A Multi-Level Examination of Life-Course Offending Trajectories: Implications for a Theoretically Integrated Model for Explaining Criminal Behavior

Macro-level research evidencing the relationship between communities and crime dates date back to the early ecological work of Park and Burgess and later further developed by Shaw and McKay into what is commonly referred to as social disorganization theory. In contrast, micro-level theories such as Sampson and Laub’s theory argues that individual pathways of offending can be altered by life transitions such as marriage and employment. Comparatively, Moffitt’s taxonomy asserts that there are two theoretically distinct groups of offenders, where one group displays an adolescent-limited type of offending and the other group are considered to be life-course-persistent or chronic offenders. Results from this study, relying on official data from two large U.S.-based birth cohorts, yielded varying levels of support for all of the theoretical frameworks mentioned above. Yet, once multinomial logistic regression models were estimated incorporating the individual-level and neighborhood-level effects there was evidence of mediation. Implications and directions for future research are also discussed