Compare methods

	Life-Course Criminology Analysis	Criminal Career Paradigm
Field	Criminology	Criminology
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	1993	1986
Originator	Robert J. Sampson & John H. Laub	Alfred Blumstein, Jacqueline Cohen, Jeffrey Roth & Christy Visher
Type	Theoretical framework and longitudinal analytic strategy for offending over the life course	Conceptual framework for decomposing offending over the life course
Seminal source	Sampson, R. J., & Laub, J. H. (1993). Crime in the Making: Pathways and Turning Points Through Life. Harvard University Press. ISBN: 9780674176058	Blumstein, A., Cohen, J., Roth, J. A., & Visher, C. A. (Eds.). (1986). Criminal Careers and 'Career Criminals' (Vols. 1–2). National Academy Press. ISBN: 9780309036887
Aliases	Age-Graded Theory of Informal Social Control, Sampson-Laub Life-Course Theory, Developmental Life-Course Criminology, Life-Course Theory of Crime	Criminal Careers Framework, Career Criminal Paradigm, Offending Career Approach, Blumstein Criminal Career Model
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.	The criminal career paradigm is a framework for studying offending as a longitudinal sequence in an individual's life rather than as undifferentiated aggregate crime. Codified by Blumstein, Cohen, Roth, and Visher in the 1986 National Academy of Sciences report, it decomposes crime into distinct dimensions — whether someone offends (participation), how often active offenders offend (frequency, λ), and the onset, seriousness, and duration of the career — each potentially with different causes.