Trajectories Of Offending

1554 Words7 Pages
Trajectories of Offending and Their Relation to Life Failure in Late Middle Age There is a well known rule of thumb when dealing with society and its problems. It can be worded in several ways but what it all comes down to is past behavior often dictates future action. In order to foresee future actions one must study the past and look for patterns. There have been countless studies conducted to observe people who have offended in various stages of their life and how it affects them as they approach middle age. Now, this theory may hold true when talking about society in general or major events, but how strong can it be when talking about an individual person? Man is more than capable of change. However, when certain factors are in motion, it is easy to predict future behavior from a convicted criminal. Everything in society is evolving and changing at a rapid pace. Not only does this apply to technology, but it applies to the ways in which data is collected and studied. Longitudinal studies have provided researches with greater information regarding their study. In this case it has given them more than adequate information regarding the topic at hand, which is how offending relates to life failure in middle age. According to Piquero, Farrington, Nagin, and Moffitt, “With the collection and aging of longitudinal data sets, researches have focused on identifying distinct developmental trajectories of offenders from childhood to adolescence to adulthood”(p.152). For every study there are always going to be those who challenge the initial theory. They may all come to the same conclusion, but the manner in which they came to it could be completely different. According to Piquero, Farrington, Nagin and Moffitt (2010), researches such as Gottfredson and Hirschi (1990) and Wilson and Herrnstein (1985), agree that offending in early life will indeed affect
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