A Review of Research on the Taxonomy of Life-Course Persistent Versus Adolescence-Limited Antisocial Behavior
This chapter reviews ten years of research into a developmental taxonomy of antisocial behavior that proposed two primary hypothetical prototypes: life-course persistent versus adolescence-limited offenders. According to the taxonomic theory, life-course persistent offenders’ antisocial behavior has its origins in the neurodevelopmental processes beginning in childhood and continuing persistently thereafter. In contrast, adolescence-limited offenders’ antisocial behavior has its origins in social processes beginning in adolescence, and desists in young adulthood. According to the theory, life-course persistent antisocial individuals are few, persistent, and pathological. Adolescence-limited antisocial individuals are common, relatively transient, and near normative. The chapter shows that the adolescence-limited path is more strongly associated with delinquent peers, as compared against the life-course persistent path. However, one study that traced peer-affiliation trajectories concluded that peers were as influential for childhood-onset persistent offenders as for adolescent-onset offenders. The most direct test of the adolescence-limited etiological hypothesis was carried out in the Youth in Transition Survey of 2, 000 males.
