Gary Sweeten

Continuity and Change in Gang Membership and Gang Embeddedness

Objectives. Drawing from social network and life-course frameworks, the authors extend Hagan’s concept of criminal embeddedness to embeddedness within gangs. This study explores the relationship between embeddedness in a gang, a type of deviant network, and desistance from gang membership. Method. Data were gathered over a five-year period from 226 adjudicated youth reporting gang membership at the baseline interview. An item response theory model is used to construct gang embeddedness. The authors estimate a logistic hierarchical linear model to identify whether baseline levels of gang embeddedness alter the longitudinal contours of gang membership. Results. Gang embeddedness is associated with slowing the rate of desistance from gang membership over the full five-year study period. Gang members with low levels of embeddedness leave the gang quickly, crossing a 50 percent threshold in six months after the baseline interview, whereas high levels of embeddedness delays similar reductions until about two years. Males, Hispanics, and Blacks were associated with greater continuity in gang membership as well as those with low self-control. Conclusions. The concept of gang embeddedness broadens understanding of heterogeneity in deviant network immersion and is applicable to a wide range of criminal and delinquent networks. Gang embeddedness has implications for studying the parameters of gang careers and for a range of criminological outcomes.

Who Will Graduate? Disruption of High School Education by Arrest and Court Involvement

Little research has assessed the effects of juvenile justice involvement during high school on educational outcomes. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, this study assesses the effect of first‐time arrest and court involvement during high school on educational attainment. In addition, differential effects by structural location are examined. Findings suggest support for the labeling perspective. First‐time court appearance during high school increases the chances of dropping out of high school independent of involvement in delinquency. Furthermore, the effect of court appearance is particularly detrimental to less delinquent youths.

Propensity Score Matching in Criminology and Criminal Justice

The propensity score methodology has become quite common in applied research in the last 10 years, and criminology is no exception to this growing trend. It offers a potentially powerful way to estimate the treatment effect of some intervention on behavior when the receipt of treatment arises in a nonrandom way – this is the selection problem. It does so by creating synthetic “experimental” and “control” groups that are equivalent on a large number of potential confounding variables. In this chapter, we first introduce the counterfactual framework on which the propensity score method is based and define the average treatment effect. We then outline technical issues that must be addressed when the propensity score method is used in practice, including estimation of the propensity score, demonstration of covariate balance, and estimation of the treatment effect of interest. To provide a step-by-step example of the method, we appeal to the relationship between employment and substance use in adolescence. Following a brief review of research in criminology and related disciplines that employ the propensity score methodology, we offer a number of guidelines for use of the technique.

Disengaging From Gangs and Desistance From Crime

We study the relationship between disengagement from gangs and desistance from crime within a life-course criminological framework. Gang disengagement is conceptualized as the event of gang membership de-identification and the process of declining gang embeddedness. We examine the effects of both the event and the process of disengaging from gangs on (1) criminal desistance mechanisms and (2) criminal offending using longitudinal data and multilevel modeling. We find that disengaging from gangs is indirectly related to offending through less exposure to antisocial peers, less unstructured routine activities, less victimization, and more temperance. Gang disengagement is associated with decreased contemporaneous offending but does not predict future offending after controlling for desistance mechanisms. Evidence also suggests that those who leave gangs more quickly are less exposed to antisocial peers, and possess better work histories and psychosocial characteristics even while in the gang. We discuss implications for research on gangs and criminal desistance.

SELF‐CONTROL THROUGH EMERGING ADULTHOOD: INSTABILITY, MULTIDIMENSIONALITY, AND CRIMINOLOGICAL SIGNIFICANCE

This study assesses self-control theorys stability postulate. We advance research on self-control stability in three ways. First, we extend the study of stability beyond high school, estimating GBTMs of self-control from ages 10 to 25. Second, drawing on advances in developmental psychology and social neuroscience, especially the dual systems model of risk taking, we investigate whether two distinct personality traits--impulsivity and sensation seeking--often conflated in measures of self-control, exhibit divergent developmental patterns. Finding that they do, we estimate multitrajectory models to identify latent classes of co-occurring developmental patterns. We supplement GBTM stability analyses with hierarchical linear models and reliable variance estimates. Lastly, using fixed effects models, we explore whether the observed within-individual changes are associated with changes in crime net of overall age trends. These ideas are tested using five waves of data from the Family and Community Health Study. RESULTS suggest that self-control is unstable, that distinct patterns of development exist for impulsivity and sensation seeking, and that these changes are uniquely consequential for crime. We conclude by comparing our findings with extant research and discussing the implications for self-control theory. Language: en

A Life-Course Analysis of Offense Specialization Across Age: Introducing a New Method for Studying Individual Specialization Over the Life Course

Much of the knowledge base on offense specialization indicates that, although there is some (short-term) specialization, it exists amidst much versatility in offending. Yet this general conclusion is drawn on studies using very different conceptualizations of specialization and emerges with data primarily through the first two to three decades of life. Using data on a sample of Dutch offenders through age 72 years, this article introduces and applies a new method for studying individual offender specialization over the life course. The results indicate that although, in general, individual offending patterns over the life course are diverse, there is also evidence of an age—diversity curve. Linking offense frequency trajectories to the estimated diversity index, the authors also examine distinct specialization patterns across unique trajectory groups. Implications for theory and research are outlined.

Propensity Score Matching and Prevention Science

Although the strongest evidence in prevention science comes from well-designed and faithfully implemented randomized control trials, sometimes randomization is not feasible and sometimes randomized control trials do not unfold as planned. This chapter reviews standards of evidence in prevention science, discusses how research can fall short of these standards, and suggests ways propensity score matching can fill the gaps. It then presents the propensity score matching framework and contemporary best practices, followed by an empirical example and a discussion of future directions.

Predictors of emotional and physical dating violence in a sample of serious juvenile offenders

AIM We estimate group-based dating violence trajectories and identify the adolescent risk factors that explain membership in each trajectory group. METHOD Using longitudinal data from the Pathways to Desistance Study, which follows a sample of 1354 serious juvenile offenders from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Phoenix, Arizona between mid-adolescence and early adulthood, we estimate group-based trajectory models of both emotional dating violence and physical dating violence over a span of five years in young adulthood. We then estimate multinomial logistic regression models to identify theoretically motivated risk factors that predict membership in these groups. RESULTS We identified three developmental patterns of emotional dating violence: none (33%), low-level (59%) and high-level decreasing (8%). The best-fitting model for physical dating violence also had three groups: none (73%), low-level (24%) and high-level (3%). Race/ethnicity, family and psychosocial variables were among the strongest predictors of both emotional and physical dating violence. In addition, delinquency history variables predicted emotional dating violence and relationship variables predicted physical dating violence. CONCLUSIONS Dating violence is quite prevalent in young adulthood among serious juvenile offenders. Numerous predictors distinguish between chronic dating violence perpetrators and other groups. These may suggest points of intervention for reducing future violence. Copyright