Crime and the Life Course

Course Synopsis: This seminar is designed to provide an intensive examination of crime and the life course. The life course will be examined as a theoretical orientation, a research methodology, and as an empirical field of study with special reference to crime and deviance. Key research issues will be analyzed and discussed including the development of criminal behavior and criminal careers; stability and change in criminal behavior across developmental stages; trajectories, transitions, and turning points through life; quantitative and qualitative approaches to studying crime and the life course; and social change and its link to individual lives. A single semester can only provide a sampling of the range of theory and empirical work on crime and the life course. The most important objective is thus to acquire a way of thinking that can serve as a potential point of departure for your future research. To accomplish this goal, I have provided a wide-ranging list of readings that bear on multiple aspects of life-course inquiry, whether quantitative or qualitative in nature.