The social transformations of crime and punishment in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries challenge traditional conceptions of criminal propensity and character. A life-course framework on cohort differences in growing up during these times of social change highlights large-scale inequalities in life experiences. 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. When we are thus matters as much as, and perhaps more than, who we are—despite law, practice, and theory privileging the latter. Because crime over the life course is shaped by changing sociohistorical conditions, it must be studied as such. Multicohort studies provide a key strategy for doing so, inspiring a reconsideration of criminal propensity and policies premised on unchanging predictors of future criminality. Developmental and life-course criminology should elevate the study of cohort differences in social change and, ultimately, societal character.

中文翻译：

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重新思考犯罪倾向和性格：群体不平等和社会变革的力量

20 世纪末和 21 世纪初犯罪和惩罚的社会变革挑战了传统的犯罪倾向和性质概念。一个关于在这些社会变革时期成长的群体差异的生命历程框架突出了生活经历中的大规模不平等。整个儿童群体都在如此不同的历史背景下长大成人，以至于犯罪倾向特征的典型标志，例如长期犯罪或有逮捕记录，既是社会变革的功能，也是个人早期生活倾向的功能或背景特征，包括犯罪学中强调的经典风险因素。当我们因此与我们是谁一样重要，甚至可能更重要时——尽管法律、实践和理论赋予后者特权。因为生命历程中的犯罪是由不断变化的社会历史条件塑造的，所以必须对其进行研究。多队列研究为此提供了一个关键策略，激发了对犯罪倾向和政策的重新考虑，这些政策的前提是对未来犯罪行为的不变预测。发展和生命历程犯罪学应该提升对社会变化以及最终社会特征的群体差异的研究。