Introduction and overview of Sampson and Laub’s life-course theory
As a discipline, criminology has traditionally been dominated by theories that identify social influ- ences on human behavior. For this reason, theories of crime have almost exclusively focused on the “social” world when trying to explain criminal activity. Theoretical explanations of crime almost always fit into one of the “big three” theories: control theory, strain theory, or cultural deviance theories. Recently, however, a small group of criminologists have begun to investigate the ways in which individual differences related to genetic and biological factors play a role in the etiology of antisocial behavior. This line of investigation is referred to as biosocial criminology. Research in the areas of life-course criminology (Sampson and Laub’s book) overlaps considerably with biosocial criminology (e.g., Wright, Tibbetts, & Daigle’s book and the other required readings). Thus, your
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demonstration project will be an in-depth analysis of the ways in which a traditional life-course theory (Sampson and Laub) can (1) be integrated to incorporate evidence from genetic research (all readings other than Sampson and Laub) and (2) be used to make progressive and potentially effective policies to reduce criminal activity in the future.
The general questions/issues to be addressed in your project are outlined above. In order to address these points you will first have to cover a number of specific topics; therefore, your project should be between 20 and 30 pages in length (excluding the title page and references section) and will be arranged in the following manner:
I. Introduction and overview of Sampson and Laub’s life-course theory
In this section you will outline the details of Sampson and Laub’s life-course theory of crime. This section should include a discussion of the theory as well as a discussion of the relevant evidence to support the theory.
II. Overview of biosocial research into human behavior
Here, you will rely on Wright, Tibbetts, and Daigle’s text to guide your description of the available research into the biosocial underpinnings of human behavior. While you do not need to integrate the biosocial literature with Sampson and Laub’s theory in this section, you may choose to provide critiques of Sampson and Laub’s theory by pointing out their omission of certain things such as the importance of genetic factors in human behavioral development.
III. Integration of Sampson and Laub’s theory with biosocial research
This section will allow you to make direct links between Sampson and Laub’s theory and the biosocial research discussed by Wright, Tibbetts, and Daigle (and the other research articles).
IV. Policy implications
Finally, you will end the paper with a discussion of some progressive and realistic policy implications that can be drawn from your integrated version of Sampson and Laub’s theory. In other words, what sort of policies could a criminologist develop to help stem antisocial behavior in American society? By “progressive” and “realistic” I mean for you to derive policies that are humane and that could reasonably be incorporated into law without any harm to human life and without imposing exorbitant costs on American taxpayers. You may find it useful to focus on one of the three broad points of the lifespan–childhood, adolescence, or adulthood–when developing your policy discussion
V. Conclusion
In this section you will provide a summary of the main points of your project and some concluding statements about the policy implications of the approach you chose to discuss.
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