Rena Zito, assistant professor of sociology, and co-author Stacy De Coster of N.C. State University have published a chapter on life-course offending in Preventing Crime and Violence.
Rena Zito, assistant professor of sociology, and co-author Stacy De Coster of N.C. State University have published a chapter on life-course offending in “Preventing Crime and Violence.”
Nearly all adolescents engage in minor forms of misbehavior and crime, and the majority of them desist from such behaviors in the transition to adulthood. For some adolescents, however, early forms of misbehavior and crime portend a life course marked by persistent offending, criminal justice encounters, and extreme disadvantage.
De Coster and Zito’s chapter, “The Social Landscape of Intractable Offending from Adolescence to Adulthood among African American Males in Marginalized Contexts,” in “Preventing Crime and Violence,” emphasizes that understanding the sometimes intractable links between adolescent misbehavior and life courses requires stepping outside traditional developmental and life-course approaches to explore how social, cultural and penal landscapes shape the everyday experiences, identities and behaviors of those most vulnerable to life courses characterized by offending and incarceration.
They focus particular attention on the way in which the unprecedented move from social welfare inclusion to social control exclusion over the past several decades has shaped the life-courses of African-American males in marginalized communities most vulnerable to continuity in offending over the life-course.
“Preventing Crime and Violence” is edited by Brent Teasdale and Mindy Bradley and is published by Springer in December 2016, For more information on the book, go here.