What Differentiates Life Course Theories From Other Criminological Perspectives, Essay Example

Criminology is a public scientific method of studying of crime as a private and societal phenomenon. As a science it consists of several theories, such as biological, moral development, psychopathic, poverty and other theories. “Criminology has always included age as a variable in crime and deviance and has long been interested in careers in crime and career criminals. Over the past two decades these issues have become encapsulated in life course criminology” (Akers, 2009). The main advantage of life course criminological theory is that it consists mostly of three criminological variables: age changes, careers and courses in criminal and unusual activities. With a clear conscience we can put in one row such criminological terms as age in a life course theory, class and race in Marxist’s theory and gender in feminists theory. Over the past years the life course theory has appeared to be a potentially mighty tool for comprehending criminal behavior. Differently from other theories, this assumption tries to clarify the pathways or lines of progress over the lifetime including working life, relations, family, confidence, and criminal behavior and particular life episodes of criminal behavior over the life time.

To draw a conclusion, I would like to mention that the life course theory had not brought anything new in criminology after extant theory, but had stimulated the attempts of theoretical integration.

References

Akers, R. L. “Social Learning and Life Course Criminology” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Criminology (ASC) <Not Available>. 2009-02-04 from http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p125441_index.html