General strain theory, persistence, and desistance among young adult males
Research Highlights
►Present study represents one of the first applications of General Strain Theory to the issue of criminal desistance ►Change scores representing exposure to recent life events and chronic stressors are both found to predict changes in self-reported criminal activity ►An indicator of negative emotionality, angry disposition, is found to moderate the association between changes in chronic strains and changes in self-reported criminal activity
Introduction
Research examining the criminal career has grown dramatically during the past quarter century. Developmental and life course theories have focused on the transitions, experiences, and changes that occur during young adulthood that help explain the dimensions of participation, frequency, seriousness, persistence and career length of criminal activity during adulthood. And while a voluminous research exists exploring these issues, the dimension of criminal desistance, while emerging as an important dimension to study, has been “downplayed or over-looked” (Gunnison & Mazerolle, 2007, p. 231) until recently. Indeed, a number of scholars have taken note of the dearth of understanding about the causal processes that lead one to reduce or discontinue their criminal activity (Kazemian, 2007, Laub and Sampson, 2001, Piquero et al., 2003), although interest in understanding desistance is clearly increasing.
Despite this increased focus on understanding the desistance process, Piquero, Farrington, and Blumstein note in their review of criminal career research that, “more needs to be done to identify the effect of various events and experiences that lead persons into and out of crime” (2003, p. 392). One such explanation that is well situated to address that question but has yet to be fully utilized is Agnew's general strain theory (GST). Since its introduction by Agnew (1992), the merits of GST as an explanation of crime and delinquency have been well established. A voluminous number of published articles have found support for many of its basic principles, including the core notion that cumulative and increased exposure to strains serves as a risk factor for crime and delinquency (Agnew and Brezina, 1997, Aseltine et al., 2000, Brezina, 1998, Brezina, 1999, Broidy, 2001, Eitle and Turner, 2002, Hoffman and Cerbone, 1999, Hoffman and Miller, 1998, Mazerolle, 1998, Mazerolle and Maahs, 2000, Mazerolle and Piquero, 1997, Mazerolle and Piquero, 1998, Mazerolle et al., 2000, Paternoster and Mazerolle, 1994). And while some components of the model have not enjoyed a preponderance of support from extant studies (e.g., the notion that several factors may moderate the strain-crime/deviance relationship [Agnew, Brezina, Wright, & Cullen, 2002, p. 43]), the impact of GST on criminological scholarship is truly noteworthy.
Despite this history, the utility in applying GST to issues central to developmental criminology has yet to be tested. While Agnew (1997, p. 101) acknowledged that such approaches to explaining crime have been dominated (on the sociological front) by social learning and social control theories, there are compelling arguments, forwarded by Agnew (2006), that GST is aptly suited to contribute to our understanding of the process of desistance versus persistence. This study used data from a longitudinal study of youth in South Florida to examine whether GST can indeed contribute to our understanding of desistance and persistence in crime.
Section snippets
Background
In response to studies that had failed to support traditional strain theory's core proposition that the inability to achieve desired goals such as middle-class status or economic success would motivate adolescents to engage in delinquency, Agnew (1992) extended classic strain theory by focusing on other possible sources of strain (defined as events or conditions that are disliked by individuals [Agnew, 2006, p. 4]). Instead of one general strain-producing source, Agnew identified three major
Data
The sample used to gather the data analyzed in the present study is drawn from a longitudinal study of adolescents attending Miami-Dade public schools (Vega & Gil, 1998). The initial study was designed to assess risk and protective factors associated with male adolescent substance use and deviance. In the original study, all 48 of the county's middle schools and all 25 high schools participated (as did alternative schools). The original study was a three wave panel study that initially surveyed
Results
Table 1 presents the summary statistics for the variables included in the analyses. What is not told by the reported statistics, however, is the fact that most respondents are reporting that they did not commit a crime in the past month (in time 5): only 7.72 percent of the respondents report having committed at least one crime in the past month. Relatively to the percentage of respondents who reported that they had committed at least one crime in the past month in wave 4, 31.79 percent, it is
Discussion
The present study expanded on research that has sought to continue to expand our understanding of criminal desistance and persistence among young adults by utilizing General Strain Theory principles. Although criminal desistance is a core concept of life course criminology, there has been a surprising dearth of scholarship examining the factors that distinguish between those who continue to engage in crime during adulthood and those that do not (Laub and Sampson, 2001, Maruna, 2001). In
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2019, International Journal of Law, Crime and JusticeCitation Excerpt :The core idea of the strain theory proposed by Merton (1938) is that stress is the main cause of crime. Many scholars have made a lot of improvements and contributions to the development of this theory (S. Agnew, 1985; Passas, 1990; Eitle, 2010; Shadmanfaat et al., 2018). However, strain theory was still being used on individual psychological factors of criminals under the microscopic research until the evolution of Macro Strain Theory (MST) put forth by A. Agnew (1999).
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2015, International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences: Second EditionNewscast on general strain theory and inmates violence
2012, Psychologie FrancaiseFoster youth and crime: Employing general strain theory to promote understanding
2012, Journal of Criminal JusticeCitation Excerpt :Indeed, Stein (2006) has observed that the situation of foster youth and marginalisation in general remains poorly theorised. Also, many of the studies present quantitative empirical findings to discuss the utility of GST, and there is limited attention to the qualitative accounts of young people (Aseltine et al., 2000; Baron, 2004; Slocum, 2010; Eitle, 2010). To fill in these gaps in the literature, this paper explores the relevance of GST to foster youth and criminality, using both quantitative and qualitative data.
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2012, Journal of Criminal JusticeNew frontiers in criminal careers research, 2000-2011: A state-of-the-art review
2011, Journal of Criminal JusticeCitation Excerpt :Drawing on data from offenders in Australia (Brame, Mazerolle, & Piquero, 2010; Mazerolle, Piquero, & Brame, 2010; Fitzgerald, Mazerolle, Piquero, & Ansara, 2011), Canada (Kazemian & Le Blanc, 2007; Morselli, Tremblay, & McCarthy, 2006; Williams & Arnold, 2002), China (Chu, 2002), Denmark (Kyvsgaard, 2003), England (Everson, 2003; LeBel et al., 2008; Maruna, 2004), Finland (Junninen, 2006; Kivivuori, 2007; Savolainen, 2009), Japan (Kobayashi et al., 2010), Malta (Clark, 2006), New Zealand (Fergusson, Horwood, & Nagin, 2000; Piquero, Brame, & Moffitt, 2005; Piquero, Moffitt, & Wright, 2007), Norway (Kjelsberg, 2004; Skardhamar, 2009a), Puerto Rico (Maldonado-Molina, Piquero, Jennings, Bird, & Canino, 2009), Scotland (Smith & McVie, 2003), Sweden (Pulkkinen et al., 2000; Stenbacka & Stattin, 2007; Svennson, 2002), The Netherlands (Bersani, Laub, & Nieuwbeerta, 2009; Bushway, Nieuwbeerta, & Blokland, 2011; Nieuwbeerta, Blokland, Piquero, & Sweeten, 2011; Nieuwbeerta, Nagin, & Blokland, 2009; Petras, Nieuwbeerta, & Piquero, 2010; van Wijk, Mali, & Bullens, 2007), and the United Kingdom (Francis, Soothill, & Ackerly, 2004; Leary & Pease, 2003; Piquero, Farrington, & Blumstein, 2007; Piquero, Farrington, Nagin, & Moffitt, 2010; Soothill, Francis, & Liu, 2008; Wikstrom & Butterworth, 2006), investigators continue to study the correlates and causes of diverse offending trajectories and typologies of criminals. Within the United States and Canada, similar research on criminal careers has been produced from a range of data sources including states, such as Arizona (DeLisi, Berg, & Hochstetler, 2004), California (Natsuaki, Ge, & Wenk, 2008; Worrall, 2004), Colorado (DeLisi, 2001a), Florida (Eitle, 2010; Kovandzic, 2001), Iowa (Simons et al., 2002), Kentucky (Ousey & Wilcox, 2007), Massachusetts (DiCataldo & Everett, 2008), Missouri (Vaughn, DeLisi, Beaver, & Wright, 2009b; Vaughn, DeLisi, Beaver, Wright, & Howard, 2007), Nebraska (Horney, Osgood, & Marshall, 1995; Sullivan, McGloin, Pratt, & Piquero, 2006), Oregon (Wiesner & Capaldi, 2003), Texas (Trulson, Marquart, Mullings, & Caeti, 2005), Virginia (Waite et al., 2005), and Wisconsin (Kurlychek, Brame, & Bushway, 2007) and cities, including Baltimore (Piquero, Daigle, Gibson, Piquero, & Tibbetts, 2007), Boston (Zagar, Busch, Hughes, & Arbit, 2009), Chicago (Kirk, 2006), Philadelphia (Brame, Mulvey, & Piquero, 2001; D'Unger, Land, & McCall, 2002; Kempf-Leonard, Tracy, & Howell, 2001; McGloin & Piquero, 2009, 2010), Montreal (Krohn, Thornberry, Rivera, & Le Blanc, 2001), Phoenix (Brame, Fagan, Piquero, Schubert, & Steinberg, 2004; Brame, Paternoster, & Bushway, 2004), Pittsburgh (Krohn et al., 2001), Racine (Zimring, Piquero, & Jennings, 2007), Rochester (Krohn et al., 2001), Seattle (Farrington et al., 2003; Weisburd, et al., 2004), and Saint Paul (Massoglia & Uggen, 2007). The criminal career paradigm has been found to be relevant to an array of populations including Catholic priests (Piquero, Terry, Youstin, Nobles, & Piquero, 2008), college students (Khey, Jennings, Lanza-Kaduce, & Frazier, 2009; Khey, Lanza-Kaduce, Spillane, & Frazier, 2010), prison inmates (Allender & Marcell, 2003; Blackburn & Trulson, 2010; DeLisi, 2003b; Graeve, DeLisi, & Hochstetler, 2007; Trulson, et al., 2010), psychiatric patients (Lussier, Tzoumakis, Cale, & Amirault, 2010; Lussier, Verdun-Jones, Deslauriers-Varin, Nicholls, & Brink, 2010), stalkers (Nobles, Fox, Piquero, & Piquero, 2009), domestic abusers (Buzawa & Hirschel, 2008; Klein & Tobin, 2008; Lussier, Farrington, & Moffitt, 2009; Piquero, Brame, Fagan, & Moffitt, 2006), marijuana users (Miller, Griffin, Gibson, & Khey, 2009; Ragan & Beaver, 2010), sex offenders (Zimring Jennings, & Piquero, 2007; Zimring, Jennings, Piquero, & Hays, 2009), and even police officers (Harris, 2010).