Study title

Since February 2010, the longitudinal research study The Stockholm Life Course Project: Life-Courses and Crime In the Swedish Welfare State Through Half a Century is conducted at the Department of Criminology. The project consists of two research blocks, a quantitative and a qualitative, and is a follow-up study of three existing research populations. The Stockholm Life Course Project is a nearly unique project, conducted with the purpose of studying the life courses of individuals with and without delinquent background. The main purpose of the project is to explore and understand the life course processes surrounding onset, persistence, desistance and intermittency of offending. Specifically, the project is focused around five themes: 1) The processes, factors, events and turning points through the life course, which are of importance for understanding the individual’s criminal career. 2) The importance of different welfare structures for life courses processes of criminal offending and other norm-breaking behavior. 3) The relationship between physical/mental health and criminal offending, as well as other norm-breaking behavior across the life course. 4) The “Social Heritage”, in the form of horizontal and vertical diffusion of criminal offending and other norm-breaking behavior. 5) The possibilities and limitations in predicting future offending and other norm-breaking behavior. The populations in The Stockholm Life Course Project will here be called the Clientele Boys, the Skå Boys and the SiS Youth. The Clientele Boys (b. 1943-1951) The population consists of four groups: 1) 192 delinquent boys with registered delinquent background prior to age 15 2) 95 matched controls (corresponding to every second delinquent boy), without registered delinquency prior to age 15 3) 96 “shadows” to the matched delinquent boys, and 4) 96 “shadows” to the matched controls. The 287 boys that make up group 1 and 2 went through extensive examinations during the 1960s,...