Crime in the Making: Pathways and Turning Points through Life

by Sampson

This new explanation of crime over the life course provides an important foundation for rethinking contemporary theory and criminal justice policy. It is based on the reanalysis of a classic set of Unraveling Juvenile Delinquency , Sheldon and Eleanor Gluecks’ mid-twentieth-century study of 500 delinquents and 500 nondelinquents from childhood to adulthood. Several years ago, Robert Sampson and John Laub dusted off sixty cartons of the Gleucks’ data that had been stored in the basement of the Harvard Law School. After a lengthy process of recoding and reanalyzing these data, they developed and tested a theory of informal social control that acknowledges the importance of childhood behavior but rejects the implication that adult social factors have little relevance.

Genres: Nonfiction, Crime, Academic

319 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1993

Reviews

[Lashaan Balasingam · Rating 3 out of 5]

This theoretical book was very heavy on data. You could find a table with a bunch of results from statistical analysis' on every other page. While the researchers behind this got their hands on some very interesting data and managed to re-analyse them to come up with a very important theoretical advancement in criminology, I have to give it to them for taking on such a huge task by putting in so much dedication. Bringing forth a life-course perspective on age and informal social control as something relevant is something definitely worth appreciating. Thanks to these folks, so much research can be done to advance our knowledge and understanding of pathways and turning points through the life of individuals.

P.S. Full review to come.

Yours truly,

Lashaan | Blogger and Book Reviewer
Official blog: http://bookidote.wordpress.com

[Laura · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book could have been 150 pages less to still make the same argument for their theory.

[Tj Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very technical, not an easy read. There are some good conclusions in there but I felt like some of the data, tables and statistical models could've been put in an appendix.