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5 - A three-dimensional, cumulative developmental model of serious delinquency
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- By Rolf Loeber, Professor of Psychiatry, Psychology, and Epidemiology Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic, School of Medicine, University of Pittsburgh, N. Wim Slot, Director of PI Research youth care and education in the Netherlands, Magda Stouthamer-Loeber, Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Psychology University of Pittsburgh
- Edited by Per-Olof H. Wikström, University of Cambridge, Robert J. Sampson, Harvard University, Massachusetts
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- Book:
- The Explanation of Crime
- Published online:
- 22 September 2009
- Print publication:
- 30 November 2006, pp 153-194
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- Chapter
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Summary
Modern criminological theories aim to explain crime, but they do so with a different emphasis on pathways to crime and ranges of explanatory factors (e.g., Thornberry & Krohn, 2002; Farrington, 2005; Wikström, 2005). Theoretical explanations of serious delinquency and violence are sometimes met with consistent empirical findings, and sometimes with equivocal results. On the one hand, meta-analyses indicate a high degree of replication of bivariate associations between explanatory/risk factors and later serious delinquency (e.g., Lipsey & Derzon, 1998; Howell, 2003). On the other hand, results from multivariate analyses based on multiple predictors vary greatly from study to study (Thornberry, 1997; Thornberry & Krohn, 2002; Farrington, 2005). This is partly caused by studies selecting relatively few of the known explanatory/risk factors of serious delinquency and under-emphasizing other factors. Although theories of antisocial and delinquent behavior often have several factors in common (e.g., juveniles' relationships with parents and peers), they differ in their relative emphasis on domains, settings, and details of explanatory factors, and the ways that these factors are interrelated (see above sources and chapters in Lahey, Moffitt, & Caspi, 2003 and in Farrington, 2005).
The theories almost always share three themes with the goals of explaining (i) antisocial and delinquent behavior over the life course, particularly in terms of prevalence, frequency, and severity of delinquent acts, (ii) individual differences in antisocial/delinquent behavior and developmental changes in these differences, and (iii) non-offending or low-level offending.