Institutional
How has DLC research enhanced our understanding of antisocial behavior to date?
An individual’s development, from childhood to adulthood, is fraught with numerous challenges. Development and life-course criminology (DLC) has provided us with an elaborate explanation on the advancements in offending as well as the development of antisocial characters from childhood to adulthood. Furthermore, DLC analyzes various risks and protective factors associated with offenders and their antisocial traits (McGee et al. 2015). DLC research also highlights different life events and developmental courses that are necessary for explaining antisocial characteristics. Such results have been achieved by analyzing the stability as well as changes in the life cycle. Moreover, researchers have examined developmental and life course criminology, thereby facilitating its prevention. Moffit’s theory enhances an individual’s understanding of DLC by explaining the causes of antisocial behaviors.
According to Moffitt’s theory, individuals commit offenses for different reasons, rates, manners, and periods of their life cycle. For instance, life-course-persistent (LCP) is an offending group comprising of few people that exhibit aggressive as well as chronic characters within their lives. The risk factors emerge in childhood. The LCP experience psychological impairment and have disadvantaged families or neighbors. Research suggests that children having extreme deficits are born within poor families. They lack access to education and social relations; therefore, they are largely exposed to antisocial behaviors throughout their life cycle. Changing the criminal characters of the LCPs is difficult since they experience failure during adulthood, which compromises their success.
Adolescence-limited (AL) is another group of offenders in the society according to Moffatt’s theory. It comprises of youths that commit offenses during adolescence. Individuals that fall under this group commit offenses as a result of peer influence. On the other hand, others commit offenses because they feel are not being accorded adulthood privileges. Therefore, the AL engages in antisocial behaviors like promiscuous sex, alcoholism, and theft, to feel like adults. Furthermore, the AL offenses are short lived since most offenders desist from offending activities once they attain adulthood. Most youths stop offending while they reach adulthood unless they were addicted to their activities.
2. What are the critical questions and issues that require more research?
Critical issues and questions that require more research include the numbers or different categories of offenders. Such a research study may seek to establish whether there are different categories of offenders, if they have certain risks and protection factors, or if they are heuristically useful. However, the characteristics of the groups vary based on different sets of data and periods. Research should be conducted to understand the different characteristics of the offenders. Moreover, more research needs to be conducted to establish the risk factors that predispose individuals from different ages and cultural backgrounds to antisocial as well as criminal behavior.
Ideally, few theories and empirical studies examine the reasons why individuals of particular age groups are predisposed to criminal behavior while others are not. Therefore, extensive research studies should be conducted to establish some of the factors exacerbate criminal behavior. Additionally, The DLC theory does not emphasize the effects of demographic similarities and variations in criminal behavior (Moffitt, 1994). As a result, more research should focus on the effects of demographic variables on antisocial and criminal behavior. The theory also focuses on the understanding of criminal engagements while ignoring the offenders’ situational factors. Therefore, research needs to focus on understanding offenders as well as the strategies that can be used to transform their conditions.
DLC has played a crucial role in helping scholars and researchers to understand the various aspects of antisocial behaviors in the society. However, several questions pertaining offenders remain unanswered. Therefore, more research needs to be conducted to facilitate the understanding of offenders’ behaviors
References
McGee, T. R., Farrington, D. P., Homel, R., & Piquero, A. R. (2015). Advancing knowledge about developmental and life-course criminology. Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology, 48(3), 307-313.
Moffitt, T.E., 1994. Natural histories of delinquency. In Cross-national longitudinal research on human development and criminal behavior. New York: Springer Press.
