A General Personality and Cognitive Social Learning Perspective of Criminal Conduct: Summary and Conclusions

Early and Late Starters. The developmental criminologists have shown that there is considerable value in recognizing two major sets of offenders: the early starters, who tend to persist in their criminal activity, and late starters, who tend to desist. Of course, the “life-course-persistent” and the “adolescent-limited” typologies hide the fact that many within either group will show different patterns of being in and out of crime at different times.