More broadly, the emphasis on prediction and the idea of criminal propensity as a marker of persistent criminal character has long been part of the criminal justice system in everyday practice, but its use has evolved and arguably increased over time. The meaning of a prisoner’s prior criminal record is central in deciding the case for release. By this the writer meant that it is not just character that matters but also that it must be narrated and proven to officials tasked with making decisions on postprison release. Getting out of prison is increasingly likened to what one investigation into parole hearings in California called “an ordeal of the soul” (Slater 2020). It is not just who enters the criminal justice system that is at stake. A criminal justice reformer in Texas summarized the distinction this way: “The intent is to be tough on career criminals, and try to reform the others” (Stockman 2018). The group deemed “crime prone” or of “criminal character” is seen as most deserving of prison, with minor or nonviolent offenders pegged for rehabilitation or probation. Many proponents of ending mass incarceration, conservative and liberal alike, also assume that we can divide the criminal population into groups-one deserving of forgiveness, versus the perceived smaller group of career criminals or violent offenders. Character claims and criminal forecasts are used on both sides, prosecution and defense, at bail hearings, in asserting innocence or guilt at trial, and in determining sentences among those found guilty. Perhaps surprisingly, this idea is not limited to any one political or ideological position-it has general properties. 1 The state soon aimed to do so on a massive scale, helping drive what we now call mass incarceration.īoth historically and today, the tantalizing idea that individuals with a persistent criminal propensity produce the bulk of society’s problems, and that we can prospectively identify and then separate them, has exerted a powerful hold on both academics and the public. Wilson ( 1975) famously concluded that the facts on persistent criminality compelled the state to separate the innocent from the wicked. Injecting moral character into the national conversation, James Q. 1986), incipient “super predators” (Bennett, Dilulio, and Walters 1996), and what one study eventually dubbed “ravenous wolves” (Martinez et al. The concept of chronic offenders spurred efforts to identify “career criminals” (Blumstein et al.
Although classification of persistent criminals has a legacy going back at least to Cesare Lombroso ( 1911), the finding in Delinquency in a Birth Cohort that just 6 percent of males in a Philadelphia birth cohort committed over 50 percent of all offenses through age 18 was an intellectual turning point in the field (Laub 2004). Nearly 50 years ago, Marvin Wolfgang and colleagues ( 1972) brought the study of crime in a birth cohort and the idea of “chronic offenders” to the forefront of criminology. Developmental and life-course criminology should elevate the study of cohort differences in social change and, ultimately, societal character.
Multicohort studies provide a key strategy for doing so, inspiring a reconsideration of criminal propensity and policies premised on unchanging predictors of future criminality. Because crime over the life course is shaped by changing sociohistorical conditions, it must be studied as such. When we are thus matters as much as, and perhaps more than, who we are-despite law, practice, and theory privileging the latter. Entire cohorts of children have come of age in such different historical contexts that typical markers of a crime-prone character, such as being a chronic offender or having an arrest record, are as much a function of societal change as of an individual’s early life propensities or background characteristics, including classic risk factors emphasized in criminology. A life-course framework on cohort differences in growing up during these times of social change highlights large-scale inequalities in life experiences.
The social transformations of crime and punishment in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries challenge traditional conceptions of criminal propensity and character.
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