ABSTRACT
The intellectual move we take in this chapter is to elucidate the life-course implications of a general age-graded theory of crime. In doing so we depart from the modus operandi of most developmental criminological theory by looking at changes in criminal behavior through a common theoretical lens that we have built through a longstanding inquiry (Sampson & Laub, 1993; Laub & Sampson, 2003). The growing tendency in developmental criminology is for greater specificity, not generality, manifested most noticeably in moves to subdivide the offender population and characteristics of the so-called criminal career, apportioning bits and pieces to different theoretical positions and different causal influences. Hirschi (1979) once called this the end–to-end or side-by-side strategy of theoretical integration.
