ON THE ASSOCIATION AMONG SELF-CONTROL, CRIME, AND ANALOGOUS BEHAVIORS

In a paper previously published in Criminology (Paternoster and Brame, 1998), we used data from the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development to investigate the association between criminal activity and a set of so-called "analogous behaviors" (i.e., excessive drinking, smoking, gambling, involvement in accidents, etc.). Our reading of Gottfredson and Hirschi's (1990) self-control theory led us to hypothesize that both of these outcomes should depend on self-control. It seemed to us that the implication of this position is that self-control should explain any association that exists between involvement in criminal activity and involvement in analogous behaviors. Our analysis suggested that the association between criminal activity and analogous behaviors persisted even after conditioning on our measure of self-control. We drew the qualified conclusion that this result constitutes negative evidence for Gottfredson and Hirschi's self-control theory. In this paper, we reexamine the analytic framework on which we relied in our earlier work.     

SPECIALIZATION AND THE CRIMINAL CAREER*

Hirschi recently (1985) attempted to show the compatibility of social control with rational choice theory. This effort by Hirschi is noteworthy because, if successful, he could provide a connection between positive and classical sentiments which have traditionally appeared in contention. Hirschi fails, however, to achieve his objective and is hindered by what he views as the incompatible objectives of the two theories. Hirschi uses the recently accepted findings which indicate lack of specialization among persons involved in illegal behavior to illustrate the difference he sees between criminality and crime and, thus, the divergence between social control and rational choice. This paper attempts to remove the barrier found by Hirschi by providing improved measurement of specialization, such as has been proposed by Farrington (1986) and Klein (1984), and by placing the results in a more realistic criminal careers perspective than has been done in previous studies. This study utilizes data from the 1958 Philadelphia Birth Cohort. With information to age 26 for 27,160 persons, these data are perhaps better suited to investigate this topic than any available.     

EXAMINING THE PREVALENCE OF CRIMINAL DESISTANCE*

Criminological theorists and criminal justice policy makers place a great deal of importance on the idea of desistance. In general terms, criminal desistance refers to a cessation of offending activity among those who have offended in the past. Some significant challenges await those who would estimate the relative size of the desisting population or attempt to identify factors that predict membership in that population. In this paper, we consider several different analytic frameworks that represent an array of plausible definitions. We then illustrate some of our ideas with an empirical example from the 1958 Philadelphia Birth Cohort Study.     

THE FAMILIAL TRANSMISSION OF CRIMINAL CONVICTIONS*

This article examines the familial transmission of criminal convictions in families in the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development. Our main analyses focus on the 344 families in the Cambridge Study with two or more children. Criminal convictions were highly familial because convictions in a parent increased the risk of convictions in a child. Correlations between siblings were stronger in same-sex siblings (.45 to .50) than in opposite-sex ones (.27). Sibling correlations did not vary by birth order. Convictions of mothers and father correlated .55. Parent-child correlations were about the same as within-generation correlations between siblings. LISREL models were used to assess whether the effect of parental convictions on child convictions was direct or mediated through the quality of the family environment (i.e., supervision. child rearing, and family size). The best fitting LISREL models suggested a direct effect of parental convictions on child convictions, without any mediation by family environment. These data on fill biological siblings, however, did not permit separate estimation of family environmental versus genetic effects. One environmental effect appeared, however—a socialization effect among siblings; in families with three sons, there appeared to be mutual influence of one sibling on another. Also, regression models based on the boys suggested that family environmental variables did add to parental criminality.     

MENTORS AND CRIMINAL ACHIEVEMENT*

Much of the research focusing on conventional occupations concludes that mentored individuals are more successful in their careers than those who are not mentored. Early research in criminology made a similar claim. Yet contemporary criminology has all but ignored mentors. We investigate this oversight, drawing on Sutherland's insights on tutelage and criminal maturation and incorporating ideas on human and social capital. We argue that mentors play a key role in their protégés' criminal achievements and examine this hypothesis with data from a recent survey of incarcerated adult male offenders in the Canadian province of Quebec. In this sample, a substantial proportion of respondents reported the presence of an influential individual in their lives who introduced them to a criminal milieu and whom they explicitly regarded as a mentor. After studying the attributes of offenders and their mentors, we develop a causal framework that positions criminal mentor presence within a pathway that leads to greater benefits and lower costs from crime.     

REDEMPTION IN THE PRESENCE OF WIDESPREAD CRIMINAL BACKGROUND CHECKS*

Criminal background checks have now become ubiquitous because of advances in information technology and growing concerns about employer liability. Also, a large number of individual criminal records have accumulated and have been computerized in state repositories and commercial databases. As a result, many ex‐offenders seeking employment could be haunted by a stale record. Recidivism probability declines with time “clean,” so some point in time is reached when a person with a criminal record, who remained free of further contact with the criminal justice system, is of no greater risk than a counterpart of the same age—an indication of redemption from the mark of crime. Very little information exists on this measure of time until redemption and on how its value varies with the crime type and the offender's age at the time of the earlier event. Using data from a state criminal‐history repository, we estimate the declining hazard of rearrest with time clean. We first estimate a point of redemption as the time when the hazard intersects the age–crime curve, which represents the arrest risk for the general population of the same age. We also estimate another similar redemption point when the declining hazard comes “sufficiently close” to the hazard of those who have never been arrested. We estimate both measures of redemption as a function of the age and the crime type of the earlier arrest. These findings aid in the development of guidelines for the users of background checking and in developing regulations to enhance employment opportunities for ex‐offenders.     

THE STABILITY OF CRIMINAL POTENTIAL FROM CHILDHOOD TO ADULTHOOD*

This paper examines two alternative interpretations of the well-documented positive association between past and future criminal behavior. One is that prior participation has a genuine behavioral impact that increases the likelihood of future participation. The second is that there are stable, unmeasured differences in criminal potential across the population. Many general theories of crime can be interpreted as suggesting one of these interpretations. Based on an analysis of a panel data set that tracks a sample of males for over 20 years, the results suggest that the positive association is largely attributable to stable, unmeasured individual differences.     

PARTICIPATION AND FREQUENCY DURING CRIMINAL CAREERS ACROSS THE LIFE SPAN*

Recent advances and debates surrounding general and developmental as well as static and dynamic theories of crime can be traced to the 1986 National Academy of Science's Report on criminal careers and the discussion it generated. A key point of contention has been regarding the interpretation of the age–crime curve. According to Gottfredson and Hirschi (1986), the decline in the age–crime curve in early adulthood reflects decreasing individual offending frequency (λ) after the peak. Blumstein et al. (1986) claimed that the decline in the aggregate age–crime curve also could be attributable to the termination of criminal careers, and the average value of l could stay constant (or increase with age) for those offenders who remain active after that peak. Using data from the Criminal Career and Life Course Study—including information on criminal convictions across 60 years of almost 5,000 persons convicted in the Netherlands—and applying a two-part growth model that explicitly distinguishes between participation and frequency, the study outlined in this article assessed the participation–frequency debate. Results suggest that the decline in the age–crime curve in early adulthood reflects both decreasing individual offending participation and frequency after the peak, that the probabilities of participation and frequency are significantly related at the individual level, and that sex and marriage influence both participation and frequency.     

GENDER,STREETLIFE AND CRIMINAL RETALIATION*

Recent work in criminology has highlighted the central role of retaliation in shaping criminal violence in America's inner cities. Most of this work, however, has been based on male offenders. It has also failed to consider whether and how gender structures payback in real‐life settings and circumstances. In this paper, we analyze in‐depth, semi‐structured interviews with forty men and twelve women who recently engaged in one or more episodes of retaliatory violence to examine the ways in which gender shapes vengeance. We hope to provide an insider's view of how gender frames the context and dynamics of retaliatory events for both men and women.     

CRIMINAL ANTHROPOLOGY IN THE UNITED STATES*

Criminologists continue to debate fundamental issues about the nature of their work. Some of the issues were built into the field by the criminal anthropologists who founded it a century ago. By examining the work of major American criminal anthropologists—a nearly forgotten group—one can identify the origins of three enduring problems: criminology's difficulties in (1) establishing its disciplinary boundaries; (2) defining its methods: and (3) deciding whether its primary goal is crime control or the production of knowledge with no immediate use-value. The study of criminology's roots in criminal anthropology cannot settle these debates, but it can put them in historical perspective and clarify their substance.     

THE EFFECT OF CRIMINAL VICTIMIZATION ON A HOUSEHOLD'S MOVING DECISION*

Only a small body of research addresses the impact of criminal victimization on moving (Skogan, 1990; Taub et al. 1984). Knowledge of this under-researched relationship is important for three reasons. First, moving is costly to the victim both in monetary and psychological terms. Second, if a victimization-mobility relationship exists, then it may partially explain why people migrate to suburban areas from cities. Third, because residential mobility reduces social control that, in turn, potentially results in more crime, evidence that criminal victimization leads to more mobility may help explain a cycle that perpetuates disorder and neighborhood decline (Bursik and Grasmick, 1993; Horwitz, 1990; Miethe and Meier, 1994; Skogan, 1990; Skogan and Maxfield, 1981). This study uses a longitudinal version of the National Crime Survey that includes 22, 375 households to test the hypothesis that criminal victimization is associated with an increased probability that a household moves.     

THE EFFECT OF DROPPING OUT OF HIGH SCHOOL ON SUBSEQUENT CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR*

Sociological theories of delinquency offer rather divergent predictions concerning the effect of dropping out of high school on subsequent delinquent and criminal behavior. For example, strain theory suggests that dropping out decreases such behavior, especially for lower class youth, while social control theory suggests that dropping out should increase the chances of criminal activity. Moreover, empirical studies provide support for each of these views with the most influential study (Elliott and Voss, 1974) presenting evidence consistent with a strain perspective. The present investigation identifies methodological shortcomings in previous studies and reexamines the link between dropout status and subsequent criminal activity. Results indicate that dropping out of high school is positively associated with later crime, an outcome that is consistent with a control perspective.     

THE SIZE OF THE “CRIMINAL POPULATION”: THE PREVALENCE AND INCIDENCE OF ADULT ARREST*

The recent emphasis in criminological theory and research on “chronic offenders” assumes that involvement in crime is concentrated among a small group of offenders rather than being widespread in the population. To address this question, this study employs a longitudinal data base on criminal histories to estimate the prevalence of arrest—defined as the proportion of a population ever arrested—and the incidence of arrest—defined as the number of arrests incurred by those ever arrested—for an age cohort of young adults between the ages of 18 and 29. The results show that being arrested is a relatively common experience for young adults: nearly one-quarter of the entire cohort and one-third of the males in the cohort were arrested at least once. One of six males and two of five black males were arrested for an index offense. The data on incidence reveal the presence of a subset of “chronic offenders” who are responsible for a disproportionate number of arrests. However, defined in terms of three or more arrests for any offense, their numbers are smaller, but the data suggest it may be difficult to distinguish “chronic offenders” from “one-time” offenders because 60% do not recidivate. These findings suggest that the current preoccupation with chronic offenders may obscure the broader social structural factors that cause very large segments of the population to come into conflict with the law.     

THE JUVENILE PENALTY: A COMPARISON OF JUVENILE AND YOUNG ADULT SENTENCING OUTCOMES IN CRIMINAL COURT*

This study uses criminal court data from the Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing (PCS) to investigate the sentencing of juvenile offenders processed in adult criminal court by comparing their sentencing outcomes to those of young adult offenders in similar situations. Because the expanded juvenile exclusion and transfer policies of the 1990s have led to an increase in the number of juveniles convicted in adult courts, we argue that it is critical to better understand the judicial decision making processes involved. We introduce competitive hypotheses on the relative leniency or severity of sentencing outcomes for transferred juveniles and interpret our results with the focal concerns theoretical perspective on sentencing. Our findings indicate that juvenile offenders in adult court are sentenced more severely than their young adult counterparts. Moreover, findings suggest that juvenile status interacts with and conditions the effects of other important sentencing factors including offense type, offense severity and prior criminal record. We discuss these results as they relate to immediate outcomes for transferred juveniles, criminal court processes in general and the broader social implications for juvenile justice policy concerning the transfer of juveniles to criminal court.