Sampson And Laub's Age-Graded Social Control Theory
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5.0. Sampson and Laub (2009) age-graded informal social control theory
Sampson and Laub’s (1993) age-graded social control theory adopts a different stance in explaining the age-crime relationship and patterns of offending throughout the life-course. Therefore, this sheds a rather different light on trajectories of offending among young people. Based on findings from the analysis of data originating from a study conducted by Glueck and Glueck (1950) and a corresponding comparison group Sampson and Laub’s (1993) theory suggests that there are persistent individual differences in the propensity for offending that are the product of structural conditions and the effect of these structural on offending is mediated by informal social controls and…show more content… Sampson and Laub (1993) challenge the conventional emphasis on childhood factors that fail to give due consideration to desistance, or factors that change the individuals later in life. Additionally, they are critical of the traditional development theories for disregarding the mediating process of informal social control between structural/personality factors and crime. The major hypothesis of informal age-graded social control theory is the proposition that structural factors mediated by informal social control processes influence crime and deviance over the life-course. Sources of informal social control, such as family, schools, peers, siblings, spouses and employment may alter deviant behaviour at any point during the life-course of the life-span of…show more content… Being young and lacking responsibilities may mean that an individual may choose to take a particular criminal path because of the consideration that they have nothing to lose. However, major life events in a young people’s life such accepting a job and wanting to keep that job may bring about attachment to society and conformity to social norms, thus forcing that individual to desist from