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	Life-Course Criminology Analysis	Age-Crime Curve Modeling
Field	Criminology	Criminology
Family	Process / pipeline	Regression model
Year of origin	1993	1983
Originator	Robert J. Sampson & John H. Laub	Travis Hirschi & Michael Gottfredson; David Farrington
Type	Theoretical framework and longitudinal analytic strategy for offending over the life course	Nonlinear regression modeling of the age distribution of offending
Seminal source	Sampson, R. J., & Laub, J. H. (1993). Crime in the Making: Pathways and Turning Points Through Life. Harvard University Press. ISBN: 9780674176058	Hirschi, T., & Gottfredson, M. (1983). Age and the explanation of crime. American Journal of Sociology, 89(3), 552–584.
Aliases	Age-Graded Theory of Informal Social Control, Sampson-Laub Life-Course Theory, Developmental Life-Course Criminology, Life-Course Theory of Crime	Age-Crime Relationship Modeling, Age-Offending Curve, Aggregate Age-Crime Distribution, Crime-Age Profile Modeling
Related	5	4
Summary	Life-course criminology analyzes both continuity and change in offending across the entire life span, anchored in Sampson and Laub's age-graded theory of informal social control. The core claim is that social bonds that emerge at different ages — strong marriages, stable employment, military service — function as informal social control that can redirect criminal trajectories, so that change is possible at any age and is not fully determined by childhood propensity.	Age-crime curve modeling fits statistical functions to the well-known relationship between age and offending: crime rises sharply in adolescence, peaks in the late teens or early twenties, and declines through adulthood. Brought to prominence by Hirschi and Gottfredson's 1983 claim that this curve is invariant, and elaborated by Farrington, the modeling task is to capture its characteristic skewed, single-peaked shape and to debate what it implies about the causes of crime.