Despite the continued growth of research demonstrating that marriage promotes desistance from cri... more Despite the continued growth of research demonstrating that marriage promotes desistance from crime, efforts aimed at understanding the mechanisms driving this effect are limited. Several theories propose to explain why we observe a reduction in offending after marriage including identity changes, strengthened attachments, reduced opportunities, and changes to routine activities. Although mechanisms are hard to measure, we argue that each proposed mechanism implies a specific change process, that is, whether the change that ensues after marriage is enduring (stable) or situational (temporary). Drawing on a medical model framework, we cast the role of marriage as a treatment condition and observe whether the effect of marriage is conditional on staying married or whether the effect persists when the "treatment" is taken away (i.e., divorce). We use 13 years of monthly level data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY97), a nationally representative sample containing close to 3,000 individuals with an arrest history, to examine changes in relationship status and arrest from adolescence into young adulthood. Estimates from multilevel within-individual models reveal *
Objectives: This study tests theorized mechanisms of desistance and whether the process of desist... more Objectives: This study tests theorized mechanisms of desistance and whether the process of desistance is conditioned by social structural position. Methods: We investigate how marriage promotes desistance from crime among urban African American males raised in the Woodlawn community, a disadvantaged neighborhood in Chicago. Using hierarchical linear modeling, we test the resiliency of the marriage effect by observing offending trajectories following marital dissolution; is the marriage effect conditional upon staying married, indicating situational effects, or does the effect persist when marriage is taken away, indicating enduring effects? Further, we test if the process of desistance is conditional upon contextual disadvantage. Results: While initial findings show an increase in violent and property offending upon divorce, further analysis shows evidence that this effect differs by neighborhood structural context; the increase in offending upon divorce is apparent only for African American men who experience continued disadvantage across the life course. Those who moved to relatively more advantaged areas by adulthood show no increase in offending upon marital dissolution. Conclusions: How marriage matters for desistance is partially influenced by social structural position; context matters. These findings invigorate criminological research on the mechanisms driving the marriage effect and provide insight into the interactive nature of person and context.
Objective: Mounting evidence reveals that foreign-born, first generation immigrants have signific... more Objective: Mounting evidence reveals that foreign-born, first generation immigrants have significantly lower levels of criminal involvement compared to their U.S.-born, second and third-plus generation peers. This study investigates whether this finding is influenced by differential crime reporting practices by testing for systematic crime reporting bias across first, second, and third-plus immigrant generations. Methods: This study draws on data from the Pathways to Desistance Study, a longitudinal investigation of the transition from adolescence to young adulthood among a sample of serious adolescent offenders. Self-reported and official reports of arrest are compared longitudinally across 10 waves of data spanning 7 years from adolescence into young adulthood for nearly 1,300 adjudicated males and females. Results: This study reveals a high degree of correspondence between self-reports of arrest and official reports of arrest when compared within groups distinguished by immigrant generation. Longitudinal patterns of divergence, disaggregated by under-reporting and over-reporting, in self- and official-reports of arrest indicated a very high degree of similarity regardless of immigrant generation. We found no evidence of systematic crime reporting biases among foreign-born, first generation immigrants compared to their U.S.-born peers. Conclusions: First generation immigrants are characterized by lower levels of offending that are not attributable to a differential tendency to under-report their involvement in crime.
Although research shows that involvement in crime varies across immigrant generations, less is kn... more Although research shows that involvement in crime varies across immigrant generations, less is known about why this is so. Using 13 waves of National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 data, we examine the influence of marriage—a key correlate of desistance from crime—to understand more fully patterns of offending across immigrant generations during the transition to adulthood. Results indicate a lower prevalence of offending among first-generation immigrants compared with their second-generation and third-plus-generation peers; however, among active offenders, rates of offending are similar across groups. Notably, marriage exerts a significantly stronger effect on offending for second-generation immigrants, suggesting that, while assimilation may be associated with more offending, it is also associated with a greater potency of marriage in promoting desistance from crime.
We develop a set of hypotheses informed by a social disorganization framework and test them using... more We develop a set of hypotheses informed by a social disorganization framework and test them using newly available data on nearly 600 terrorist attacks in U.S. counties from 1990 to 2011. Our results show that terrorist attacks were more common in counties characterized by greater language diversity, a larger proportion of foreign-born residents, greater residential instability, and a higher percentage of urban residents. Contrary to the social disorganization perspective but in keeping with most prior research, terrorist attacks were less common in counties marked by high levels of concentrated disadvantage. More generally, we found steady declines in the number of terrorist attacks on U.S. soil from 1990 to 2011. We discuss the implications of the results for theory, future research, and policy.
Journal of Developmental and Life-Course Criminology
Purpose
Motivated by offender typology debates, we evaluate whether adult offending trajectories... more Purpose
Motivated by offender typology debates, we evaluate whether adult offending trajectories can be predicted from adolescent risk factors.
Methods
Drawing on data from the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development (N = 411), we use person-centered, latent class cluster analysis (LCCA) to identify groups of respondents with similar behavioral, social, and psychological profiles measured in adolescence. We then use hierarchical linear models to estimate the criminal trajectories associated with each cluster using annual offending measures from 19 to 50 years of age. This offers a test of whether prospectively defined crime trajectories validate theoretical conceptions of qualitatively distinct offender groups.
Results
Our LCCA identified four clusters of boys with varying patterns of adolescent characteristics. The offending trajectories associated with these clusters differed in magnitude rather than shape. While we were able to identify a subgroup of offenders whose criminal offending remained relatively high over the life course, significant differences across subgroups were varied and dissipated after young adulthood. All offending trajectories followed the familiar age-crime curve, characterized by a sharp decline in offending in early adulthood.
Conclusions
Our findings support multidimensional interventions that would offset the constellations of behavioral, psychological, and social setbacks adolescents face. At the same time, our findings undermine the notion that qualitatively distinct patterns of offending can be prospectively identified and suggest that the processes behind criminal decline over the life course are generalizable across offenders.
Despite a considerable body of research demonstrating the beneficial effects of marriage for crim... more Despite a considerable body of research demonstrating the beneficial effects of marriage for criminal desistance, data limitations have resulted in much of this work being based on predominantly white, male samples. In light of the rapidly changing demographic landscape of the U.S.—and particularly the tremendous growth in the Hispanic population—the question of whether the benefits of marriage are generalizable to racial and ethnic minorities is an important one. This research extends prior work on the relationship between marriage and offending by assessing whether the benefits of marriage for criminal offending extend to today’s racial and ethnic minority populations. Using a contemporary sample of 3,560 young adult Hispanic, black and white males followed annually for 13 years spanning the transition to adulthood, we find that while marriage is a potent predictor of desistance for all groups, the benefits of marriage vary substantially across both race and ethnicity.
Research on immigration and crime has only recently started to consider potential heterogeneity i... more Research on immigration and crime has only recently started to consider potential heterogeneity in longitudinal patterns of immigrant offending. Guided by segmented assimilation and life course criminology frameworks, this article advances prior research on the immigration-crime nexus in three ways: using a large sample of high-risk adjudicated youth containing first and second generation immigrants; examining longitudinal trajectories of official and self-reported offending; and merging segmented assimilation and life course theories to distinguish between offending patterns. Data come from the Pathways to Desistance study containing detailed offending and socio-demographic background information on 1,354 adolescents (13.6% female; n = 1,061 native-born; n = 210 second generation immigrants; n = 83 first generation immigrants) as they transition to young adulthood (aged 14 to 17 at baseline). Over 84 months we observe whether patterns of offending, and the correlates that may distinguish them, operate differently across immigrant generations. Collectively, this study offers the first investigation of whether immigrants, conditioned on being adjudicated, are characterized by persistent offending. Results show that first generation immigrants are less likely to be involved in serious offending and to evidence persistence in offending, and appear to be on a path toward desistance much more quickly than their peers. Further, assimilation and neighborhood disadvantage operate in unique ways across generational status and relate to different offending styles. The findings show that the risk for persistent offending is greatest among those with high levels of assimilation who reside in disadvantaged contexts, particularly among the second generation youth in the sample.
Evidence continues to accumulate documenting a generational disparity in offending whereby second... more Evidence continues to accumulate documenting a generational disparity in offending whereby second generation immigrants (the children of immigrants) evidence a precipitous increase in offending compared to their first generation, foreign-born peers. An understanding of this pattern is most often couched in terms reflective of segmented assimilation theory highlighting the unique assimilation experiences and challenges faced by the children of immigrants. Importantly, alternative explanations of this pattern exist; namely, those promoting a regression to the mean hypothesis - born and socialized in the U.S. mainstream, second generation immigrants are simply native-born youth. Using data from 9 waves of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, this alternative hypothesis is evaluated. The differential influence of variables tapping into important family, school, peer and neighborhood domains on offending trajectories are compared across second generation immigrant and native-born subsamples. The results reveal a high degree of similarity comparing second generation immigrants and native-born Whites. At the same time, differences are also observed when compared to native-born Black and Hispanic peers particularly among measures of more serious offending. Implications of these findings for theory and policy are discussed.
Despite the continued growth of research demonstrating that marriage promotes desistance from cri... more Despite the continued growth of research demonstrating that marriage promotes desistance from crime, efforts aimed at understanding the mechanisms driving this effect are limited. Several theories propose to explain why we observe a reduction in offending after marriage including identity changes, strengthened attachments, reduced opportunities, and changes to routine activities. Although mechanisms are hard to measure, we argue that each proposed mechanism implies a specific change process, that is, whether the change that ensues after marriage is enduring (stable) or situational (temporary). Drawing on a medical model framework, we cast the role of marriage as a treatment condition and observe whether the effect of marriage is conditional on staying married or whether the effect persists when the “treatment” is taken away (i.e., divorce). We use 13 years of monthly level data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY97), a nationally representative sample containing close to 3,000 individuals with an arrest history, to examine changes in relationship status and arrest from adolescence into young adulthood. Estimates from multilevel within-individual models reveal greater support for situational mechanisms in that divorce is detrimental particularly for those in longer marriages; yet they also reveal important caveats that suggest a closer examination of the marriage effect. This research adds to the growing body of knowledge regarding the marriage effect by redirecting desistance research away from asking if marriage matters to asking how marriage affects desistance. A better understanding of this change process has important implications for criminal justice policy.
The myth of the criminal immigrant has permeated public and political debate for much of this nat... more The myth of the criminal immigrant has permeated public and political debate for much of this nation’s history and persists despite growing evidence to the contrary. Crime concerns are increasingly aimed at the indirect impact of immigration on crime highlighting the criminal pursuits of the children of immigrants. Adding to extant knowledge on the immigration-crime nexus, this research asks whether immigrants are differentially involved in crime by examining immigrant offending histories (prevalence, frequency, seriousness, persistence, and desistance) from early adolescence to young adulthood. Particular attention is afforded to the influence of various sources of heterogeneity including: generational and nativity status, and crime type. Results suggest that the myth remains; trajectory analyses reveal that immigrants are no more crime-prone than the native-born. Foreign-born individuals exhibit remarkably low levels of involvement in crime across their life course. Moreover, it appears that by the second generation, immigrants have simply caught up to their native-born counterparts in respect to their offending. Implications of the findings for theory and future research are discussed.
Over the last two decades, research examining desistance from crime in adulthood has steadily inc... more Over the last two decades, research examining desistance from crime in adulthood has steadily increased. The evidence from this body of research consistently demonstrates that salient life events-in particular, marriage-are associated with a reduction of offending across the life course. However, previous studies have been largely limited to male samples in the United States. As a result, questions regarding the universal effect of these relationships remain. Specifically, research is needed to assess whether the desistance effect of life events like marriage varies by gender and/or socio-historical context in countries other than the U.S. The present research addresses these gaps by examining the relationship between marriage and criminal offending using data from the Criminal Career and Life Course Study (CCLS). The CCLS includes criminal conviction histories spanning a large portion of the life course for nearly 5,000 men and women convicted in the Netherlands in 1977. Because we assess change over multiple observations within and between individuals, we utilize hierarchical models to estimate gender and contextual effects of marriage on criminal offending (i.e., any, violent, and property convictions). Overall, we find consistent support for the idea that marriage reduces offending across gender and socio-historical context. Notably, we find that the reduction in the odds of offending due to marriage is significantly greater for individuals in the most contemporary context. The implications of these findings are discussed.
Distinguishing trajectories of criminal offending over the life course, especially the prediction... more Distinguishing trajectories of criminal offending over the life course, especially the prediction of high-rate offenders, has received considerable attention over the past two decades. Motivated by a recent study by , this study uses longitudinal data on conviction histories from the Dutch Criminal Career and Life-Course Study (CCLS) to examine whether adolescent risk factors predict offending trajectories across the life span. The CCLS is particularly well suited to study developmental offending trajectories as it contains detailed information on individual criminal offending careers for a representative sample of all individuals convicted in the Netherlands in 1977 (n = 4,615) beginning at 12 years of age and continuing into late adulthood. To assess predictive Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 46(4) 468-494
Are immigrants crime prone? In America, this question has been posed since the turn of the 20 th ... more Are immigrants crime prone? In America, this question has been posed since the turn of the 20 th century and more than 100 years of research has shown that immigration is not linked to increasing crime rates. Nevertheless, as was true more than a century ago, the myth of the criminal immigrant continues to permeate public debate. In part this continued focus on immigrants as crime prone is the result of significant methodological and theoretical gaps in the extant literature. Five key limitations are identified and addressed in this research including: (1) a general reliance on aggregate level analyses,
Pulkkinen 2003). Although youth who do poorly in school are oftentimes already criminal, during t... more Pulkkinen 2003). Although youth who do poorly in school are oftentimes already criminal, during this time of transition school failure may exacerbate their criminal offending (Jarjoura 1993; Thornberry, Moore, and Christenson 1985). Researchers have long understood the deleterious effects of school failure (grade retention and dropout) on adolescent delinquency and adult development. Children who are retained in middle school or beyond, and youth who drop out of school, earn less and have less secure occupational ...
Despite the continued growth of research demonstrating that marriage promotes desistance from cri... more Despite the continued growth of research demonstrating that marriage promotes desistance from crime, efforts aimed at understanding the mechanisms driving this effect are limited. Several theories propose to explain why we observe a reduction in offending after marriage including identity changes, strengthened attachments, reduced opportunities, and changes to routine activities. Although mechanisms are hard to measure, we argue that each proposed mechanism implies a specific change process, that is, whether the change that ensues after marriage is enduring (stable) or situational (temporary). Drawing on a medical model framework, we cast the role of marriage as a treatment condition and observe whether the effect of marriage is conditional on staying married or whether the effect persists when the "treatment" is taken away (i.e., divorce). We use 13 years of monthly level data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY97), a nationally representative sample containing close to 3,000 individuals with an arrest history, to examine changes in relationship status and arrest from adolescence into young adulthood. Estimates from multilevel within-individual models reveal *
Objectives: This study tests theorized mechanisms of desistance and whether the process of desist... more Objectives: This study tests theorized mechanisms of desistance and whether the process of desistance is conditioned by social structural position. Methods: We investigate how marriage promotes desistance from crime among urban African American males raised in the Woodlawn community, a disadvantaged neighborhood in Chicago. Using hierarchical linear modeling, we test the resiliency of the marriage effect by observing offending trajectories following marital dissolution; is the marriage effect conditional upon staying married, indicating situational effects, or does the effect persist when marriage is taken away, indicating enduring effects? Further, we test if the process of desistance is conditional upon contextual disadvantage. Results: While initial findings show an increase in violent and property offending upon divorce, further analysis shows evidence that this effect differs by neighborhood structural context; the increase in offending upon divorce is apparent only for African American men who experience continued disadvantage across the life course. Those who moved to relatively more advantaged areas by adulthood show no increase in offending upon marital dissolution. Conclusions: How marriage matters for desistance is partially influenced by social structural position; context matters. These findings invigorate criminological research on the mechanisms driving the marriage effect and provide insight into the interactive nature of person and context.
Objective: Mounting evidence reveals that foreign-born, first generation immigrants have signific... more Objective: Mounting evidence reveals that foreign-born, first generation immigrants have significantly lower levels of criminal involvement compared to their U.S.-born, second and third-plus generation peers. This study investigates whether this finding is influenced by differential crime reporting practices by testing for systematic crime reporting bias across first, second, and third-plus immigrant generations. Methods: This study draws on data from the Pathways to Desistance Study, a longitudinal investigation of the transition from adolescence to young adulthood among a sample of serious adolescent offenders. Self-reported and official reports of arrest are compared longitudinally across 10 waves of data spanning 7 years from adolescence into young adulthood for nearly 1,300 adjudicated males and females. Results: This study reveals a high degree of correspondence between self-reports of arrest and official reports of arrest when compared within groups distinguished by immigrant generation. Longitudinal patterns of divergence, disaggregated by under-reporting and over-reporting, in self- and official-reports of arrest indicated a very high degree of similarity regardless of immigrant generation. We found no evidence of systematic crime reporting biases among foreign-born, first generation immigrants compared to their U.S.-born peers. Conclusions: First generation immigrants are characterized by lower levels of offending that are not attributable to a differential tendency to under-report their involvement in crime.
Although research shows that involvement in crime varies across immigrant generations, less is kn... more Although research shows that involvement in crime varies across immigrant generations, less is known about why this is so. Using 13 waves of National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 data, we examine the influence of marriage—a key correlate of desistance from crime—to understand more fully patterns of offending across immigrant generations during the transition to adulthood. Results indicate a lower prevalence of offending among first-generation immigrants compared with their second-generation and third-plus-generation peers; however, among active offenders, rates of offending are similar across groups. Notably, marriage exerts a significantly stronger effect on offending for second-generation immigrants, suggesting that, while assimilation may be associated with more offending, it is also associated with a greater potency of marriage in promoting desistance from crime.
We develop a set of hypotheses informed by a social disorganization framework and test them using... more We develop a set of hypotheses informed by a social disorganization framework and test them using newly available data on nearly 600 terrorist attacks in U.S. counties from 1990 to 2011. Our results show that terrorist attacks were more common in counties characterized by greater language diversity, a larger proportion of foreign-born residents, greater residential instability, and a higher percentage of urban residents. Contrary to the social disorganization perspective but in keeping with most prior research, terrorist attacks were less common in counties marked by high levels of concentrated disadvantage. More generally, we found steady declines in the number of terrorist attacks on U.S. soil from 1990 to 2011. We discuss the implications of the results for theory, future research, and policy.
Journal of Developmental and Life-Course Criminology
Purpose
Motivated by offender typology debates, we evaluate whether adult offending trajectories... more Purpose
Motivated by offender typology debates, we evaluate whether adult offending trajectories can be predicted from adolescent risk factors.
Methods
Drawing on data from the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development (N = 411), we use person-centered, latent class cluster analysis (LCCA) to identify groups of respondents with similar behavioral, social, and psychological profiles measured in adolescence. We then use hierarchical linear models to estimate the criminal trajectories associated with each cluster using annual offending measures from 19 to 50 years of age. This offers a test of whether prospectively defined crime trajectories validate theoretical conceptions of qualitatively distinct offender groups.
Results
Our LCCA identified four clusters of boys with varying patterns of adolescent characteristics. The offending trajectories associated with these clusters differed in magnitude rather than shape. While we were able to identify a subgroup of offenders whose criminal offending remained relatively high over the life course, significant differences across subgroups were varied and dissipated after young adulthood. All offending trajectories followed the familiar age-crime curve, characterized by a sharp decline in offending in early adulthood.
Conclusions
Our findings support multidimensional interventions that would offset the constellations of behavioral, psychological, and social setbacks adolescents face. At the same time, our findings undermine the notion that qualitatively distinct patterns of offending can be prospectively identified and suggest that the processes behind criminal decline over the life course are generalizable across offenders.
Despite a considerable body of research demonstrating the beneficial effects of marriage for crim... more Despite a considerable body of research demonstrating the beneficial effects of marriage for criminal desistance, data limitations have resulted in much of this work being based on predominantly white, male samples. In light of the rapidly changing demographic landscape of the U.S.—and particularly the tremendous growth in the Hispanic population—the question of whether the benefits of marriage are generalizable to racial and ethnic minorities is an important one. This research extends prior work on the relationship between marriage and offending by assessing whether the benefits of marriage for criminal offending extend to today’s racial and ethnic minority populations. Using a contemporary sample of 3,560 young adult Hispanic, black and white males followed annually for 13 years spanning the transition to adulthood, we find that while marriage is a potent predictor of desistance for all groups, the benefits of marriage vary substantially across both race and ethnicity.
Research on immigration and crime has only recently started to consider potential heterogeneity i... more Research on immigration and crime has only recently started to consider potential heterogeneity in longitudinal patterns of immigrant offending. Guided by segmented assimilation and life course criminology frameworks, this article advances prior research on the immigration-crime nexus in three ways: using a large sample of high-risk adjudicated youth containing first and second generation immigrants; examining longitudinal trajectories of official and self-reported offending; and merging segmented assimilation and life course theories to distinguish between offending patterns. Data come from the Pathways to Desistance study containing detailed offending and socio-demographic background information on 1,354 adolescents (13.6% female; n = 1,061 native-born; n = 210 second generation immigrants; n = 83 first generation immigrants) as they transition to young adulthood (aged 14 to 17 at baseline). Over 84 months we observe whether patterns of offending, and the correlates that may distinguish them, operate differently across immigrant generations. Collectively, this study offers the first investigation of whether immigrants, conditioned on being adjudicated, are characterized by persistent offending. Results show that first generation immigrants are less likely to be involved in serious offending and to evidence persistence in offending, and appear to be on a path toward desistance much more quickly than their peers. Further, assimilation and neighborhood disadvantage operate in unique ways across generational status and relate to different offending styles. The findings show that the risk for persistent offending is greatest among those with high levels of assimilation who reside in disadvantaged contexts, particularly among the second generation youth in the sample.
Evidence continues to accumulate documenting a generational disparity in offending whereby second... more Evidence continues to accumulate documenting a generational disparity in offending whereby second generation immigrants (the children of immigrants) evidence a precipitous increase in offending compared to their first generation, foreign-born peers. An understanding of this pattern is most often couched in terms reflective of segmented assimilation theory highlighting the unique assimilation experiences and challenges faced by the children of immigrants. Importantly, alternative explanations of this pattern exist; namely, those promoting a regression to the mean hypothesis - born and socialized in the U.S. mainstream, second generation immigrants are simply native-born youth. Using data from 9 waves of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, this alternative hypothesis is evaluated. The differential influence of variables tapping into important family, school, peer and neighborhood domains on offending trajectories are compared across second generation immigrant and native-born subsamples. The results reveal a high degree of similarity comparing second generation immigrants and native-born Whites. At the same time, differences are also observed when compared to native-born Black and Hispanic peers particularly among measures of more serious offending. Implications of these findings for theory and policy are discussed.
Despite the continued growth of research demonstrating that marriage promotes desistance from cri... more Despite the continued growth of research demonstrating that marriage promotes desistance from crime, efforts aimed at understanding the mechanisms driving this effect are limited. Several theories propose to explain why we observe a reduction in offending after marriage including identity changes, strengthened attachments, reduced opportunities, and changes to routine activities. Although mechanisms are hard to measure, we argue that each proposed mechanism implies a specific change process, that is, whether the change that ensues after marriage is enduring (stable) or situational (temporary). Drawing on a medical model framework, we cast the role of marriage as a treatment condition and observe whether the effect of marriage is conditional on staying married or whether the effect persists when the “treatment” is taken away (i.e., divorce). We use 13 years of monthly level data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY97), a nationally representative sample containing close to 3,000 individuals with an arrest history, to examine changes in relationship status and arrest from adolescence into young adulthood. Estimates from multilevel within-individual models reveal greater support for situational mechanisms in that divorce is detrimental particularly for those in longer marriages; yet they also reveal important caveats that suggest a closer examination of the marriage effect. This research adds to the growing body of knowledge regarding the marriage effect by redirecting desistance research away from asking if marriage matters to asking how marriage affects desistance. A better understanding of this change process has important implications for criminal justice policy.
The myth of the criminal immigrant has permeated public and political debate for much of this nat... more The myth of the criminal immigrant has permeated public and political debate for much of this nation’s history and persists despite growing evidence to the contrary. Crime concerns are increasingly aimed at the indirect impact of immigration on crime highlighting the criminal pursuits of the children of immigrants. Adding to extant knowledge on the immigration-crime nexus, this research asks whether immigrants are differentially involved in crime by examining immigrant offending histories (prevalence, frequency, seriousness, persistence, and desistance) from early adolescence to young adulthood. Particular attention is afforded to the influence of various sources of heterogeneity including: generational and nativity status, and crime type. Results suggest that the myth remains; trajectory analyses reveal that immigrants are no more crime-prone than the native-born. Foreign-born individuals exhibit remarkably low levels of involvement in crime across their life course. Moreover, it appears that by the second generation, immigrants have simply caught up to their native-born counterparts in respect to their offending. Implications of the findings for theory and future research are discussed.
Over the last two decades, research examining desistance from crime in adulthood has steadily inc... more Over the last two decades, research examining desistance from crime in adulthood has steadily increased. The evidence from this body of research consistently demonstrates that salient life events-in particular, marriage-are associated with a reduction of offending across the life course. However, previous studies have been largely limited to male samples in the United States. As a result, questions regarding the universal effect of these relationships remain. Specifically, research is needed to assess whether the desistance effect of life events like marriage varies by gender and/or socio-historical context in countries other than the U.S. The present research addresses these gaps by examining the relationship between marriage and criminal offending using data from the Criminal Career and Life Course Study (CCLS). The CCLS includes criminal conviction histories spanning a large portion of the life course for nearly 5,000 men and women convicted in the Netherlands in 1977. Because we assess change over multiple observations within and between individuals, we utilize hierarchical models to estimate gender and contextual effects of marriage on criminal offending (i.e., any, violent, and property convictions). Overall, we find consistent support for the idea that marriage reduces offending across gender and socio-historical context. Notably, we find that the reduction in the odds of offending due to marriage is significantly greater for individuals in the most contemporary context. The implications of these findings are discussed.
Distinguishing trajectories of criminal offending over the life course, especially the prediction... more Distinguishing trajectories of criminal offending over the life course, especially the prediction of high-rate offenders, has received considerable attention over the past two decades. Motivated by a recent study by , this study uses longitudinal data on conviction histories from the Dutch Criminal Career and Life-Course Study (CCLS) to examine whether adolescent risk factors predict offending trajectories across the life span. The CCLS is particularly well suited to study developmental offending trajectories as it contains detailed information on individual criminal offending careers for a representative sample of all individuals convicted in the Netherlands in 1977 (n = 4,615) beginning at 12 years of age and continuing into late adulthood. To assess predictive Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 46(4) 468-494
Are immigrants crime prone? In America, this question has been posed since the turn of the 20 th ... more Are immigrants crime prone? In America, this question has been posed since the turn of the 20 th century and more than 100 years of research has shown that immigration is not linked to increasing crime rates. Nevertheless, as was true more than a century ago, the myth of the criminal immigrant continues to permeate public debate. In part this continued focus on immigrants as crime prone is the result of significant methodological and theoretical gaps in the extant literature. Five key limitations are identified and addressed in this research including: (1) a general reliance on aggregate level analyses,
Pulkkinen 2003). Although youth who do poorly in school are oftentimes already criminal, during t... more Pulkkinen 2003). Although youth who do poorly in school are oftentimes already criminal, during this time of transition school failure may exacerbate their criminal offending (Jarjoura 1993; Thornberry, Moore, and Christenson 1985). Researchers have long understood the deleterious effects of school failure (grade retention and dropout) on adolescent delinquency and adult development. Children who are retained in middle school or beyond, and youth who drop out of school, earn less and have less secure occupational ...
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Papers by Bianca Bersani
Methods: We investigate how marriage promotes desistance from crime among urban African American males raised in the Woodlawn community, a disadvantaged neighborhood in Chicago. Using hierarchical linear modeling, we test the resiliency of the marriage effect by observing offending trajectories following marital dissolution; is the marriage effect conditional upon staying married, indicating situational effects, or does the effect persist when marriage is taken away, indicating enduring effects? Further, we test if the process of desistance is conditional upon contextual disadvantage.
Results: While initial findings show an increase in violent and property offending upon divorce, further analysis shows evidence that this effect differs by neighborhood structural context; the increase in offending upon divorce is apparent only for African American men who experience continued disadvantage across the life course. Those who moved to relatively more advantaged areas by adulthood show no increase in offending upon marital dissolution.
Conclusions: How marriage matters for desistance is partially influenced by social structural position; context matters. These findings invigorate criminological research on the mechanisms driving the marriage effect and provide insight into the interactive nature of person and context.
Methods: This study draws on data from the Pathways to Desistance Study, a longitudinal investigation of the transition from adolescence to young adulthood among a sample of serious adolescent offenders. Self-reported and official reports of arrest are compared longitudinally across 10 waves of data spanning 7 years from adolescence into young adulthood for nearly 1,300 adjudicated males and females.
Results: This study reveals a high degree of correspondence between self-reports of arrest and official reports of arrest when compared within groups distinguished by immigrant generation. Longitudinal patterns of divergence, disaggregated by under-reporting and over-reporting, in self- and official-reports of arrest indicated a very high degree of similarity regardless of immigrant generation. We found no evidence of systematic crime reporting biases among foreign-born, first generation immigrants compared to their U.S.-born peers.
Conclusions: First generation immigrants are characterized by lower levels of offending that are not attributable to a differential tendency to under-report their involvement in crime.
Motivated by offender typology debates, we evaluate whether adult offending trajectories can be predicted from adolescent risk factors.
Methods
Drawing on data from the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development (N = 411), we use person-centered, latent class cluster analysis (LCCA) to identify groups of respondents with similar behavioral, social, and psychological profiles measured in adolescence. We then use hierarchical linear models to estimate the criminal trajectories associated with each cluster using annual offending measures from 19 to 50 years of age. This offers a test of whether prospectively defined crime trajectories validate theoretical conceptions of qualitatively distinct offender groups.
Results
Our LCCA identified four clusters of boys with varying patterns of adolescent characteristics. The offending trajectories associated with these clusters differed in magnitude rather than shape. While we were able to identify a subgroup of offenders whose criminal offending remained relatively high over the life course, significant differences across subgroups were varied and dissipated after young adulthood. All offending trajectories followed the familiar age-crime curve, characterized by a sharp decline in offending in early adulthood.
Conclusions
Our findings support multidimensional interventions that would offset the constellations of behavioral, psychological, and social setbacks adolescents face. At the same time, our findings undermine the notion that qualitatively distinct patterns of offending can be prospectively identified and suggest that the processes behind criminal decline over the life course are generalizable across offenders.
Methods: We investigate how marriage promotes desistance from crime among urban African American males raised in the Woodlawn community, a disadvantaged neighborhood in Chicago. Using hierarchical linear modeling, we test the resiliency of the marriage effect by observing offending trajectories following marital dissolution; is the marriage effect conditional upon staying married, indicating situational effects, or does the effect persist when marriage is taken away, indicating enduring effects? Further, we test if the process of desistance is conditional upon contextual disadvantage.
Results: While initial findings show an increase in violent and property offending upon divorce, further analysis shows evidence that this effect differs by neighborhood structural context; the increase in offending upon divorce is apparent only for African American men who experience continued disadvantage across the life course. Those who moved to relatively more advantaged areas by adulthood show no increase in offending upon marital dissolution.
Conclusions: How marriage matters for desistance is partially influenced by social structural position; context matters. These findings invigorate criminological research on the mechanisms driving the marriage effect and provide insight into the interactive nature of person and context.
Methods: This study draws on data from the Pathways to Desistance Study, a longitudinal investigation of the transition from adolescence to young adulthood among a sample of serious adolescent offenders. Self-reported and official reports of arrest are compared longitudinally across 10 waves of data spanning 7 years from adolescence into young adulthood for nearly 1,300 adjudicated males and females.
Results: This study reveals a high degree of correspondence between self-reports of arrest and official reports of arrest when compared within groups distinguished by immigrant generation. Longitudinal patterns of divergence, disaggregated by under-reporting and over-reporting, in self- and official-reports of arrest indicated a very high degree of similarity regardless of immigrant generation. We found no evidence of systematic crime reporting biases among foreign-born, first generation immigrants compared to their U.S.-born peers.
Conclusions: First generation immigrants are characterized by lower levels of offending that are not attributable to a differential tendency to under-report their involvement in crime.
Motivated by offender typology debates, we evaluate whether adult offending trajectories can be predicted from adolescent risk factors.
Methods
Drawing on data from the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development (N = 411), we use person-centered, latent class cluster analysis (LCCA) to identify groups of respondents with similar behavioral, social, and psychological profiles measured in adolescence. We then use hierarchical linear models to estimate the criminal trajectories associated with each cluster using annual offending measures from 19 to 50 years of age. This offers a test of whether prospectively defined crime trajectories validate theoretical conceptions of qualitatively distinct offender groups.
Results
Our LCCA identified four clusters of boys with varying patterns of adolescent characteristics. The offending trajectories associated with these clusters differed in magnitude rather than shape. While we were able to identify a subgroup of offenders whose criminal offending remained relatively high over the life course, significant differences across subgroups were varied and dissipated after young adulthood. All offending trajectories followed the familiar age-crime curve, characterized by a sharp decline in offending in early adulthood.
Conclusions
Our findings support multidimensional interventions that would offset the constellations of behavioral, psychological, and social setbacks adolescents face. At the same time, our findings undermine the notion that qualitatively distinct patterns of offending can be prospectively identified and suggest that the processes behind criminal decline over the life course are generalizable across offenders.