ABSTRACT
Over the past two decades criminologists have paid increasing attention to criminal life course research and trajectory explanations of criminal behavior. These ideas suggest that the human life course contains defining moments or turning points that shape participation in crime. This shaping process includes specifying the age of onset of crime and desistence from crime, and the analysis of early or late onset and desistence trajectories. Trajectory analysis adds to this approach the observation that the criminal life course can be divided into trajectories or pathways of development that reflect periodic offending, persistent offending, and early and late onset offending patterns among others (Jennings, 2010; Jennings, Maldonado-Molina, and Komro, 2010).
