Compare methods

	Life-Course Criminology Analysis	Turning Point Analysis
Field	Criminology	Criminology
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	1993	1998
Originator	Robert J. Sampson & John H. Laub	John H. Laub, Daniel S. Nagin & Robert J. Sampson
Type	Theoretical framework and longitudinal analytic strategy for offending over the life course	Within-individual analysis of life events that redirect offending trajectories
Seminal source	Sampson, R. J., & Laub, J. H. (1993). Crime in the Making: Pathways and Turning Points Through Life. Harvard University Press. ISBN: 9780674176058	Laub, J. H., & Sampson, R. J. (2003). Shared Beginnings, Divergent Lives: Delinquent Boys to Age 70. Harvard University Press. ISBN: 9780674011946
Aliases	Age-Graded Theory of Informal Social Control, Sampson-Laub Life-Course Theory, Developmental Life-Course Criminology, Life-Course Theory of Crime	Life-Event Turning Point Analysis, Turning Points in Offending, Life-Transition Analysis of Crime, Redirection-of-Trajectory Analysis
Related	5	3
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.	Turning point analysis examines how specific life events — marriage, stable employment, military service, parenthood — redirect an individual's offending trajectory. Developed within Sampson and Laub's life-course program, it uses within-individual and counterfactual designs to ask whether the same person offends less after a transition than before, isolating the causal imprint of life events from the stable traits that select people into them.