Self-reported offending,maturational reform,and the Easterlin hypothesis

The maturational reform hypothesis and the Easterlin cohort size hypothesis are used to specify models in which age, period, and cohort effects on self-reported crime and delinquency are estimated. Curvilinear effects, logarithmic transformations, and the distinction between prevalence and frequency of offending are considered. The maturational reform hypothesis is supported for general delinquency but not for serious (Index) delinquency, for which there appears to be a steady decline in the behavior with age. The Easterlin hypothesis is supported for both general and Index delinquency. Theoretical, methodological, and substantive implications of the results are discussed.     

Dissecting the Prevalence and Incidence of Offending During the Crime Drop of the 1990s

Objectives

To evaluate whether the 1990s crime drop reflects a decrease in offending prevalence (the fraction of the population engaged in crime), offending incidence (the frequency of offending among active criminals), or some combination of the two.

Methods

We use individual-level longitudinal data on adolescent offending patterns from the Pittsburgh Youth study (PYS), integrating information from the youngest and oldest cohorts to compare offending among 17–18 year old males at the beginning and end of the 1990s. Logistic and negative binomial regression models are estimated to assess whether there are significant differences in offending prevalence and incidence during the 1990s.

Results

The reduction in property crime rates in the PYS sample during the 1990s can be attributed to declines in both offending prevalence and incidence. The overall decline in serious violence during the 1990s for the full sample was primarily the result of a falloff in prevalence. However, for black youth our results indicate significant reductions in both the prevalence and incidence of serious violence. We did not detect a significant difference in illegal drug sales during the period.

Conclusions

Using longitudinal data on individuals to decompose aggregate crime trends into changes in the prevalence and incidence of offending offers insights into the nature of the 1990s crime drop that cannot be discerned from aggregate crime data. Future research should build on the current study by examining the specific mechanisms that influence change over time in crime prevalence, incidence, or both.

     

THE PREVALENCE,CORRELATES, AND CONTINUITY OF SERIOUS CONDUCT PROBLEMS IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL CHILDREN*

Police and court records rarely reject the prevalence of delinquent acts of elementary school-aged children. Data are presented on conduct problems during the elementary school years in regard to how well they predict adult delinquency and chronic offending. In addition, the paper presents prevalence estimates of illegal and serious conduct problems occurring prior to high school, such as fighting, the), truancy, firesetting, vandalism, marijuana use, and delinquency. Policy implications are discussed in view of the fact that early onset of serious conduct problems is ominous for chronic offending to develop at an age when children are not yet judged to be criminally responsible.     

Short-term trends in crime and delinquency: A comparison of UCR,NCS, and self-report data

This study examines short-term (five- to ten-year) trends in crime and juvenile delinquency using FBI Uniform Crime Reports data on arrests and offenses known to the police, National Crime Survey data on victimization, and National Youth Survey data on self-reported delinquency. The focus is on FBI Index offenses, but less serious offenses are also considered. FBI statistics indicate generally increasing rates of crime, while NCS and NYS data indicate stable and occasionally decreasing rates. Data on the self-reported incidence of delinquency are more compatible with arrest data than are data on the self-reported prevalence of delinquency, but the two self-report measures are more compatible with one another than with arrest data. Attempts to reconcile official statistics with victimization surveys and self-report studies seem unlikely to overcome the differences among the sources when trends in crime, rather than rates of crime at a single time, are considered.     

The sociological imagination revisited: lessons from <Emphasis Type="Italic">America’s Safest City</Emphasis>

In America’s Safest City, Simon Singer embraces the sociological imagination to situate juveniles’ personal troubles within the context of middle-class affluence and modernity. In so doing, he departs from the standard research paradigm that seeks to explain delinquency by using secondary data sets that contain limited measures of theoretical constructs identified by reigning perspectives. Singer’s decision has resulted in a rich analysis that is replete with criminological lessons about the nature of delinquency. Four such lessons are presented here, which include: (1) a lower-class bias has clouded thinking about crime; (2) the reaction to crime differs across classes; (3) parents matter in producing adolescence-limited antisocial youths; and (4) suburban delinquency may be a precursor to white-collar crime.     

“Do Unstructured Routines Modify the Link Between Social-Psychological Strain and Adolescent Offending?”

In this article, based on Agnew’s General Strain Theory (GST), main as well as interactive effects of social-psychological strain and unstructured routines in the explanation of petty crime and serious delinquency are studied in a general adolescent population. Data signify that family and school strain does relate to adolescent offending. However, chances of these types of strain leading to adolescent offending are highest amongst youth who do not engage in unstructured routines, which indicates that individual- and situational-based causes of offending have a great potential of being studied together. Strain resulting from a beloved person getting ill or passing away, on the other hand, only relates to adolescent offending through unstructured routines. Finally, it was found that strain mechanisms are more important in the explanation of serious delinquency than petty crime. Implications for further research as well as for the future of GST are discussed.     

A Criminal Career Study of the Continuity and Discontinuity of Sex Offending during the Adolescence-Adulthood Transition: A Prospective Longitudinal Study of Incarcerated Youth

Longitudinal research has seriously challenged assumptions that juvenile sex offenders (JSO) are characterized by high level of dangerousness, mental health problems, and crime specialization in sex offenses. The current study examines the longitudinal pattern of offending among a sample of JSO and a sample of juvenile nonsex offenders. The research design includes longitudinal data over a nine-year period allowing the examination of offending patterns and the crime mix from age 12 to age 23. The findings highlight that, while JSO are prone to persist offending in adulthood, there is limited continuity of sex offending. Further, the findings stress the importance of taking into account nonsexual juvenile delinquency, more specifically, youth violence, to make a better assessment of early adult offending outcomes of JSO.     

INVESTIGATING THE STABILITY OF CO‐OFFENDING AND CO‐OFFENDERS AMONG A SAMPLE OF YOUTHFUL OFFENDERS*

Scholars have long argued that delinquency is a group phenomenon. Even so, minimal research exists on the nature, structure, and process of co‐offending. This investigation focuses on a particular void, namely the stability of 1) co‐offending and 2) co‐offender selection over time, for which divergent theoretical expectations currently exist that bear on issues central to general and developmental/life‐course theories of crime. By relying on individual‐level, longitudinal data for a sample of juvenile offenders from Philadelphia, we find that distinct trajectories of co‐offending exist over the course of the juvenile criminal career. This inquiry also develops an individualized measure of co‐offender stability, which reveals that delinquents generally tend not to “reuse” co‐offenders, although frequent offenders show a greater propensity to do so. The discussion considers the theoretical and policy implications of these findings as well as provides some avenues for future research.     

DOING GENDER: SORTING OUT THE CASTE AND CRIME CONUNDRUM*

Theories that examine the relationship between inequality and crime typically privilege one system of stratification over others. In criminology, the system most often assumed to be primary is social class, but other approaches may emphasize gender or racial oppression to account for observed differences in offending patterns. Few, however, systematically link gender and race oppression as moderating etiological variables in the study of crime. From the theoretical and empirical literature on this subject, we discuss (1) how “hegemonic” masculinities and femininities are framed within social institutions such as work, the family, peer group, and schools; (2) how “doing gender” within these sites is modified by race; and (3) anticipated relationships among social structure, social action, and delinquency. Self-report data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth are used to test research hypotheses. Chow interaction tests and comparisons of slope coefficients reveal that gender and race modify independent-variable effects on property and violent delinquency.     

SIBLING RESEMBLANCE IN JUVENILE DELINQUENCY: FINDINGS FROM THE NATIONAL YOUTH SURVEY*

Analyses based on individual- and family-level self-report data indicate that (1) delinquency incidents are disproportionately concentrated among households with adolescents, (2) families do not specialize in delinquency by producing certain types of offenders, and (3) adolescent levels of delinquency are predicted equally as well by the offending of an older sibling. the offending of a younger sibling, or by the average level of offending among all other adolescents in the household. Three sets of family characteristics (socioeconomic status, composition, and functioning) are used in multivariate analyses to examine the association among sibling delinquency levels. while sibling composition and family functioning are significant predictors of adolescent delinquency, only family functioning accounts for a small proportion of sibling resemblance in offending. These analyses add to the growing body of research that suggests that sibling similarity in delinquency requires additional consideration in theoretical and empirical investigations of juvenile offending.     

THE PREDICTIVE VALUE OF CRIMINAL BACKGROUND CHECKS: DO AGE AND CRIMINAL HISTORY AFFECT TIME TO REDEMPTION?*

Criminal record checks are being used increasingly by decision makers to predict future unwanted behaviors. A central question these decision makers face is how much time it takes before offenders can be considered “redeemed” and resemble nonoffenders in terms of the probability of offending. Building on a small literature addressing this topic for youthful, first‐time offenders, the current article asks whether this period differs across the age of last conviction and the total number of prior convictions. Using long‐term longitudinal data on a Dutch conviction cohort, we find that young novice offenders are redeemed after approximately 10 years of remaining crime free. For older offenders, the redemption period is considerably shorter. Offenders with extensive criminal histories, however, either never resemble their nonconvicted counterparts or only do so after a crime‐free period of more than 20 years. Practical and theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.     

SPECIALIZATION IN JUVENILE COURT CAREERS

The study of specialization in offending careers is relevant to the key theoretical issue of whether different types of offending reject only one underlying theoretical construct (such as delinquent tendency) or several different constructs. This research improves on previous studies of specialization in offending careers in three ways: (1) It is based on the complete juvenile court careers of a very large sample of offenders (nearly 70,000). (2) It uses a fine-grained classification of 21 offense types. (3) It uses a new measure of the strength of specialization, the Forward Specialization Coefficient (FSC). Both transition matrices and offending careers are studied.
The major findings from the transition matrices are (1) there was a small but significant degree of specialization in offending superimposed on a great deal of versatility: (2) the degree of specialization tended to increase with successive referrals, and this was not due to more versatile offenders dropping out: and (3) the relative extent to which offenders specialized in different offenses held for two jurisdictions (Maricopa County, Arizona, and Utah), both sexes, and all ages.
The analyses of offending careers showed that the most specialized offenses were runaway, burglary, motor vehicle theft, liquor violations, incorrigibility, curfew, truancy, and drugs. Nearly 20 percent of the offenders were identified as specialists. The conclusion is that, while offending was versatile to a first approximation, delinquency theories should attempt to explain specialization and specialists in order to yield more accurate quantitative predictions about offending careers.     

Sex Differences in Trajectories of Offending Among Puerto Rican Youth

Although sex is one of the strongest correlates of crime, contentions remain regarding the necessity of sex-specific theories of crime. The current study examines delinquent trajectories across sex among Puerto Rican youth socialized in two different cultural contexts (Bronx, United States and San Juan, Puerto Rico). Results indicate: similar substantive offending trajectories across males and females within each cultural context; that males exhibit a higher frequency of offending and higher levels of risk factors for delinquency; and there more similarities than differences in how risk/protective factors relate to patterns of offending across male versus female youth. Study limitations and implications for sex-specific criminological theories are also discussed.     

The contemporary transformation of american youth: An analysis of change in the prevalence of delinquency, 1991–2015

Youth involvement in crime has declined substantially over the past few decades, yet the reasons for this trend remain unclear. We advance the literature by examining the role of several potentially important shifts in individual attitudes and behaviors that may help to account for the observed temporal variation in youth delinquency. Our multilevel analysis of repeated cross‐sectional data from eighth and tenth grade students in the Monitoring the Future (MTF) study indicates that changes in youth offending prevalence were not associated with changes in youth attachment and commitment to school, community involvement, or parental supervision after school. In contrast, the study provides suggestive evidence that the significant reduction in youth offending prevalence observed since the early 1990s was significantly associated with a decrease in unstructured socializing and alcohol consumption and, to a lesser extent, with a decrease in youth preferences for risky activities. Implications for existing theoretical explanations and future research on youth crime trends are discussed.     

WHEN BEING GOOD IS BAD: AN EXPANSION OF NEUTRALIZATION THEORY*

Traditional subcultural theorists maintain that offenders operate in an environment in which oppositional norms catering to ethics of violence, toughness and respect dominate the social landscape. Such offenders actively reject middle‐class value systems and operate beyond the boundaries of what is considered decent society. In their seminal work introducing Neutralization Theory, Sykes and Matza criticized such subcultural perspectives for overemphasizing the extent to which actors reject mainstream values (1957). They maintained that offenders and delinquents are aware of conventional values, understand that their offending is wrong, and self‐talk before offending to mitigate the anticipated shame and guilt associated with violating societal norms. This study analyzes street offender decision making and behavior in an effort to expand that perspective. The analyzed data was taken from interviews of hardcore, active, noninstitutionalized (uncaught) drug dealers, street robbers and carjackers to determine how they neutralize to support their offending. Findings indicate that these offenders strive to protect a self‐image consistent with a code of the streets orientation rather than a conventional one. That is, they neutralize being good rather than being bad. This suggests that expanding the scope of neutralization theory beyond the confines of conventional value systems will allow the theory to explain the behavior of a larger group of offenders. It also takes into account the kinds of real‐world contextual forces that now influence urban crime.     

The Dynamics of Female Delinquency, 1976-1980

This article employs self-report delinquency data from a national probability sample of adolescents to describe the epidemiology and dynamics of female delinquency from 1976 to 1980. Both age and cohort effects are examined, utilizing incidence and prevalence data categorized by race, social class, and place of residence. Within years there are few consistent, significant differences in the incidence of delinquency by any of the demographic variables analyzed. Significant race and social class differentials exist, however, in the prevalence of assaultive crimes among the panel, with substantially higher proportions of black and lower-class females reporting involvement in violent behavior for three of the five years. Strong cohort effects are observed for all delinquency measures. In general, the incidence and prevalence of serious female delinquency appear to decline with age, and the 15-17-year-old females in 1980 are significantly less involved in delinquency than their same-age peers were in 1976.     

School climate and delinquency – on the significance of the perceived social and learning climate in school for refraining from offending

School is regarded as a central arena for crime prevention. This study analyses the effects of student perceptions of school contextual aspects on self-reported offending, using logistic regression with control for clustering effects. The data comprise a census of pupils in year nine in comprehensive school (15 year olds) and in year two of upper secondary school (17 year olds) in the City of Stockholm in 2006, 2008 and 2010 (n = 25,850 of which 47% are boys and 53% are girls). Besides showing that several aspects of students’ perceptions of the school setting have direct protective effects on offending, the study shows that perceiving schoolwork as meaningful appears to moderate the effect of adverse home conditions on delinquency for boys. The only aspect of school investigated in this study that was not significantly related to offending was the perception of classroom order, indicating that emotional support from teachers is more important for crime preventive implications than maintaining order in the classroom. Controlling for clustering effects shows differences in offending between classes and schools that are not produced by differences between the students.     

MARKETIZED MENTALITY,COMPETITIVE/EGOISTIC SCHOOL CULTURE,AND DELINQUENT ATTITUDES AND BEHAVIOR: AN APPLICATION OF INSTITUTIONAL ANOMIE THEORY*

We analyze the individual‐level and school‐level determinants of delinquency through the lens of a macro‐sociological theory of crime—institutional anomie theory (IAT). The concept of a “marketized mentality” is introduced as a predictor of students’ delinquency, along with an egoistic/competitive school culture—a feature of the school community. Five hypotheses pertaining to the readiness to use violence and self‐reported delinquency were assessed using multilevel modeling with data from a survey in Germany for 4,150 students clustered in 69 schools. The results largely meet theoretical expectations. The measure of marketized mentality exhibits robust relationships with both forms of delinquency at the individual level, and an egoistic/competitive school culture helps explain variation in levels of these forms of delinquency across schools. Also consistent with expectations, the anti‐social effects of marketized mentality are accentuated for both the readiness to use violence and committing instrumentally motivated property offenses as a competitive/egoistic school climate increases. The results of our analyses reveal that bringing in concepts of IAT can appreciably enhance understanding of the characteristics of students and features of communal school organization that are conducive to youthful offending.     

THE TRUE VALUE OF LAMBDA WOULD APPEAR TO BE ZERO: AN ESSAY ON CAREER CRIMINALS,CRIMINAL CAREERS,SELECTIVE INCAPACITATION,COHORT STUDIES,AND RELATED TOPICS*

The idea of selective incapacitation and the distinction between prevalence and incidence (participation and lambda) justify the search for a group of offenders whose criminality does not decline with age and who may be identified solely on the basis of legally relevant variables. This paper questions such research, arguing that the decline in age with crime characterizes even the most active offenders. and that the distinction between incidence and prevalence does not deserve the theoretical, research, or policy attention it has been claimed to merit (Farrington, 1985; Blumstein and Graddy, 1981–1982). In doing so, it relies on research results widely accepted in criminology. Thus, the current focus of criminological research on the “career criminal,” on selective incapacitation, and on longitudinal research remains unjustified.