Question

Explain the age-graded theory, be sure to provide an example. Lastly, how does marriage impact potential criminal behavior?

Answer 1

The theory states that crime is more likely to occur when an individuals' bond to society is weakened or broken. In a dynamic approach, “individual behaviour is mediated over time through interaction with age-graded institutions” (Laub, et al., 2006), which vary across the life-span.Crime and delinquency are likely to occur when an individual's bond to society is weakened or broken. ... Use crime and the criminal law, then to control subordinates.Sampson and Laub find that attachments or social bonds in adulthood increase some individuals' social capital, leading to desistance from most types of deviant behavior, with the exception of men involved in drunkenness and violence. This paper links job and marital attachments in a side-by-side fashion to Bowlby's construct of infant-parent attachment. Men who become attached to coworkers or a spouse will increase their self-control; alternatively, as Gottfredson and Hirschi hypothesize, constraints in the form of job or marital attachments may prevent those with low self-control from offending.The simple fact is that married people are less likely to commit crime than single people. And, offenders who marry are less likely to reoffend, even if they have had long criminal careers.