Overview. The life course approach examines an individual's life history and investigates, for example, how early events influenced future decisions and events such as marriage and divorce, engagement in crime, or disease incidence.
Broadly speaking, criminal behavior theories involve three categories of factors: psychological, biological, and social.
Developmental and life-course criminology (DLC) is concerned with three main issues: the development of offending and antisocial behavior, risk factors at different ages, and the effects of life events on the course of development.
Criminal behavior refers to conduct of an offender that leads to and including the commission of an unlawful act. Following are examples of case laws on criminal behavior: Sexual acts with a 10 year old child clearly constitute criminal behavior.
The goal of criminological theory is to help one gain an understating of crime and criminal justice. Theories cover the making and the breaking of the law, criminal and deviant behavior, as well as patterns of criminal activity. Individual theories may be either macro or micro.
The life course perspective looks at how chronological age, relationships, life transitions, and social change shapes the life from birth to death.
How is the life course defined in LC criminology? Defined as the interconnection of trajectories that are influenced by societal changes and short-term development transitions and turning points.
In general, developmental/life-course theories focus on offending behavior over time (e.g., trajectories) and on dimensions of the criminal career and make an effort to identify risk and protective factors that relate to life-course patterns of offending.Oct 2, 2015