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P. Lussier
Mulvey, 2009 ). In fact, research has shown that there are distinct patterns of personality
development that are associated with distinct offending patterns over life
course (Morizot & Le Blanc, 2005 ).
The Inexorable Age Effect
The age–crime curve and the aging out effect were interpreted differently by Hirschi
and Gottfredson ( 1983 ). They argued that the (a) age–crime curve is invariant across
individuals; (b) that the age–crime association is robust across time, place, and social
condition; (c) that age has a direct effect on crime, and (d) that conceptualization of
the age effect is largely redundant. Hence, unlike the Gluecks and their maturational
hypothesis, Hirschi and Gottfredson argued that age has a direct effect on crime and
desistance. They later added that, while the propensity to commit crime remains relatively
stable throughout life course, offending declines with age due to the inexorable
aging of the organism (Gottfredson & Hirschi, 1990 ). In other words, the
desistance from crime is the result of a biological process that need not to be
explained further. From this standpoint, aging affects offending participation the
same way it affects cognitive performance and memory, performance in sports,
scholarly productivity, and other age-dependent behaviors. Hence, they asserted that
life events and transitions such as education, employment and marriage have no or
little impact on desistance. These assertions, however, have been criticized on various
grounds. Farrington ( 1986 ), for example, presented data suggesting that the peak
of offending in middle adolescence followed by a rapid drop off from middle adolescence
to early adulthood was a product of modern society and the emergence of a
new developmental stage, that is, adolescence. Greenberg ( 1985 ) and Moffitt ( 1993 )
also proposed alternative explanations of the age–crime curve. Of importance,
Moffitt ( 1993 ) as well as Blumstein, Cohen, and Farrington ( 1988 ) argued that the
age-effect was not invariant across individuals. According to this view, a subgroup of
individuals, chronic offenders, did not experience the same drop in offending rate in
adulthood as other did. As a result, some suggested that the maturation effect did not
appear to be as prevalent among chronic, serious and violent offenders as it appears
to be in the general population of juvenile offenders (e.g., Tolan & Gorman-Smith,
1998 ). Maruna ( 2001 ), however, argued that the age-effect is somewhat overstated
considering that it is more pronounced for official (e.g., arrest) than self-reported
measures of offending. With age, Maruna hypothesized that individuals become
more adept at not being caught or they slow down their criminal activity to a level at
which they rarely get apprehended and/or they switch to less risky offenses, such as
white-collar crimes. If they do get caught, they spend more time incarcerated
Cognitive Changes and Self-Identity Transformation
Another line of research proposes that within- individual subjective changes are key
to the process of desistance from crime and delinquency. In this oft-cited study,
Shover and Thompson ( 1992 ) reported observations collected from a sample of