Akiva M. Liberman (ed), The Long View of Crime: A Synthesis of Longitudinal Research

Excerpt

Although the genealogy of longitudinal research on crime and delinquency stretches back roughly to the early-middle part of the 20th century (see Glueck and Glueck 1950), only in the past 25 years has the field of longitudinal crime and delinquency research grown exponentially in terms of the number of studies and the complexity of analyses. Major findings in recent longitudinal studies redefined criminologists’ understanding of the relationship between early childhood factors and later offending, offender trajectories and change over time, and the onset and desistance of criminal activity. Indeed, longitudinal studies prompted the development of new theories, such as Sampson and Laub’s (1993) age-graded social control theory and Thornberry’s (1987) interactional theory of delinquency. It is in the context of this recent explosion of research that Akiva Liberman’s The Long View of Crime: A Synthesis of Longitudinal Research seeks to capitalize on the rapidly accumulating numbers of longitudinal crime and delinquency studies. Acting as a type of non-statistical meta-analysis, a major goal of the work was to present and assess, in detail, those topics for which there is “a critical mass of studies” and therefore can contribute to relevant crime and delinquency policy (Liberman 2008, p. 10). In that frame of reference, Liberman’s effort in The Long View of Crime can be regarded as an excellent compilation of accumulated longitudinal research from some of the best authors in field. …