An agency graded theory of crime. An integrated explanation of the onset and endphase of youth crime.

Criminological theory has primarily taken on the task of examining ‘determining’ features – actors’ so called structure – as causal factors forcrime. The individual actor amid of this causality and his ‘choice’ to commit crime – captured by the notion of human agency – are however obscured from these etiological explanations. Nevertheless, the criminal actor’s choice – or responsibility – is actually one of criminal law’s mostessential premises. As an illustration of both, juveniles are withdrawnfrom the criminal justice system because of their supposedly diminishedcapacities. This doctoral research aims to counterbalance and complement criminological theory by means of a theoretical and empirical framework on the role of human agency in actors’ criminal trajectories. Furthermore, this inquiry seeks to provide a new approach and input towardsthe debate on criminal responsibility and the age differentiation in criminal law systems. Besides an extensive literature research and a circumscribed comparative law research, the project addresses these central research topics empirically by means of a cross-sectional quantitative and qualitative study.