Shared Beginnings, Divergent Lives: Delinquent Boys to Age 70

by Laub, Robert J. Sampson

This book analyzes newly collected data on crime and social development up to age 70 for 500 men who were remanded to reform school in the 1940s. Born in Boston in the late 1920s and early 1930s, these men were the subjects of the classic study Unraveling Juvenile Delinquency by Sheldon and Eleanor Glueck (1950). Updating their lives at the close of the twentieth century, and connecting their adult experiences to childhood, this book is arguably the longest longitudinal study of age, crime, and the life course to date.

John Laub and Robert Sampson's long-term data, combined with in-depth interviews, defy the conventional wisdom that links individual traits such as poor verbal skills, limited self-control, and difficult temperament to long-term trajectories of offending. The authors reject the idea of categorizing offenders to reveal etiologies of offending--rather, they connect variability in behavior to social context. They find that men who desisted from crime were rooted in structural routines and had strong social ties to family and community.

By uniting life-history narratives with rigorous data analysis, the authors shed new light on long-term trajectories of crime and current policies of crime control.

Genres: Nonfiction, Academic, Crime

352 pages, Paperback

First published December 30, 2003

Reviews

[Jessica Cooper · Rating 5 out of 5]

An emotional and impressive work, and research that deserves serious respect.

[Birdy · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you read Sampson and Laub's "Crime in the Making," you should follow up with this book. Laub takes the time in the first chapter to address critics of Crime in the Making, and describe in detail an update on the age-graded theory of crime. The analysis in this text is also interesting, because they include older offenders (a side interest of mine woot woot-biased my rating from 3 to 4 sorry not sorry). You can also get the same overview in Laub's published journal articles (if you don't have a University account that allows access for free, check researchgate). For a quantitative text it is fairly straight forward and easy to digest. Getting the most out of this book probably does require some statistical background in either research design or undergraduate level stats and review of social control theory on wikipedia (you developmental psych people may be very unsatisfied and wonder-um? where's the "development" in this so-called "life-course/development theory"???? hmmm-you're not wrong. But it is sociology text).

Key findings: Using the Glueck data, Laub and Sampson find that the main trajectories from Crime in the Making still hold. The major turning points of interest for this sample (which, is old and connected by important historical contexts) are still quality marriage, positive military experience, and employment. What is added in Shared Beginnings is the idea of human agency within life-course trajectories. For instance, some of the older men interviewed in this book described a strong "decision" to stop offending and get on track. For the very older men in the sample who continue to live disorganized lives, alcohol and social isolation play a key role.

[Jacquie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A qualitative account of their first book, crime in the making, Shared Beginnings, Divergent Lives details the growth and lives of the young boys, now adults, and their criminogenic tendencies. Some have desisted, some persisted, and some can't get a handle on who they want to be. This well-written account give insight to the criminal justice system and what theories might hold the answer as to why people commit crime.

[Cortney]

Interesting study. Long (maybe longer than necessary in my mind), but an overall interesting study on crime and how life courses can determine these.