By Robert J. Sampson and L. Ash Smith

The social transformations of crime and punishment in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries challenge traditional conceptions of criminal propensity and character. A life-course framework on cohort differences in growing up during these times of social change highlights large-scale inequalities in life experiences. Entire cohorts of children have come of age in such different historical contexts that typical markers of a crime-prone character, such as being a chronic offender or having an arrest record, are as much a function of societal change as of an individual’s early life propensities or background characteristics, including classic risk factors emphasized in criminology. When we are thus matters as much as, and perhaps more than, who we are—despite law, practice, and theory privileging the latter. Because crime over the life course is shaped by changing socio-historical conditions, it must be studied as such. Multi-cohort studies provide a key strategy for doing so, inspiring a reconsideration of criminal propensity and policies premised on unchanging predictors of future criminality. Developmental and life-course criminology should elevate the study of cohort differences in social change and, ultimately, societal character.

Crime and Justice, Volume 50, 2021