John H Laub
Biographic Data
| ID | 229310 |
|---|---|
| NAME | John H Laub |
| GIVEN NAMES | John H |
| FAMILY NAME | Laub |
| SIGNATURE | LAUB J H |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Maryland, College Park |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 45 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 2126 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 44 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1981 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2021 |
| H-INDEX | 18 |
Moving the National Institute of Justice Forward: July 2010 through December 2012
Criminologists are often frustrated by the disconnect between sound empirical research and public policy initiatives. Recently, there have been several attempts to better connect research evidence and public policy. While these new strategies may well bear fruit, I believe the challenge is largely an intellectual one. Ideas and research evidence must guide public policy and practice. In this article, I present highlights from my tenure as the Dir…
In Memoriam Joan R. Petersilia (1951–2019)
This review synthesizes the historical literature on the criminalization and incarceration of black Americans for an interdisciplinary audience. Drawing on key insights from new histories in the field of American carceral studies, we trace the ...Read More
Social Control Theory: The Legacy of Travis Hirschi's Causes of Delinquency
The publication of Travis Hirschi's Causes of Delinquency in 1969 was a watershed moment in criminology. There are many reasons for the work's lasting influence. Hirschi carefully examined the underlying assumptions of extant theories of crime in light of what was known about the individual-level correlates of offending. He then developed critical tests of hypotheses derived from social control theory and competing perspectives and empirically as…
The Craft of Criminology
A Life-Course View of the Development of Crime
In this article, the authors present a life-course perspective on crime and a critique of the developmental criminology paradigm. Their fundamental argument is that persistent offending and desistance—or trajectories of crimp—can be meaningfully understood within the same theoretical framework, namely, a revised age-graded theory of informal social control. The authors examine three major issues. First, they analyze data that undermine the idea t…
Contemporary Masters in Criminology
Contemporary Masters in Criminology
Neighborhood Change and Crime in the Modern Metropolis
Few empirical studies of crime have treated neighborhoods as dynamic entities, by examining how processes of growth, change, and decline affect neighborhood rates of crime. From a small yet burgeoning collection of dynamic research related to population migration—including population loss, gentrification, development and demolition of public housing, home ownership and home foreclosure, and immigration—we know that neighborhood change, even when …
Marriage and Desistance from Crime in the Netherlands: Do Gender and Socio-Historical Context Matter?
Shared Beginnings, Divergent Lives: Delinquent Boys to Age 70
Good Kids from Bad Neighborhoods: Successful Development in Social Context
Shared Beginnings, Divergent Lives: Delinquent Boys to Age 70
Does Marriage Reduce Crime? A Counterfactual Approach to Within‐individual Causal Effects
Although marriage is associated with a plethora of adult outcomes, its causal status remains controversial in the absence of experimental evidence. We address this problem by introducing a counterfactual life‐course approach that applies inverse probability of treatment weighting (IPTW) to yearly longitudinal data on marriage, crime, and shared covariates in a sample of 500 high‐risk boys followed prospectively from adolescence to age 32. The dat…
When Prediction Fails: From Crime-Prone Boys to Heterogeneity in Adulthood
The authors respond to the commentaries of Michael Gottfredson and Lee Robins on their article “A Life-Course View of the Development of Crime.” They delve further into the effect of marriage on crime, potential problems with sampling and research design, and how their data speak directly to related hypotheses and theories
A Life-Course View of the Development of Crime
In this article, the authors present a life-course perspective on crime and a critique of the developmental criminology paradigm. Their fundamental argument is that persistent offending and desistance—or trajectories of crime—can be meaningfully understood within the same theoretical framework, namely, a revised agegraded theory of informal social control. The authors examine three major issues. First, they analyze data that undermine the idea th…
Seductions of Method: Rejoinder to Nagin and Tremblay's “Developmental Trajectory Groups: Fact or Fiction?”
The Life Course of Criminology in the United States: The American Society of Criminology 2003 Presidential Address
The field of criminology lacks a sense of its own history. To rectify this situation, I apply the concepts and framework of the life‐course perspective to the development of criminology as a discipline. Examining criminology in the United States over the last 100 years, I discuss three eras (or life‐course phases), intellectual continuities and turning points in the field. My thesis is that if we knew our history, we would realize that ideas abou…
Life‐course Desisters? Trajectories of Crime Among Delinquent Boys Followed to Age 70
Linking recently collected data to form what is arguably the longest longitudinal study of crime to date, this paper examines trajectories of offending over the life course of delinquent boys followed from ages 7 to 70. We assess whether there is a distinct offender group whose rates of crime remain stable with increasing age, and whether individual differences, childhood characteristics, and family background can foretell long‐term trajectories …
After the Epidemic: Recent Trends in Youth Violence in the United States
The epidemic of youth violence in the United States peaked in 1993 and has been followed by a rapid, sustained drop. We assess two types of explanation for this drop-those that focus on "cohort" effects (including the effects of abortion legalization) and those that focus on "period" effects (including the effects of the changing crack-cocaine trade). We are able to reject the cohort-type explanations yet also find contradictions with an account …
The onset of adult offending
Crime & Coercion: An Integrated Theory of Chronic Criminality
Understanding Desistance from Crime
The study of desistance from crime is hampered by definitional, measurement, and theoretical incoherence. A unifying framework can distinguish termination of offending from the process of desistance. Termination is the point when criminal activity stops and desistance is the underlying causal process. A small number of factors are sturdy correlates of desistance (e. g., good marriages, stable work, transformation of identity, and aging). The proc…
The Unprecedented Epidemic in Youth Violence
The epidemic of youth violence that began in the mid-1980s has been demographically concentrated among black male youths: the homicide-commission rate for this group increased by a factor of about 4.5. A number of patterns stand out: one of every four or five serious crimes of violence, and one of ten homicides, are committed by juveniles who are less than age eighteen; the proportion of arrests for violent crimes, however, that involved juvenile…
Trajectories of Change in Criminal Offending: Good Marriages and the Desistance Process
Building on R. J. Sampson and J. H. Laub, the authors draw an analogy between changes in criminal offending spurred by the formation of social bonds and an investment process. This conceptualization suggests that because investment in social relationships is gradual and cumulative, resulting desistance will be gradual and cumulative. Using a dynamic statistical model developed by D. S. Nagin and K. C. Land, they test their ideas about change usin…
Socioeconomic Achievement in the Life Course of Disadvantaged Men: Military Service as a Turning Point, Circa 1940-1965
Les AA. s'efforcent de comprendre en quoi le service militaire, particulierement en temps de guerre, peut affecter la vie socio-professionnelle d'un individu. Ils presentent un certain nombre de donnees collectees, aux Etats-Unis, entre 1940 et 1965 concernant de jeunes adultes issus de milieux defavorises dont un grand nombre de delinquants et qui ont fait leur service pendant la Deuxieme Guerre mondiale. Ils examinent l'influence de l'experienc…
Crime and Deviance over the Life Course: The Salience of Adult Social Bonds
Analyzing the natural histories of two samples of boys that differ dramatically in childhood delinquency, we test a model of crime and deviance over the life course. The first hypothesis is that childhood antisocial behavior predicts problems in adult development across a wide variety of dimensions. Second, we argue that social bonds in adulthood--to work and family--explain changes in crime and deviance over the life span. The longitudinal data …
Trajectories of Change in Criminal Offending: Good Marriages and the Desistance Process
Building on R. J. Sampson and J. H. Laub, the authors draw an analogy between changes in criminal offending spurred by the formation of social bonds and an investment process. This conceptualization suggests that because investment in social relationships is gradual and cumulative, resulting desistance will be gradual and cumulative. Using a dynamic statistical model developed by D. S. Nagin and K. C. Land, they test their ideas about change usin…
Understanding Desistance from Crime
The study of desistance from crime is hampered by definitional, measurement, and theoretical incoherence. A unifying framework can distinguish termination of offending from the process of desistance. Termination is the point when criminal activity stops and desistance is the underlying causal process. A small number of factors are sturdy correlates of desistance (e. g., good marriages, stable work, transformation of identity, and aging). The proc…
Turning Points in the Life Course: Why Change Matters to the Study of Crime
This article examines conceptual issues relating to continuity and change in crime over the life course. Building on past efforts, we first distinguish self‐selection from a cumulative, developmental process whereby delinquent behavior attenuates adult social bonds (e.g., labor force attachment, marital cohesion). We then conceptualize various types of change and argue that social capital and turning points are crucial in understanding processes …
A Life-Course View of the Development of Crime
In this article, the authors present a life-course perspective on crime and a critique of the developmental criminology paradigm. Their fundamental argument is that persistent offending and desistance—or trajectories of crime—can be meaningfully understood within the same theoretical framework, namely, a revised agegraded theory of informal social control. The authors examine three major issues. First, they analyze data that undermine the idea th…
The Link Between Offending and Victimization Among Adolescents
Prior research on victimization in the United States has generally neglected two key areas—victimization among juveniles and young adults and the connection between offending and victimization. The research presented here fuses these two concerns by examining the effect of delinquent lifestyles on the criminal victimization of teenagers and young adults. An examination of longitudinal data from the first five waves of the National Youth Survey su…
Life‐course Desisters? Trajectories of Crime Among Delinquent Boys Followed to Age 70
Linking recently collected data to form what is arguably the longest longitudinal study of crime to date, this paper examines trajectories of offending over the life course of delinquent boys followed from ages 7 to 70. We assess whether there is a distinct offender group whose rates of crime remain stable with increasing age, and whether individual differences, childhood characteristics, and family background can foretell long‐term trajectories …
Does Marriage Reduce Crime? A Counterfactual Approach to Within‐individual Causal Effects
Although marriage is associated with a plethora of adult outcomes, its causal status remains controversial in the absence of experimental evidence. We address this problem by introducing a counterfactual life‐course approach that applies inverse probability of treatment weighting (IPTW) to yearly longitudinal data on marriage, crime, and shared covariates in a sample of 500 high‐risk boys followed prospectively from adolescence to age 32. The dat…
Socioeconomic Achievement in the Life Course of Disadvantaged Men: Military Service as a Turning Point, Circa 1940-1965
Les AA. s'efforcent de comprendre en quoi le service militaire, particulierement en temps de guerre, peut affecter la vie socio-professionnelle d'un individu. Ils presentent un certain nombre de donnees collectees, aux Etats-Unis, entre 1940 et 1965 concernant de jeunes adultes issus de milieux defavorises dont un grand nombre de delinquants et qui ont fait leur service pendant la Deuxieme Guerre mondiale. Ils examinent l'influence de l'experienc…
Unraveling Families and Delinquency: A Reanalysis of the Gluecks' Data
One of the most influential studies in the history of criminological research is Sheldon and Eleanor Gluecks' Unraveling Juvenile Delinquency (UJD) (1950). The research design of the UJD study was strong, but the conceptual and statistical analyses performed by the Gluecks were ofen lacking in both methodological and theoretical rigor. As a result, the Gluecks' study has been criticized from both a methodological and ideological perspective. This…
Structural Variations in Juvenile Court Processing: Inequality, the Underclass, and Social Control
This article develops a macrolevel framework on inequality and juvenile court processing by integrating ideas drawn from conflict theory, research on urban poverty, and recent race-specific trends in drug enforcement. Using 1985 data for more than 200 U.S. counties, we examine how structural context—especially racial inequality and the concentration of “underclass” poverty—influence the formal petitioning, predisposition detention, and out-of-hom…
The Life Course of Criminology in the United States: The American Society of Criminology 2003 Presidential Address
The field of criminology lacks a sense of its own history. To rectify this situation, I apply the concepts and framework of the life‐course perspective to the development of criminology as a discipline. Examining criminology in the United States over the last 100 years, I discuss three eras (or life‐course phases), intellectual continuities and turning points in the field. My thesis is that if we knew our history, we would realize that ideas abou…
Crime in the making: Pathways and Turning Points Through Life
Sampson and Laub revisit Sheldon and Eleanor Gluecks' mid-century study of 500 delinquents and 500 nondelinquents from childhood to adulthood. They reanalyze the raw data and develop a theory of informal social control which acknowledges the importance of childhood behavior but rejects the implication that adult social factors have little relevance.
The onset of adult offending
The Sutherland-Glueck Debate: On the Sociology of Criminological Knowledge
During the 1930, Edwin Sutherland established the sociological model of crime as the dominant paradigm in criminology and as a result became the most influential criminologist of the 20th century. This article examines Sutherland's debate with Sheldon Glueck and Eleanor Glueck about the causes of crime and the proper focus of social science research. Previously unavailable correspondence and unpublished papers are examined along with published wo…
Neighborhood Change and Crime in the Modern Metropolis
Few empirical studies of crime have treated neighborhoods as dynamic entities, by examining how processes of growth, change, and decline affect neighborhood rates of crime. From a small yet burgeoning collection of dynamic research related to population migration—including population loss, gentrification, development and demolition of public housing, home ownership and home foreclosure, and immigration—we know that neighborhood change, even when …
Seductions of Method: Rejoinder to Nagin and Tremblay's “Developmental Trajectory Groups: Fact or Fiction?”
Social Control Theory: The Legacy of Travis Hirschi's Causes of Delinquency
The publication of Travis Hirschi's Causes of Delinquency in 1969 was a watershed moment in criminology. There are many reasons for the work's lasting influence. Hirschi carefully examined the underlying assumptions of extant theories of crime in light of what was known about the individual-level correlates of offending. He then developed critical tests of hypotheses derived from social control theory and competing perspectives and empirically as…
The Unprecedented Epidemic in Youth Violence
The epidemic of youth violence that began in the mid-1980s has been demographically concentrated among black male youths: the homicide-commission rate for this group increased by a factor of about 4.5. A number of patterns stand out: one of every four or five serious crimes of violence, and one of ten homicides, are committed by juveniles who are less than age eighteen; the proportion of arrests for violent crimes, however, that involved juvenile…
After the Epidemic: Recent Trends in Youth Violence in the United States
The epidemic of youth violence in the United States peaked in 1993 and has been followed by a rapid, sustained drop. We assess two types of explanation for this drop-those that focus on "cohort" effects (including the effects of abortion legalization) and those that focus on "period" effects (including the effects of the changing crack-cocaine trade). We are able to reject the cohort-type explanations yet also find contradictions with an account …
Ecological considerations in victim reporting to the police
Patterns of offending in urban and rural areas
An Analysis of Serious Crime by Young Black Women
This research focuses on a relatively unexplored phenomenon—black female juvenile offenders. Both theoretical and research work are weak or nonexistent regarding these offenders. This paper seeks to fill some of these gaps. In addition, this research effort draws on a source of data that has in frequently been adapted to study offenders, National Crime Survey (NCS) victimization data. Utilizing NCS data from 1973 through 1981, a comparative analy…
When Prediction Fails: From Crime-Prone Boys to Heterogeneity in Adulthood
The authors respond to the commentaries of Michael Gottfredson and Lee Robins on their article “A Life-Course View of the Development of Crime.” They delve further into the effect of marriage on crime, potential problems with sampling and research design, and how their data speak directly to related hypotheses and theories
Shared Beginnings, Divergent Lives: Delinquent Boys to Age 70
Ecological considerations in victim reporting to the police
Oral History and Delinquency: The Rhetoric of Criminology, by James Bennett
Patterns of offending in urban and rural areas
Criminology in the Making: An Oral History
Talking About Crime: Oral History in Criminology and Criminal Justice
Additional informationNotes on contributorsJohn H. LaubJohn H. Laub is Associate Professor of Criminal Justice at Northeastern University.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Academy of Criminal Justice Science in Louisville, Kentucky, on 25 March 1982, and portions of it are incorporated into his Criminology in the Making: An Oral History (1983). The author would like to thank both James Bennett and Ron Gre…
An Analysis of Serious Crime by Young Black Women
This research focuses on a relatively unexplored phenomenon—black female juvenile offenders. Both theoretical and research work are weak or nonexistent regarding these offenders. This paper seeks to fill some of these gaps. In addition, this research effort draws on a source of data that has in frequently been adapted to study offenders, National Crime Survey (NCS) victimization data. Utilizing NCS data from 1973 through 1981, a comparative analy…
Unraveling Families and Delinquency: A Reanalysis of the Gluecks' Data
One of the most influential studies in the history of criminological research is Sheldon and Eleanor Gluecks' Unraveling Juvenile Delinquency (UJD) (1950). The research design of the UJD study was strong, but the conceptual and statistical analyses performed by the Gluecks were ofen lacking in both methodological and theoretical rigor. As a result, the Gluecks' study has been criticized from both a methodological and ideological perspective. This…
Crime and Deviance over the Life Course: The Salience of Adult Social Bonds
Analyzing the natural histories of two samples of boys that differ dramatically in childhood delinquency, we test a model of crime and deviance over the life course. The first hypothesis is that childhood antisocial behavior predicts problems in adult development across a wide variety of dimensions. Second, we argue that social bonds in adulthood--to work and family--explain changes in crime and deviance over the life span. The longitudinal data …
The Link Between Offending and Victimization Among Adolescents
Prior research on victimization in the United States has generally neglected two key areas—victimization among juveniles and young adults and the connection between offending and victimization. The research presented here fuses these two concerns by examining the effect of delinquent lifestyles on the criminal victimization of teenagers and young adults. An examination of longitudinal data from the first five waves of the National Youth Survey su…
The Sutherland-Glueck Debate: On the Sociology of Criminological Knowledge
During the 1930, Edwin Sutherland established the sociological model of crime as the dominant paradigm in criminology and as a result became the most influential criminologist of the 20th century. This article examines Sutherland's debate with Sheldon Glueck and Eleanor Glueck about the causes of crime and the proper focus of social science research. Previously unavailable correspondence and unpublished papers are examined along with published wo…
Conventional and Delinquent Activities: Implications for the Prevention of Violent Victimization among Adolescents
While age is one of the most important correlates of an individual’s risk of violent victimization, research regarding the victimization of adolescents is relatively meager. Using two well-known national data sources and an analytical framework guided by lifestyle/routine activities theories, we describe the relationships between activity involvement and the risk of assault and robbery victimization among adolescents in the United States. Several…
Crime and Deviance in the Life Course
Criminological research has emphasized the strong relationship between age and crime, with involvement in most crimes peaking in adolescence and then declining. However, there is also evidence of the early onset of delinquency and of the stability of criminal and deviant behavior over the life course. In this essay we reconcile these findings by synthesizing and integrating longitudinal research on childhood antisocial behavior, adolescent delinq…
Crime in the making: Pathways and Turning Points Through Life
Sampson and Laub revisit Sheldon and Eleanor Gluecks' mid-century study of 500 delinquents and 500 nondelinquents from childhood to adulthood. They reanalyze the raw data and develop a theory of informal social control which acknowledges the importance of childhood behavior but rejects the implication that adult social factors have little relevance.
Crime in the Making: Pathways and Turning Points Through Life
This explanation of crime and deviance over the life course is based on the re-analysis of a classic set of data: Sheldon and Eleanor Glueck's mid-century study of 500 delinquents and 500 non-delinquents from childhood to adulthood. More than five years ago, Robert Sampson and John Laub dusted off 60 cartons of the Gluecks' data that had been stored in the basement of the Harvard Law School and undertook a lengthy process of recoding, computerizi…
Beyond Adolescence: Problem Behavior and Young Adult Development
Turning Points in the Life Course: Why Change Matters to the Study of Crime
This article examines conceptual issues relating to continuity and change in crime over the life course. Building on past efforts, we first distinguish self‐selection from a cumulative, developmental process whereby delinquent behavior attenuates adult social bonds (e.g., labor force attachment, marital cohesion). We then conceptualize various types of change and argue that social capital and turning points are crucial in understanding processes …
Structural Variations in Juvenile Court Processing: Inequality, the Underclass, and Social Control
This article develops a macrolevel framework on inequality and juvenile court processing by integrating ideas drawn from conflict theory, research on urban poverty, and recent race-specific trends in drug enforcement. Using 1985 data for more than 200 U.S. counties, we examine how structural context—especially racial inequality and the concentration of “underclass” poverty—influence the formal petitioning, predisposition detention, and out-of-hom…
Urban Poverty and the Family Context of Delinquency: A New Look at Structure and Process in a Classic Study
Crimes Through Time
Eleanor Touroff Glueck: An Unsung Pioneer in Criminology
It is a fact that the lives and works of female criminologists during the 20th century have not been explored with the same rigor as their male counterparts. Seeking to redress this imbalance, this paper describes the life and work of Eleanor Touroff Glueck. For this overview, we rely on published and unpublished papers found in the Glueck archives as well as interviews with staff members of the Gluecks' research team. Although recognizing her co…
Socioeconomic Achievement in the Life Course of Disadvantaged Men: Military Service as a Turning Point, Circa 1940-1965
Les AA. s'efforcent de comprendre en quoi le service militaire, particulierement en temps de guerre, peut affecter la vie socio-professionnelle d'un individu. Ils presentent un certain nombre de donnees collectees, aux Etats-Unis, entre 1940 et 1965 concernant de jeunes adultes issus de milieux defavorises dont un grand nombre de delinquants et qui ont fait leur service pendant la Deuxieme Guerre mondiale. Ils examinent l'influence de l'experienc…
The Unprecedented Epidemic in Youth Violence
The epidemic of youth violence that began in the mid-1980s has been demographically concentrated among black male youths: the homicide-commission rate for this group increased by a factor of about 4.5. A number of patterns stand out: one of every four or five serious crimes of violence, and one of ten homicides, are committed by juveniles who are less than age eighteen; the proportion of arrests for violent crimes, however, that involved juvenile…
Trajectories of Change in Criminal Offending: Good Marriages and the Desistance Process
Building on R. J. Sampson and J. H. Laub, the authors draw an analogy between changes in criminal offending spurred by the formation of social bonds and an investment process. This conceptualization suggests that because investment in social relationships is gradual and cumulative, resulting desistance will be gradual and cumulative. Using a dynamic statistical model developed by D. S. Nagin and K. C. Land, they test their ideas about change usin…
Crime & Coercion: An Integrated Theory of Chronic Criminality
Understanding Desistance from Crime
The study of desistance from crime is hampered by definitional, measurement, and theoretical incoherence. A unifying framework can distinguish termination of offending from the process of desistance. Termination is the point when criminal activity stops and desistance is the underlying causal process. A small number of factors are sturdy correlates of desistance (e. g., good marriages, stable work, transformation of identity, and aging). The proc…
Criminology (33 works) · Psychology (33 works) · Crime Patterns and Interventions (29 works) · Sociology (29 works) · Crime, Illicit Activities, and Governance (17 works) · Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis (17 works) · Political science (17 works) · Developmental psychology (13 works) · Life course approach (12 works) · Social Psychology (12 works)