Within this context, the life-course-persistent group exhibit antisocial behaviors since early childhood, and these persist throughout their entire life course. Moffitt suggested that such life-course-persistent antisocial behavior is mainly due to the neuropsychological impairment suffered at an early age.
Life-Course-Persistent offenders begin to behave antisocially early in childhood and continue this behavior into adulthood. This theory is used with respect to antisocial behavior instead of crime due to the differing definitions of 'crime' among cultures.
In Moffitt’s theory, youths below the black curve are classified into two groups, life-course-persistent youths who remain antisocial throughout their life course, and adolescence-limited youths who behave antisocially only during their adolescent period.
The histories and traits of life-course-persistents have foreclosed their options, entrenching them in the antisocial path. To test this hypothesis, research must examine condi- tional effects of individual histories on opportunities for desis- tence from crime.
Persistent, stable antisocial behavior is found among a relatively small number of males whose behavior problems are also quite extreme. The central tenet of this article is that temporary versus persistent antisocial persons constitute two qualitatively distinct types of persons.
Moffitt's theory of delinquency suggests that at-risk youths can be divided into two groups, the adolescence- limited group and the life-course-persistent group, predetermined at a young age, and social interactions between these two groups become important during the adolescent years.
Specifically, the segment of the population predicted by Moffitt to be chronically aggressive—called life-course persistent offenders—has been found to account for a disproportionate number of serious crimes.
According to Moffitt's (1993) developmental taxonomy, the maturity gap is the result of a disjuncture between biological maturity and social maturity.
In general, the accepted notion is that the factors occurring at a younger stage in life are predominately influential on crime risk than later life experiences. As a result of this idea, the life-course theory works closely with developmental theories to reinforce explanations of crime occurrences.
The life course perspective or life course theory (LCT) is a multidisciplinary approach to understanding the mental, physical and social health of individuals, which incorporates both life span and life stage concepts that determine the health trajectory.
In the Criminal Justice System Statistics quarterly publication a persistent offender is considered to be an offender with 8 or more previous convictions or cautions. In most analyses, an offender with 15 or more previous sanctions is considered a prolific offender.
Which of the following would Moffitt argue is the most important cause of a person becoming a "life-course persistent" offender? Neuropsychological deficits that evoke poor early parenting and cause youth to have difficulty in other social settings.
Moffitt proposed that there are two main types of antisocial offenders in society: The adolescence-limited offenders, who exhibit antisocial behavior only during adolescence, and the life-course-persistent offenders, who begin to behave antisocially early in childhood and continue this behavior into adulthood.
Moffitt's taxonomy, combining a micro and macro-level of approach (Wellford & Solé, 2002), draws attention upon the interactional relationship between the biological and environmental perspectives when referring to LCPs (neuropsychological vulnerabilities/criminogenic environments), and also, to same extent, to ALs ( ...
Life course theory argues that specific events in one's life motivate one to desist from crimes, and this eventually prompts an individual to lead a normal life. These events are called turning points.
The life course perspective posits that cumulative and interactive exposures over the life span—including in utero exposures—influence the development of health disparities.
The four stages of the life course are childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and old age. Socialization continues throughout all these stages.
For teens who become adolescence-limiteddelinquents, antiso cial behavior is an effective means of knifing-offchildhood apron strings and ofproving thatthey can act independently to conquer new challenges (Erikson, 1960). Hypothetical rein forcers for delinquency include damaging the quality of inti macy and communication with parents, provoking responses from adults in positions ofauthority, finding ways to look older (such as by smoking cigarettes, being tattooed, playing the big spender with ill-gottengains), and tempting fate (risking preg nancy, driving while intoxicated, orshoplifting underthe noses ofclerks). None ofthese putative reinforcers may seem very pleasurable tothe middle-agedacademic, buteach oftheafore mentioned consequences is a precious resource to the teenager and can serve to reinforce delinquency. Bloch and Niederhoffer (1958) have offered an anthropological perspective: "11 is almost as ifthecontemporary young person, in the absence ofpuberty ritualsandordeals, is moved to exclaim: Ifyoudon'tcaretotest us, then we will test ourselves!" (p. 28). I suggest that every curfew violated, car stolen, drug taken, andbabyconceived is a statementofpersonalindependence and
The proffered theory ofadolescence-limiteddelinquency re gards this sort of delinquency as an adaptive response to contextual circumstances. As a consequence, the theory seems to predictthatevery teen will engage indelinquency. Datafrom epidemiologicaI studies using the self-report method suggest thatalmost all adolescents do commitsome illegal acts (Elliott et al., 1983). In addition, even studies using official records of arrest by police find surprisingly high prevalence rates (for a review see Farrington, Ohlin, & Wilson, 1986). Nevertheless, some youths commitless delinquency than others, and a small minority abstains completely. Unfortunately, aImost no re search sheds light on the characteristics ofteens who abstain from antisociaI behavior altogether. Speculations are thusill
In the previous section, the concept ofevocative person-envi ronment interaction was called on to describe how children's difficult behaviors might affect encounters with their parents. Two additionaltypes ofinteraction may help toexplain how the life-course-persistentindividual'sproblem behavior, once initi ated, might promote its own continuity and pervasiveness. Re active interaction occurs when different youngsters exposed to thesame environmentexperience it, interpretit, and reactto it in accordance with their particularstyle. Forexample, ininter personal situations where cues are ambiguous, aggressive chil dren arelikely to mistakenly attribute harmful intentto others and then act accordingly (Dodge&Frame, 1982). Proactive in teraction occurswhen people select orcreateenvironmentsthat support their sty1es. For examp1e, antisocia1 individuals appear to be likely to affiliate se1ectively with antisocial others, even when selecting a mate. Some evidence points to nonrandom mating along personality traits related to antisocial behavior (Buss, 1984), and there are significant spouse correlations on conviction for crimes (e.g., Baker, Mack, Moffitt, & Mednick, 1989). Thethreetypes ofperson-environmentinteractionscan pro duce two kinds ofconsequences in the life course: cumulative consequences and contemporary consequences (Caspi & Bem, 1990). Early individualdifferences may setin motiona downhill snowball .. of cumulative continuities. In addition, individuaI differences may themselves persist from infancy to adulthood, continuingtoinfluenceadolescentandadultbehaviorina prox imal contemporary fashion. Contemporary continuity arises if the life-course-persistentperson continues to carry into adult hood the same underlying constellation oftraits that got him into trouble as a chi1d, such as high activity level, irritability, poorself-control,and low cognitive ability. Theroles ofcumulativeandcontemporarycontinuitiesinan tisocial behavior have been explored by Caspi, Bem, and Elder (1989; Caspi et al., 1987), using data from the longitudinal Berkeley Guidance Study. They identified men who had a his toryoftempertantrumsduringlatechildhood(when tantrums are not developmentally normative). Then they traced the con tinuities and consequences ofthis personality style across the subsequent 30 years ofthe subjects'lives and into multiple di verse life domains: education, employment, and marriage. A majorfinding was thathot-temperedboyswho carne from mid dle-classhomessuffered a progressivedeterioration ofsocioeco nomic status as they moved through the life course. By age 40, their occupational status was indistinguishable from that of men born into the working class. A majorityofthem held jobs ofloweroccupationalstatusthanthose heldby theirfathers ata comparable age. Did these men fail occupationally because their earlier ill-temperednessstarted them down a particular path (cumulative consequences) or because their currentill
new opportunities. Heterotypic continuity refers to continuity ofan inferred trait or attribute that is presumed to underlie diverse phenotypic behaviors (Kagan, 1969). As Kagan and Moss (1962) suggested, a specific behavior in childhood might not be predictive of phenotypically similar behavior later in adulthood, butit may still beassociated with behaviors thatare conceptuaffyconsistentwith theearlierbehavior. Examples ofheterotypic continuities have been reported by Ryder (1967), who found that childhood aggression, physical adventurousness, andnonconformity were relatedtoadultsex ual behavior. Anotherexampleofcoherenceis providedina 22 year follow-upstudy ofmen and women who hadbeen ratedas aggressive by their peers in late childhood (Huesmann, Eron, Lefkowitz, & Walder, 1984). As adults, the men were likely to commit serious criminal acts, abuse their spouses, and drive while intoxicated, whereas the women were likely to punish their offspring severely. Another example ofpersonality coher ence is thefinding thatthedevelopmental antecedentsoferratic work histories may be found in phenotypically dissimilar attri butes ofdifficult temperament in childhood (Caspi, Elder, & Bem, 1987). In addition, in their hallmarkstudy, West andFar rington (1977) observed that stealing, alcohol abuse, sexual promiscuity, reckless driving, and violence were linked across the life course. The prognosis for the life-course-persistentper son is bleak: Drug and alcohol addiction; unsatisfactory em ployment; unpaid debts; homelessness; drunk driving; violent assault; multiple and unstable relationships; spouse battery; abandoned, neglected, or abused children; and psychiatric ill ness have all been reported at very high rates for offenders who persist past the age of25 (Farrington & West, 1990; Robins, 1966; Sampson & Laub, 1990). Thus, this theoryoflife-course persistent antisocial behaviorpredicts continuityacross theen tire life course but allows that the underlying disposition will change its manifestation when age and social circumstancesal teropportunities. Although reports ofthe continuity ofantisocial styles from childhoodtoyoung adulthoodabound, the outcomesofantiso eial individuals during midlife have seldom been examined. The pattem ofofficial crime over age (Figure l) implies that criminal offending all but disappears by midlife,2but there is noreason toexpectthatlife-course-persistentsmiraculouslyas sume prosocial tendencies after an antisocial tenure ofseveral decades. Indeed, criminal psychopaths decrease their number ofarrestable offenses at about age 40, but the constellation of antisocial personality traits described by Cieckley (1976) per-
Why do adolescence-limiteddelinquentsbegin delinquency? The answer advanced here is that their delinquency is "social mimicry" oftheantisocial style oflife-course-persistentyouths. The concept ofsocial mimicry is borrowed from ethology. So cial mimicry occurs when two animai species share a single niche and one ofthe species has cornered the market on a re source that is needed to promote fitness (Moynihan, 1968). In
notbecome antisocial adults" (p. 611). In fact, research has shown that'antisocialbehavior is remarkably stable across time and circumstance for some persons but decidedly unstable for most otherpeople. Thestability ofantisocial behavior is closely linked to its ex tremity. The extreme frequency ofcrime committed by a very few males is impressive; it has been repeatedly shown that the most persistent 5% or 6% ofoffenders are responsible for about 50% ofknown crimes (see Farrington, Ohlin, & Wilson, 1986, for a review). In their study of 10,000 men, Wolfgang et al. (1972) found that6% ofoffenders accounted for morethan half of the crimes committed by the sample; relative to other offenders, these high-rateoffenders began theircriminai careers ear1ierandcontinuedthem for moreyears. The re1ationship be tween stability and extremityis found insamples ofchildren as well. In his analysis ofa sample ofthird-gradeboys, Patterson (1982) foundthatthemostaggressive 5% oftheboysconstituted the mostpersistentgroupas well; 39% ofthemrankedabove the 95th percentile on aggression lO years later, and 100% ofthem were still above the mediano Similar1y, Loeber (1982) has re viewed research showing that stability ofyoungsters'antisocial behavior across time is linked with stability across situations
17 (Elliott, Huizinga, & Menard, 1989). Adult-onsetcrime is not only very unusual, but it tends to be low rate , nonviolent (Blumstein & Co hen, 1987), and generally notaccompanied by the many complications that attend a persistent and pervasive antisocial life-style(Farrington, Loeber, Elliott, etal., 1990).
This chapter tests and refines a developmental taxonomy of antisocial behavior, which proposed two primary hypothetical prototypes: life-course persistent offenders whose antisocial behavior begins in childhood and continues worsening thereafter, versus adolescence-limited offenders whose antisocial behavior begins in adolescence and desists in young adulthood (Moffitt, 1993).
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Template:Personality disorders sidebar Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD) is recognized by the DSM-IV. It is a disorder characterized by a severe disregard for the rights of others. In most of the studies described below, individuals with who exhibit antisocial behavior, but have not been diagnosed with ASPD, are used as subjects.
The following biological risk factors have been linked to, but do not cause, persistent antisocial behavior throughout the life course.
Although the biological risk factor do not apply to this group, one point worth noting is that the myelination of the frontal cortex continues into our 20's. This continuing development may help to explain why antisocial behavior ceases after adolescence and why such a spike in crime exists there in the first place.
This type of theory leads to several different neuroethical issues.
When Moffitt developed this theory, she pointed out a few phenomena which we would like to highlight here. First, evidence shows that when youths grow up from early childhood to adolescence, the prevalence of antisocial behavior and criminal offences among youths increase with age (see Fig 1). During this transition, the life-course-persistent youths shift from peripheral to more influential positions in the peer social network. Their psychopathological behavior in childhood becomes normative, and the object of imitation by their adolescence-limited peers. Adolescence-limited youths, on the other hand, feel the need to exhibit antisocial behaviors to lessen the psychological burden they experience from the maturity gap. However, when adolescence ends, the trend reverses and both antisocial behaviors and criminal offences become less prevalent as the youths reach adulthood. After assuming legitimate adult roles and attaining adult privileges, the maturity gap is closed, and the adolescence-limited youths have no further need to behave antisocially. Moreover, behaving antisocially will also diminish their past achievements or jeopardize their future goals. With rewards turning into costs, the adolescence-limited group will quit behaving antisocially. In comparison, due to their long histories of antisocial behaviors, the life-course-persistent youths find few options for change, and thus they are more likely to remain antisocial.
In Moffitt’s theory, youths become antisocial depending on the reward and cost associated with such behaviors. As mentioned in the Introduction, the reward of antisocial behavior is greater than the cost when youths are faced with the maturity gap. Once they reach adulthood, the cost of antisocial behaviors become even higher. We therefore introduce two variables, the reward aand the cost b, to each of the agents. These variables keep track of the tendency for agents to behave antisocially, and also decide whom the agents would befriend. Similar to the antisocial level and the connection strength, we restrict the values of aand bbetween 0 and 1.
The black curve gives the qualitativeprevalence of antisocial behavior among youths. In Moffitt’s theory, youths below the black curve are classified into two groups, life-course-persistent youths who remain antisocial throughout their life course, and adolescence-limited youths who behave antisocially only during their adolescent period. Also shown are typical peer network structures of the same eight individuals at different life stages, where blue nodes represent pro-social individuals and red nodes represent antisocial individuals. Green nodes represent marginally pro-social individuals while yellow nodes represent marginally antisocial. Thick links between nodes indicate frequent/strong contacts between these individuals, whereas thin links between other nodes indicate infrequent/weak contacts between these other individuals. In this figure, we illustrate how their dispositions and social structure change as a result of individuals mimicking others more antisocial than themselves during the maturity gap, and individuals more pro-social than themselves after the maturity gap. This social mimicry causes the social network to change from one organized around the pro-social individuals at around age 5 to one organized around the antisocial individuals at around age 17, and thereafter back to one organized around the pro-social individuals in adulthood.
At each time step, agents affect each other’s antisocial levels according to their connection strengths. The change in the antisocial level of agent idue to agent jis proportional to the connection strength Aijand the difference between the antisocial levels of agent iand agent j. We introduce the proportionality constant cto prevent the antisocial levels from changing too abruptly. Mathematically this reads
Moffitt’s theory of delinquency suggests that at-risk youths can be divided into two groups, the adolescence- limited group and the life-course-persistent group, predetermined at a young age, and social interactions between these two groups become important during the adolescent years. We built an agent-based model based on the microscopic interactions Moffitt described: (i) a maturity gap that dictates (ii) the cost and reward of antisocial behavior, and (iii) agents imitating the antisocial behaviors of others more successful than themselves, to find indeed the two groups emerging in our simulations. Moreover, through an intervention simulation where we moved selected agents from one social network to another, we also found that the social network plays an important role in shaping the life course outcome.
Juvenile delinquency is prevalent in cities [1, 2], perhaps due to the fact that cities create high social inequality, where the rich gets richer, while the poor remains poor [3, 4]. Neither social inequality nor delinquency is desirable, and both carry social costs beyond economic terms. As we struggle to find effective solutions to the problem of social inequality, which may in turn solve the problem of delinquency, the world rapidly urbanizes. It is projected that by 2050, 67.2% of the world’s population will live in cities[5]. Therefore, if we do not start finding solutions soon, the problem of juvenile delinquency will become ever more critical as we approach 2050. Another reason for urgency is the increasing likelihood that the socially disenfranchised delinquents may feed into religious self-radicalisation [6–8].
calculate for each agent ithe influences of its peers j≠ i, dij(t) = cAij(t)(ej(t)−ei(t)), according to Eq (1);