amongst other factors, will have criminal careers that continue long into adulthood. Life course perspectives do not entirely deny the importance of childhood experiences, but argue that developmental theory is too deterministic in nature. Instead they argue that because humans have agency, every stage of the life course matters. Early childhood experiences remain important, albeit within a framework of cumulative disadvantage, and attachments later on in life can determine whether an individual will be likely to offend or not. Developmental perspectives The developmental perspective aims to explain the age-crime curve by two qualitatively distinct types of people and their behavioural trajectories; adolescence-limited (those who start their criminal career in adolescence and desist from crime before adulthood) and life-course persistent (those who begin anti-social behaviour in adolescence and continue this criminal behaviour into adulthood). Attachment theory has been used to identify differences between these two trajectories. Life-course persistent offenders start with disrupted attachment relationships in their childhood, which drives a disordered personality and long term antisocial behaviours and criminal careers. By contrast, adolescence-limited offenders do not have disrupted family bonds and are described as having healthy pre-delinquent development. Life-course perspectives The life-course perspective argues that individuals are not automatically assigned to a category in a dual taxonomy. Instead, there are within-individual changes in criminality, due to human agency. Individuals who have insecure attachment styles in childhood can therefore later create meaningful social ties and thereby desist from crime, allowing changes to criminality at different stages in the life course. Types of offenses Since early childhood relationships can influence interpersonal relationships throughout the lifespan, attachment theory has been applied in research into particular crimes, particularly those which tend to occur within close relational ties. Disrupted attachment patterns from childhood have been identified as a risk factor for domestic violence. These disruptions in childhood can prevent the formation of a secure attachment relationship, and in turn adversely affecting a healthy way to deal with stress. In adulthood, lack of coping mechanisms can result in intense conflict resulting in violent behaviour. Bowlby's theory of functional anger states that children signal to their caregiver that their attachment needs are not being met by use of angry behaviour. This has been extended to theorize why domestic violence occurs; an adult with consistent experience of insecure attachment may use physical violence to express their attachment needs not being met by their partners. This perception of low support