Robert J. Sampson

To demonstrate the powerfully enduring effect of place, this text reviews a decade of research in Chicago, to demonstrate how neighborhoods influence social phenomena, including crime, health, civic engagement & altruism.

Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect

Great American City

This “landmark work in urban sociology” examines the influence of neighborhoods on social phenomena and in our lives (Claude Fischer, City & Community). For over fifty years numerous public intellectuals and social theorists have insisted that community is dead. Some would have us believe that we act solely as individuals choosing our own fates regardless of our surroundings, while other theories place us at the mercy of global forces beyond our control. These two perspectives dominate contemporary views of society, but by rejecting the importance of place they are both deeply flawed. Based on one of the most ambitious studies in the history of social science, Great American City argues that communities still matter because life is decisively shaped by where you live. To demonstrate the powerfully enduring impact of place, Robert J. Sampson presents here the fruits of over a decade’s research in Chicago combined with his own unique personal observations about life in the city, from Cabrini Green to Trump Tower and Millennium Park to the Robert Taylor Homes. He discovers that neighborhoods influence a remarkably wide variety of social phenomena, including crime, health, civic engagement, home foreclosures, teen births, altruism, leadership networks, and immigration. Even national crises cannot halt the impact of place, Sampson finds, as he analyzes the consequences of the Great Recession and its aftermath, bringing his magisterial study up to the fall of 2010. Following in the influential tradition of the Chicago School of urban studies but updated for the twenty-first century, Great American City is at once a landmark research project, a commanding argument for a new theory of social life, and the story of an iconic city. Praise for Great American City “After Great American City we will never be able to view cities in the same way again. This is one of those rare books that deeply affect how we think about the world. It teaches us afresh how the neighborhoods we live in affect us and the people around us. And there are also immense policy implications. Robert Sampson shows definitively how the fate of the urban poor is so very dependent on the communities in which they live.” —George Akerlof, Nobel Laureate in Economics, University of California at Berkeley “Great American City takes us from the grand theories conjured by its commanding title, down to the iconic street corner to see what it really means when windows are broken. This is a book of big, challenging, provocative, and inspiring ideas, as well as of meticulous, rigorous, and exhaustive data. Sampson has truly shown his shoulders big enough to be counted among Chicago’s most venerated social observers, as well as the most astute theorists of place.” —Mary Pattillo, Northwestern University

John H. Laub

Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences Robert J Sampson

ably the longest longitudinal study of age, crime, and the life course to date.

Delinquent Boys to Age 70

Shared Beginnings, Divergent Lives

This book analyzes newly collected data on crime and social development up to age 70 for 500 men who were remanded to reform school in the 1940s. Born in Boston in the late 1920s and early 1930s, these men were the subjects of the classic study Unraveling Juvenile Delinquency by Sheldon and Eleanor Glueck (1950). Updating their lives at the close of the twentieth century, and connecting their adult experiences to childhood, this book is arguably the longest longitudinal study of age, crime, and the life course to date. John Laub and Robert Sampson's long-term data, combined with in-depth interviews, defy the conventional wisdom that links individual traits such as poor verbal skills, limited self-control, and difficult temperament to long-term trajectories of offending. The authors reject the idea of categorizing offenders to reveal etiologies of offending--rather, they connect variability in behavior to social context. They find that men who desisted from crime were rooted in structural routines and had strong social ties to family and community. By uniting life-history narratives with rigorous data analysis, the authors shed new light on long-term trajectories of crime and current policies of crime control.

Thomas C. Castellano

Juvenile Criminal Behavior and Its Relation to Neighborhood Characteristics

Pathways and Turning Points through Life

Crime in the Making

John Laub

Life-course criminology has generated new energy and provoked sharp debate over competing ideas about the fundamental relationship between age and crime. A major catalyst for this debate – a 2003 American Society of Criminology (ASC) conference session entitled "Age, Crime, and Human Development: The Future of Life-Course Criminology," chaired by the editors of this issue – provided a springboard for this special issue of The Annals. With an eye to the future, this special issue provides critical debate on patterns of age and crime across the full life course – from infancy to late adulthood. Criminal career topics such as onset, continuation, termination, and career length are also discussed, along with the viability of developmental and taxonomic theories of crime, the suitability of existing data archives to test theories, and the prospects for marrying longitudinal and experimental studies. The distinguished papers that appear in this compelling collection include the full set of presentations from the inaugural Albany Symposium on Crime and Justice: "Developmental Criminology and Its Discontents: Offender Typologies and Trajectories of Crime," which took place in April 2005 and built upon the questions raised at the ASC conference session. In addition to the revised original papers and commentaries from the Albany symposium, this journal also includes never-before-published responses to the commentaries by each of the papers' authors. An overview by Alfred Blumstein of the central issues raised at the symposium and a book-review essay by Hans-Jürgen Kerner rounds out the volume and collectively provides a comprehensive representation of the provocative discussion ignited by these intriguing session panels. Centered on the fundamental discussions raised by the life-course paradigm in criminology, this historical issue of The Annals will potentially shape the theoretical and research agenda for years to come. It is an essential resource for scholars, researchers, and practitioners in the fields of criminology, sociology, psychology, criminal justice, aging, human development, and social policy. With a diverse set of viewpoints, this well-rounded and in-depth look at age, crime, and human development is a valuable contribution to existing studies and will serve as a foundation for future research into this lively topic.

Trajectories of Crime from Childhood to Old Age

Developmental Criminology and Its Discontents

Per-Olof H. Wikström

Integration of disciplines, theories and research orientations has assumed a central role in criminological discourse yet it remains difficult to identify any concrete discoveries or significant breakthroughs for which integration has been responsible. Concentrating on three key concepts: context, mechanisms, and development, this volume aims to advance integrated scientific knowledge on crime causation by bringing together different scholarly approaches. Through an analysis of the roles of behavioural contexts and individual differences in crime causation, The Explanation of Crime seeks to provide a unified and focused approach to the integration of knowledge. Chapter topics range from individual genetics to family environments and from ecological behaviour settings to the macro-level context of communities and social systems. This is a comprehensive treatment of the problem of crime causation that will appeal to graduate students and researchers in criminology and be of great interest to policy-makers and practitioners in crime policy and prevention.

Context, Mechanisms and Development

The Explanation of Crime

John H. LAUB

This book analyzes newly collected data on crime and social development up to age 70 for 500 men who were remanded to reform school in the 1940s. Born in Boston in the late 1920s and early 1930s, these men were the subjects of the classic study Unraveling Juvenile Delinquency by Sheldon and Eleanor Glueck (1950). Updating their lives at the close of the twentieth century, and connecting their adult experiences to childhood, this book is arguably the longest longitudinal study of age, crime, and the life course to date. John Laub and Robert Sampson's long-term data, combined with in-depth interviews, defy the conventional wisdom that links individual traits such as poor verbal skills, limited self-control, and difficult temperament to long-term trajectories of offending. The authors reject the idea of categorizing offenders to reveal etiologies of offending--rather, they connect variability in behavior to social context. They find that men who desisted from crime were rooted in structural routines and had strong social ties to family and community. By uniting life-history narratives with rigorous data analysis, the authors shed new light on long-term trajectories of crime and current policies of crime control. Table of Contents: Acknowledgments 1. Diverging Pathways of Troubled Boys 2. Persistence or Desistance? 3. Explaining the Life Course of Crime 4. Finding the Men 5. Long-Term Trajectories of Crime 6. Why Some Offenders Stop 7. Why Some Offenders Persist 8. Zigzag Criminal Careers 9. Modeling Change in Crime 10. Rethinking Lives in and out of Crime Notes References Index The accounts of individuals are quite riveting, and the book can be recommended strongly purely for the stories provided about diverse lives. However, the book is much, much more than that in terms of the serious challenge that the authors' findings and ideas present to some of the leading contemporary theories of both crime and development. A highly original and scholarly contribution of the highest quality. --Sir Michael Rutter, Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London ttitleShared Beginnings, Divergent Lives is an extraordinary work which shows the deep insights gained by studying the whole life course, beginning in childhood and ending in later life. With access to a rare data archive, the authors provide compelling evidence on the remarkably varied adult lives of teenage delinquents who grew up in low-income areas of Boston (born 1925-1935). The story behind these varied life paths and their consequences inspires fresh thinking about crime over the life course through models of life trajectories and vivid narratives that reveal the complexity of lives. --Glen H. Elder, Jr., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill This book redraws the landscape of developmental criminology that Laub and Sampson already have done so much to define, setting new standards and benchmarks along the way. The authors both provide new evidence for earlier conclusions and challenge prevailing assumptions and assertions, thereby reshaping the criminological research agenda for years to come. --John Hagan, Northwestern University

Robert J. Sampson

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