Abstract
This study uses General Strain Theory (GST) to describe and examine one potential pathway of delinquency/crime escalation and de-escalation across adolescence and young adulthood. In particular, the time-varying consequences for delinquent behavior and young adult crime of persistent or increasing levels of strain are addressed using data from the Family Health Study, an eight-year longitudinal data set (n = 840). The results indicate that there is a positive association between experiencing one type of strain—stressful life events—and involvement in delinquent or criminal behavior during this period of the life-course. However, the impact of stressful life events on these behaviors is diminished among young adults. Moreover, delinquent/criminal peer associations attenuate the age-specific effects of stressful life events, thus suggesting that peers play a central role in the association between strain and these behaviors. Implications of the results for theory and policy are discussed.
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Notes
Although GST provides a description of the association between delinquent behavior and a number of sources of adolescent strain (Agnew 1992), we focus on stressful life events for three reasons. First, there is a substantial body of literature in sociology and psychology that demonstrates consistent effects of stressful life events on a number of negative outcomes, including depression, drug use, delinquency, and aggression. Second, GST does not make a clear distinction between sources of strain and sources of bonding or social control. For example, distinguishing between negative relations with a parent and lack of attachment may be plausible theoretically (Agnew 1995), but it presents measurement problems for empirical models (Hoffmann and Miller 1998). Third, the model presented and examined empirically in this study broadens the general research on stressful life events during adolescence considerably. Therefore, it should be of interest to those concerned with many adolescent outcomes in addition to delinquency.
Results of additional lowess plots also confirm that self-esteem, self-efficacy, and family relations have a quadratic association with age, with increases in each during late adolescence and early adulthood after a trough during middle adolescence. On the other hand, delinquent/criminal peers and depressive symptoms reach a plateau at about age 17 and then diminish slightly during early adulthood.
Hypothesis 3 proposes that the moderators take on a larger role in late adolescence and early adulthood. The tables do not provide a complete test of this hypothesis. In order to do so three-way interactions were entered into the models. For example, a stress × age × peer delinquency term—as well as others—was included in the GEE model. None of these interaction terms is statistically significant, nor does including them result in a better fitting model, according to the BICs. The analysis thus does not support any aspect of Hypothesis 3. In the interests of space, these models are not shown, but are available from the author upon request.
As a sensitivity analysis, we also estimated the models using different correlation structures for the errors. The models shown in the tables assume an exchangeable structure, thus the models were also estimated assuming an autoregressive (t–1) structure and an unstructured correlation structure. Although there were some differences among the three approaches, the substantive findings did not vary enough to change the conclusions of the analysis. The results of these models are available from the author.
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This paper has benefitted from my collaborations with the late S. Susan Su, Felicia Gray Cerbone, Dean Gerstein, the late Alan Miller, Robert Johnson, Karen Spence, Craig Rivera, and Tim Ireland. Tim Brezina, Tim Ireland, Wesley Jennings, and an anonymous reviewer offered helpful advice on earlier versions of this paper. Original funding for data collection of the Family Health Study was provided by grant DA05617 from the National Institute on Drug Abuse. All interpretations of the results are the sole responsibility of the author.
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Hoffmann, J.P. A Life-Course Perspective on Stress, Delinquency, and Young Adult Crime. Am J Crim Just 35, 105–120 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12103-010-9072-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12103-010-9072-4