Explaining When Arrests End for Serious Juvenile Offenders: Comments on the Sampson and Laub Study

In: The annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Band 602, Heft 1, S. 57-72

Abstract

This article comments on the article by Sampson and Laub in this issue. It congratulates them on locating and interviewing at approximately age seventy a large proportion of the survivors of the Glueck and Glueck (1968) study. It also points out problems, some resulting from the impact of privacy regulations. Other problems arose from the age of the subjects at follow-up, resulting in half being already deceased; from askingmento explain their desistance from crime, when they may not understand it themselves; and from the methods of testing childhood predictors of desistance. The study results apply only to serious juvenile delinquents and cannot be assumed to generalize to crime in general, including that which begins later and includes white-collar criminals. Preliminary studies to serve as the basis for such a broad approach are suggested.