ABSTRACT
In this chapter, McGee and Piquero provide an interesting complement to the previous chapter by Kennedy and Caplan. In contrast to a focus on crime patterns at particular places, McGee and Piquero discuss individual-level crime patterns by focusing on the utility of an emergence framework when studying criminal careers. Specifically, they demonstrate that a focus on the interaction of a person and his environment, as well as the feedback effects of such interactions, can shed important insight on onset, persistence, and desistence in offending careers. Moreover, they highlight how interactions may produce differential results depending on an individual’s age and social position in life. In doing so, McGee and Piquero suggest that the crime emergence framework is as useful for researchers focused on individual-level offending patterns as it is for those interested in forecasting crime in particular social circumstances or environmental locations.
