Do government policies increase the likelihood that some citizens will become persistent criminals? Using criminological concepts such as the idea of a “criminal career” and sociological concepts such as the life course, this article assesses the outcome of macro-level economic policies on individuals’ engagement in crime. Few studies in political science, sociology, or criminology directly link macroeconomic policies to individual offending. Employing individual-level longitudinal data, this article tracks a sample of Britons born in 1970 from childhood to adulthood and examines (...) their offending trajectories through the early 1980s to see the effects of economic policies on individuals’ repeated offending. A model is developed with data from the British 1970 Birth Cohort Study that incorporates individuals, families, and schools and takes account of national-level economic policies. Findings suggest that economic restructuring was a key causal factor in offending during the period. Criminologists are encouraged to draw on ideas from political science to help explain offending careers and show how political choices in the management of the economy encourage individual-level responses. (shrink)

One of the most influential of the Victorian philosophers, Henry Sidgwick also made important contributions to fields such as economics, political theory, and classics. An active champion of higher education for women, he founded Cambridge's Newnham College in 1871. He attended Rugby School and then Trinity College, Cambridge, where he remained his whole career. In 1859 he took up a lectureship in classics, and held this post for ten years. In 1869, he moved to a lectureship in moral philosophy, the (...) subject where he left his greatest mark. Published posthumously in 1902, this work is Sidgwick's expository critique of the leading schools of thought that had emerged to rival his philosophy of utilitarianism, which he had presented previously in his masterpiece The Methods of Ethics. (shrink)