms of deviant behavior. The same is true for the classification of individuals according to their developmental trajectories. It is further argued that problems in self-regulation are germane to both crime and deviant behaviors, and that qualitative and quantitative changes in self-regulation underlie the manifestations of all deviant behaviors. Finally, the chapter makes a case that most explanatory models are more complex than ones that are currently in use and that the next generation of statistical tests will need to advance to more complex levels.