2. INTRODUCTION
• Development perspective roots in mainstream criminology and positivist social science and studies the
relationship between biological, psychological, and social factors and offending across the life course, from
conception to death.
• A foundation assumption is that the ‘baggage’ people carry from the past – the continuing effects of earlier
experiences such as a happy childhood or sexual abuse – affect the ways they behave in the present.
• Thus developmental criminologists reject traditional approaches that emphasize between-group differences
in favor of a study of within-individual changes in offending in relation to changes in many other factors.
• The field has been dominated by quantitative methods that aim to measure relationships between
developmental processes and offending.
3. LATENT
• This theory of criminology states that certain personality traits can predispose one to crime.
• It has roots in Michael Lombroso’s which states that criminals are throwbacks to a more primality, both
physically and mentally.
• It holds that some underlying condition present at birth or soon after controls behavior. Suspect traits include
low IQ, impulsivity, and personality structure.
• Latent traits are thought to be stable and persistent personality characteristics that will always be present if a
person has them.
• Examples: genetic abnormalities, defective social intelligence, brain function issues and impulsive behavior
4. PROPENSITY
• The criminal propensity perspective is concerned with the stable individual differences among the
population that increase the likelihood of offending.
• This approach focuses on the criminal activity (or criminal career) of offenders, that is, the onset,
persistence, and desistance of offending over time.
• On the contrary, the opportunity approach states that crimes are determined by situational,
contextual, and opportunity factors.
• More specifically, this approach focuses on the situational, cognitive, emotional, and behavioral
aspects of offenders prior to, during, and after a criminal event.
5. LIFE COURSE
• The life course perspective is a broad approach that can be used in a variety of subject matters,
such as psychology, biology, history and criminology.
• As a theory, the denotation establishes the connection between a pattern of life events and the
actions that human perform.
• In the criminology field, life course theory is used as a backbone (or starting branch) for an
assortment of other theories that are less broad and more specific.
• The history of the theory partially stems from 1920’s theorist, Karl Mannheim, who wrote the ground
breaking dissertation, the Sociological Problem of Generalizations.
6. • Although, Mannheim does not explicitly generate a full-fledged theory, he demonstrates the findings of how the human
experiences, specifically undergone in childhood, shape their ultimate outcome, he later goes on to note these outcomes
will be passed from generation to generation concluding that past generation form the further generations.
• Life-course theory’s attempt to explain why certain individuals are more prone to a life of a crime while other’s have
lower probability.
• Thus, these factors force consistent interaction between individuals and their surroundings that fundamentally create a
particular lifestyle that could lead to a life of crime if these factors are negative.
• In general, the accepted notion is that 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.
• In regards to criticism of the theory, the question that has arouse is “whether life-course criminology has produced new
general theories or rather represents ways of pulling in concepts and proportions from exhausting theories at different
ages or stages of life”.
7. END OF THE MODULE!!!
Goodluck for your Final Exam guys, Hoping
you learned a lot from me!! Modu Chukahaeyo
