MULTIPLE ROUTES TO DELINQUENCY? A TEST OF DEVELOPMENTAL AND GENERAL THEORIES OF CRIME

General and developmental theories take very different approaches to the study of crime. General theories, like Gottfredson and Hirschi's recent theory of self-control, assume that crime can be explained with reference to a single or very limited set of explanatory factors. In addition, some general theories, like Gottfredson and Hirschi's, adopt a very static approach to causality. They presume that prior offending has no causal effect on current offending once time-stable criminal propensity is controlled, and they assume that the relationship between changes in life events and changes in offending are spurious. Recent developmental theories, like those proposed by Moffitt and Patterson, stand in stark contrast to Gottfredson and Hirschi's theory. These developmental theories are far more complex because they relax the assumption of general causality and adopt a more dynamic position about the relationship between changes in life circumstances and changes in crime. In this article we examine whether the added complexity of a developmental theory of crime is preferable to the more parsimonious general/static theory of Gottfredson and Hirschi. We find that the evidence is not faithful to either a pure static/general model or a pure developmental model of crime. Our findings appeal to a theoretical middle ground that assumes that pathways to crime are more similar than different and that allows for a causal effect of past offending and life experiences on future criminality. When viewed in the context of previous studies that have assessed offending over the life course, our results suggest that further theoretical development can profit from studying issues of measurement and sample composition.     

DRUG USE AND DESISTANCE PROCESSES

Sampson and Laub's age‐graded theory of informal social control emphasizes the importance of adult social bonds such as marriage and stable employment in redirecting behavior in a more prosocial direction. Heavy alcohol use has also been shown to influence persistent patterns of offending as well as more episodic offending across the life course. Sampson and Laub's life‐course theory emphasizes the negative impact of alcohol use on marital and employment bonds. Although alcohol has indeed been shown to have significant effects on criminal offending, we argue that drug use and the drug culture in which many contemporary offenders are enmeshed have consequences that often complicate desistance processes in ways that alcohol does not. Drug use and its lifestyle concomitants bring together a host of distinctive social dynamics that compromise multiple life domains. The current project investigates the role of drug use on desistance processes relying on a contemporary sample of previously institutionalized youth. We draw on three waves of data from the Ohio life‐course study, a project that spans some 21 years. The results support the assertion that drug use exerts unique effects on desistance processes, once levels of alcohol use are taken into account. We investigate possible mechanisms that help to explain the differential impact of drug use on offending and find that social network effects, particularly partner criminality, explain some but not all of the negative impact of drug use on life‐course patterns of criminal offending.     

THE CONTEXT OF MARRIAGE AND CRIME: GENDER,THE PROPENSITY TO MARRY,AND OFFENDING IN EARLY ADULTHOOD*

Marriage is central to theoretical debates over stability and change in criminal offending over the life course. Yet, unlike other social ties such as employment, marriage is distinct in that it cannot be randomly assigned in survey research to more definitively assess causal effects of marriage on offending. As a result, key questions remain as to whether different individual propensities toward marriage shape its salience as a deterrent institution. Building on these issues, the current research has three objectives. First, we use a propensity score matching approach to estimate causal effects of marriage on crime in early adulthood. Second, we assess sex differences in the effects of marriage on offending. Although both marriage and offending are highly gendered phenomena, prior work typically focuses on males. Third, we examine whether one's propensity to marry conditions the deterrent capacity of marriage. Results show that marriage suppresses offending for males, even when accounting for their likelihood to marry. Furthermore, males who are least likely to marry seem to benefit most from this institution. The influence of marriage on crime is less robust for females, where marriage reduces crime only for those with moderate propensities to marry. We discuss these findings in the context of recent debates concerning gender, criminal offending, and the life course.     

DIFFERENTIATING SERIOUS ADOLESCENT OFFENDERS WHO EXIT THE JUSTICE SYSTEM FROM THOSE WHO DO NOT

Numerous factors have been posited to promote desistance from criminal offending in late adolescence and early adulthood. Research in this area has generally examined these factors for their impact on offending for a period shortly after the occurrence or shifts in possible predictors. The current study takes a slightly different approach. It examines the broad relation of life changes and developmental patterns to wholesale shifts in offending behavior. The current study uses data from the Pathways to Desistance study to compare the developmental patterns of two groups of serious adolescent male offenders: those who are “system successes” with no subsequent criminal justice system involvement and a matched sample for a 7‐year period after court involvement for a felony offense. Findings from growth curve analyses indicate that patterns of change in criminal attitudes, psychosocial development, and legal employment over this extended follow‐up period are related to an absence of offending. These results support further investigation of the synergistic effects of psychological changes and entry into the job market as possible mechanisms promoting desistance during this developmental period. The policy and practice implications of these findings are discussed.     

THE STRUCTURAL SIMILARITY OF PROCESSES GENERATING CRIMINAL AND ANALOGOUS BEHAVIORS*

It is possible to distinguish between broad-domain theories that offer an explanation for all phenomena of interest to a discipline and narrow-domain theories that attempt to explain a subset of those phenomena. In criminology, this distinction has prompted theorists and researchers to confront the question of whether the same etiological process can explain variation in all types of criminal offending behavior or whether it will be necessary to adopt different theories to explain variation in different kinds of criminal behavior. One broad-domain theory, advanced by Gottfredson and Hirschi (1990), contends that a variable called “self-control” can account for variation in all kinds of criminal conduct as well as variation in many acts that are “analogous” to crime in some ways but are not actually criminal. Analogous behaviors include, among other things, smoking, drinking, involvement in accidents, gambling, and loitering. Using data from the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development (N = 369 males), we attempt to define operationally the concept of self-control with a set of variables measured at ages 8–9. We then examine the empirical association between this self-control measure and self-reported involvement in a variety of criminal and analogous acts during adolescence. In support of Gottfredson and Hirschi's position, our results indicate that self-control is associated with both outcomes and that the strength of the association is approximately equal. Contrary to the expectations of their theory, however, was our finding that the covariance between criminal and analogous behaviors could not be explained entirely by variations in self-control. This finding suggests that factors other than time-stable differences in criminal propensity do matter for criminal and legal, but, risky behaviors.     

STRAINED LIVES AND CRIME: EXAMINING INTRA‐INDIVIDUAL VARIATION IN STRAIN AND OFFENDING IN A SAMPLE OF INCARCERATED WOMEN*

When applied to the study of changes in an individual's offending, general strain theory posits that individuals will be more likely to offend during periods of high strain. Using 36 months of retrospective data collected from female inmates, we explore the relationship between intra‐individual changes in strain and changes in offending and drug use. We also examine how different dimensions of strain‐recent composite strain, duration, clustering and accumulation, contribute to the explanation of offending. We find that changes in strain are associated with changes in violence, drug use, and property crime and that these relationships remain after the addition of control variables. Moreover, the strain‐crime relationship holds when the correct causal order is specified. When modeling offending, taking various dimensions of strain into account does increase the amount of variation explained for some outcomes, but other dimensions are highly correlated. We conclude that conceptualizing the interaction between strain and crime as a dynamic process is constructive and that general strain theory will be improved if criminologists move beyond static conceptions of strain.     

THE EFFECTS OF LIFE CIRCUMSTANCES ON LONGITUDINAL TRAJECTORIES OF OFFENDING*

This study, which is based on individual criminal careers over a 60‐year period, focuses on the development of criminal behavior. It first examines the impact that life circumstances such as work and marriage have on offending, then tests whether the effects of these circumstances are different for different groups of offenders, and finally examines the extent to which the age‐crime relationship at the aggregate level can be explained by age‐graded differences in life circumstances. Official data were retrieved for a 4‐percent (N=4,615) sample of all individuals whose criminal case was tried in the Netherlands in 1977. Self‐report data were derived from a nationally representative survey administered in the Netherlands in 1996 to 2,244 individuals aged 15 years or older. In analyzing this data, we use semi‐parametric group‐based models. Results indicate that life circumstances substantially influence the chances of criminal behavior, and that the effects of these circumstances on offending differ across offender groups. Age‐graded changes in life circumstances, however, explain the aggregate age‐crime relationship only to a modest extent.     

Females' initiation into violent street crime

The present study is concerned with understanding when and how women become involved in violent street crime. Specifically, the study explores the correlates or explanatory factors of such offending in a sample of women arrested and/or incarcerated for violent street crimes in New York City. The findings suggest that an adequate understanding of female offending must consider the impact of neighborhood, peer, and addiction factors which affect both males' and females' participation in criminal violence. In addition, different configurations of these factors appear to contribute to the initiation of violent offending, depending on the age of onset. Early initiation into violent crime was accompanied by participation in a wide variety of other offending behaviors and deviant lifestyles. In contrast, those women who began their violent offending later did so in the context of a criminal career which, until the beginning of substance abuse, was more specialized and focused on typically nonviolent, gender-congruent activities (e.g., prostitution, shoplifting).     

CO‐OFFENDING AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE DELINQUENT CAREER*

This article examines the role of co‐offending in the development of the delinquent career. Hypotheses derived from Reiss's (1986, 1988) taxonomic theory of co‐offending are tested, using police‐reported data on the delinquent careers and co‐offending of 55,336 Canadian offenders. Support is found for a taxonomic theory and for age‐related and functional theories of co‐offending. The taxonomy consists of two types of offenders—high activity (3 percent) and low activity (97 percent)—whose co‐offending patterns differ during the teenage years but not during childhood. For low‐activity offenders as teenagers, the proportion of co‐offenses decreases with criminal experience. The rate of co‐offending by high‐activity offenders as teenagers is lower at onset than for low‐activity offenders, and it varies little with criminal experience. For both offender types, the proportion of co‐offenses decreases with age, is slightly less in males, and varies with the type of offense. For both offender types, the proportion of co‐offenses in childhood offending is greater than in the teenage years and is unrelated to the offender's age or criminal experience.     

ON THE INITIATION AND CONTINUATION OF DELINQUENCY*

An ongoing debate among criminologists concerns the merits of studying different dimensions of offending, such as initiation, frequency, and duration. One critical point of contention is whether separate models are necessary to explain different aspects of offending. The current study uses empirical data to assess whether different models are required to explain initiation and continuation of delinquent behavior. Using the first four waves of the National Youth Survey, we focus on the predictive ability of variables central to social control, labelling, differential association, and urbanism perspectives. We find many similarities and some differences between models for initiation and continuation of delinquency. We discuss the relevance of these results for developing a more comprehensive understanding of criminal behavior.     

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.     

How Exceptional Is India? A Test of Situational Action Theory

This study explores the generalizability of Situational Action Theory (SAT) in India by testing hypotheses related to the person–environment interaction in explaining offending. Drawing on data from a sample of 872 students between the ages of 14 and 17 from an Indian city collected as part of the International Self-Report Delinquency Study (ISRD3), we tested the hypothesis that Indian youths will report more delinquent acts if they have a higher propensity to commit crime combined with a greater exposure to criminogenic activities. Our findings show unequivocal support for the applicability of SAT in India where youths reported a slight increase in offending behavior if they exercised low self-control or if they were less moralistic (i.e., they were more crime-prone), or when exposed to criminal activities or peers. Consistent with tests of SAT in other contexts, we find that exposure to criminogenic environments increases offending for youth with higher levels of criminal propensity but does not impact youth with lower levels of criminal propensity. We speculate that the overall low rate of delinquent offending coupled with the cultural milieu of Indian youths may explain why criminogenic exposure may be less relevant in light of young people’s strong avoidance of rule-breaking.

     

AGE,CRIMINAL CAREERS,AND POPULATION HETEROGENEITY: SPECIFICATION AND ESTIMATION OF A NONPARAMETRIC,MIXED POISSON MODEL*

This article addresses three issues that are central to the criminal career debate. First, is the life course of individual offending patterns marked by distinctive periods of quiescence? Second, at the level of the individual, do offending rates vary systematically with age? In particular, is the age-crime curve single peaked or flat? Third, are chronic offenders different from less active offenders? Do offenders themselves differ in systematic ways? Using a new approach to the analysis of individual criminal careers—based on nested, mixed Poisson models in which the mixing distribution is estimated nonparametrically—we analyze a panel data set that tracks a sample of males for more than 20 years. Our results provide empirical evidence in support of some features of criminal propensity theory and some in support of conventional criminal careers theory. In support of latent-trait criminal propensity theory, the individual-level average offense rate (per unit of time) varies as a function of observable individual-level characteristics and unobservable heterogeneity among individuals, and the age trajectory of the offense rate is generally single peaked rather than flat. On the other hand, in support of conventional criminal careers theory, models that incorporate a parameter that permits periods of active as well as inactive offending across age have greater explanatory power than those that do not. In addition, the nonparametric, discrete approximation to the population distribution of unobservable heterogeneity in the individual-level mean offense rate facilitates identification of four classes of offenders—nonoffenders as well as individual-level characteristics that are unique to each group. Problems of theoretical explanation and empirical generalizability of these results are described.     

THE ONSET AND PERSISTENCE OF OFFENDING*

This paper assesses the need for and focus of developmental theories of crime by analyzing three questions: (1) whether age of onset of criminal behavior has a causal impact on subsequent behavior, (2) whether the determinants of onset vary, at least in part, with age, and (3) whether the determinants of onset and continuation of offending differ in some respects. The inverse association between age of onset and persistence of offending is found to be entirely attributable to time-stable individual differences and, thus, is not attributable to a causal linkage. However, evidence is found of the covariates of onset changing with age and differences in the covariates of onset and of the continuation of offending.     

A quasi-experimental test of the effects of criminal justice involvement on later mental health

Objectives

While many criminological theories posit causal hypotheses, many studies fail to use methods that adequately address the three criteria of causality. This is particularly important when assessing the impact of criminal justice involvement on later outcomes. Due to practical and ethical concerns, it is challenging to randomize criminal sanctions, so quasi-experimental methods such as propensity score matching are often used to approximate a randomized design. Based on longitudinal data from the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development, the current study used propensity score matching to investigate the extent to which convictions and/or incarcerations in the first two decades of life were related to adverse mental health during middle adulthood.

Methods

Propensity scores were utilized to match those with and without criminal justice involvement on a wide range of risk factors for offending.

Results

The results indicated that there were no significant differences in mental health between those involved in the criminal justice system and those without such involvement.

Conclusions

The results did not detect a relationship between justice system involvement and later mental health suggesting that the consequences of criminal justice involvement may only be limited to certain domains.

     

Understanding dynamic risk factors for violence

ABSTRACT

Recent years have seen a consensus emerge regarding the dynamic risk factors that are associated with future violence. These risk factors are now routinely assessed in structured violence risk assessment instruments. They provide a focus for treatment in structured group programmes. However, relatively little attention has been paid to risk-related theoretical issues, whether these dynamic risk factors are causally related or simply correlates of violent offending, or the extent to which they change as a consequence of treatment. More challenging is the lack of evidence to suggest that changes in these dynamic risk factors actually result in reductions in violent offending. In this paper we consider the meaning of the term dynamic risk, arguing that only those factors that, when changed, reduce the likelihood of violent recidivism, can be considered to be truly dynamic. We conclude that few of the violence risk factors commonly regarded as dynamic fulfil this requirement. There is a need to think more critically about assessment findings and treatment recommendations relating to dynamic risk, and conduct research that establishes, rather than assumes, that certain dynamic risk factors are directly related to violence. Some suggestions for advancing knowledge and practice are provided.     

Are the same factors related to participation and frequency of offending by male and female prisoners?

Abstract

This paper is the first to compare correlates of participation and frequency of violent and property offending by male and female offenders. The criminal career approach suggests that different features of criminal careers may have different correlates and predictors, whereas Gottfredson and Hirschi argued that all criminal career features have the same correlates and predictors. This paper investigates how much 24 explanatory constructs, derived from social learning, labelling and personality theories, were related to participation and frequency of offending. Samples of 118 male prisoners and 93 female prisoners in Trinidad were interviewed to determine whether they participated in violent and property crimes and the frequency with which they committed these crimes. The results showed that these theoretical constructs (especially labelling) were much more related to participation than to frequency, but they were similarly related to violent and property offending. They were similarly related to male and female frequency but not to male and female participation in offending. In general, different factors influenced participation and frequency, although impulsivity was related to both for males and females. It is concluded that existing theories need to be improved to explain the frequency of offending.     

THE INTERACTION OF ANTISOCIAL PROPENSITY AND LIFE‐COURSE VARYING PREDICTORS OF DELINQUENT BEHAVIOR: DIFFERENCES BY METHOD OF ESTIMATION AND IMPLICATIONS FOR THEORY*

Recent criminological research has explored the extent to which stable propensity and life‐course perspectives may be integrated to provide a more comprehensive explanation of variation in individual criminal offending. One line of these integrative efforts focuses on the ways that stable individual characteristics may interact with, or modify, the effects of life‐course varying social factors. Given their consistency with the long‐standing view that person–environment interactions contribute to variation in human social behavior, these theoretical integration attempts have great intuitive appeal. However, a review of past criminological research suggests that conceptual and empirical complexities have, so far, somewhat dampened the development of a coherent theoretical understanding of the nature of interaction effects between stable individual antisocial propensity and time‐varying social variables. In this study, we outline and empirically assess several of the sometimes conflicting hypotheses regarding the ways that antisocial propensity moderates the influence of time‐varying social factors on delinquent offending. Unlike some prior studies, however, we explicitly measure the interactive effects of stable antisocial propensity and time‐varying measures of selected social variables on changes in delinquent offending. In addition, drawing on recent research that suggests that the relative ubiquity of interaction effects in past studies may be partly from the poorly suited application of linear statistical models to delinquency data, we alternatively test our interaction hypotheses using least‐squares and tobit estimation frameworks. Our findings suggest that method of estimation matters, with interaction effects appearing readily in the former but not in the latter. The implications of these findings for future conceptual and empirical work on stable propensity/time‐varying social variable interaction effects are discussed.     

ONSET AGE,PERSISTENCE, AND OFFENDING VERSATILITY: COMPARISONS ACROSS GENDER*

Offending specialization has received considerable attention in past research on criminal careers. Relatively little attention has been given to examining the relationships between various sub‐group differences and the extent to which individuals tend toward specialization or versatility in their criminal careers. In the present analysis, we examine hypotheses derived from Moffitt's recent developmental theory that bear directly on offending specialization. Our analysis examines direct relationships between gender, onset age, persistence and offending specialization as well as the interaction of these influences and offending specialization. Our findings reveal results that are both consistent and inconsistent with Moffitt's dual taxonomy of offending behavior.     

Scaling Criminal Offending

Objective:

This paper reviews a century of research on creating theoretically meaningful and empirically useful scales of criminal offending and illustrates their strengths and weaknesses.

Methods:

The history of scaling criminal offending is traced in a detailed literature review focusing on the issues of seriousness, unidimensionality, frequency, and additivity of offending. Modern practice in scaling criminal offending is measured using a survey of 130 articles published in five leading criminology journals over a two-year period that included a scale of individual offending as either an independent or dependent variable. Six scaling methods commonly used in contemporary criminological research are demonstrated and assessed using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979: dichotomous, frequency, weighted frequency, variety, summed category, and item response theory ??theta??.

Results:

The discipline of criminology has seen numerous scaling techniques introduced and forgotten. While no clearly superior method dominates the field today, the most commonly used scaling techniques are dichotomous and frequency scales, both of which are fraught with methodological pitfalls including sensitivity to the least serious offenses.

Conclusions:

Variety scales are the preferred criminal offending scale because they are relatively easy to construct, possess high reliability and validity, and are not compromised by high frequency non-serious crime types.