Bianca E. Bersani

An Examination of First and Second Generation Immigrant Offending Trajectories

The myth of the criminal immigrant has permeated public and political debate for much of this nations 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.

WHEN THE TIES THAT BIND UNWIND: EXAMINING THE ENDURING AND SITUATIONAL PROCESSES OF CHANGE BEHIND THE MARRIAGE EFFECT

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.

County-Level Correlates of Terrorist Attacks in the United States

Research Summary 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. Policy Implications Terrorism, like ordinary crime, is highly concentrated. Of the 3,144 counties in the United States, only 250 (7.95%) experienced a terrorist attack from 1990 to 2011; 5 counties (0.002% of total U.S. counties) accounted for 16% of all attacks. Moreover, counties at greatest risk of terrorist attack have identifying characteristics. Just as random preventive patrol policing has generally been replaced by more targeted strategies, efforts to counter terrorism might benefit from strategies that target certain counties: those with high population heterogeneity and great residential instability that are highly urban. And just as targeting particular neighborhoods raises equity concerns in policing, policies aimed at counties with particular characteristics pose a challenge for countering terrorist attacks. However, unlike the situation in policing ordinary crime, high-terrorism-risk counties are generally not characterized by economic disadvantage or a large proportion of racial and ethnic minorities.

A Game of Catch-Up? The Offending Experience of Second-Generation Immigrants:

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 with 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 nine 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 with native-born Black and Hispanic peers particularly among measures of more serious offending. Implications of these findings for theory and policy are discussed.

Longitudinal Patterns of Legal Socialization in First-Generation Immigrants, Second-Generation Immigrants, and Native-Born Serious Youthful Offenders

It is now well documented that the view that immigrants commit more crime than native-born persons is not supported by empirical research. Yet, the knowledge base is limited in our understanding of the criminological frameworks that may distinguish these groups and, in part, lead to divergent offending patterns. We use the legal socialization framework to understand potential differences along with data from the Pathways to Desistance to assess differences in legal socialization perceptions between first-generation immigrants, second-generation immigrants, and native-born serious youthful offenders. Results show that, compared with second-generation and native-born youth, first-generation youth tend to have more positive views toward the law, less cynical attitudes toward the legal system, and report more social costs associated with punishment.

Examining the Salience of Marriage to Offending for Black and Hispanic Men

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 US—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.

Marriage and Offending: Examining the Significance of Marriage among the Children of Immigrants

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.

Understanding the Mechanisms of Desistance at the Intersection of Race, Gender, and Neighborhood Context

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.