2011
John H. Laub
Causes of crime across the life course.
Professors Laub and Sampson were lauded for their important contributions to life course criminology and the further development of the theory of social bonding. Their research shows how changes in criminal behaviour are influenced not only by the ageing process, but also by ‘turning point’ changes in social control (or their absence) over a person’s lifetime.John H. Laub
Born 1953 in the US. John H. Laub was professor at the University of Maryland (United States) and Director of the US National Institute of Justice (NIJ) at the time of the award.
Showed that an individual’s propensity to commit crime is influenced by key events – turning points – throughout the entire lifetime.Showed that an individual’s propensity to commit crime is influenced by key events – turning points – throughout the entire lifetime.
Research on the importance of social control for the criminal career
The 2011 prize was awarded to American scholars John H. Laub and Robert J. Sampson for their research on why and how offenders stop committing crimes – or not. Their research shows that even serious criminals can leave their criminal careers for good in connection with good turning points of social control in their course of life.
At the time the prize was awarded, Laub and Sampson had carried out one of the world’s longest cohort studies of criminals. The study involved 500 men born in the 1920s who had been sentenced to juvenile correctional facilities in Massachusetts in the late 1930s.
The study was originally initiated during the 1950s by Sheldon and Eleanor Glueck at Harvard Law School. Based on the study, the couple wrote several high-profile books on juvenile crime. The source material was eventually archived and stored in a basement at Harvard, where it remained until it was rediscovered by Laub in the mid-1980s.
Why offenders stop committing crimes
Laub and Sampson further researched the Glueck materials, searched additional archives, and carried out additional interviews with the study participants, who were by then nearly 70 years old. Their research was a breakthrough in terms of understanding how and why offenders stop committing crimes following key events – or so-called ‘turning points’ in their lives.
Key turning points in the subjects’ lives that affected their criminality were increases in social control from their social networks via marriage, military service, employment, and other life events that strengthened their social bonds. These findings have had a major impact on the field of criminology on a global scale.
In a major line of mid-range research on community social control, Sampson went on to develop cross-community comparisons of crime in Chicago. Using surveys and systematic observations of street behaviour, Sampson and his Chicago colleagues translated concepts of individual social control into the community level capacity to create and maintain ‘collective efficacy’ against crime and disorder.