This article analyzes data derived from the first detailed long‐term follow‐up of a sample of serious adolescent female delinquents and similarly situated males. Neither marital attachment nor job stability, factors frequently associated with male desistance from crime, were strongly related to female or male desistance. A symbolic‐interactionist perspective on desistance is developed as a counterpoint to Sampson and Laub’s theory of informal social control, and life history narratives are used to illustrate the perspective. This cognitive theory is generally compatible with a control approach but (a) adds specificity regarding underlying change mechanisms, (b) explains some negative cases, and (c) fits well with life course challenges facing contemporary serious female (and more provisionally male) offenders.

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Gender, Crime, and Desistance: Toward a Theory of Cognitive Transformation

General strain theory (GST) is usually tested by examining the effect of strain on crime. Researchers, however, have little guidance when it comes to selecting among the many hundreds of types of strain and have trouble explaining why only some of them are related to crime. This article builds on GST by describing the characteristics of strainful events and conditions that influence their relationship to crime. Strains are said to be most likely to result in crime when they (1) are seen as unjust, (2) are seen as high in magnitude, (3) are associated with low social control, and (4) create some pressure or incentive to engage in criminal coping. Drawing on these characteristics, it is predicted that some types of strain will not be related to crime, including types that have dominated the research on strain theory, and that others will be related to crime, including types that have been neglected by empirical researchers.

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Building on the Foundation of General Strain Theory: Specifying the Types of Strain Most Likely to Lead to Crime and Delinquency:

The study of desistance from crime is hampered by definitional, measurement, and theoretical incoherence. A unifying framework can distinguish termination of offending from the process of desistanc...

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Understanding Desistance from Crime

Criminal careers have long occupied the imaginations of criminologists. Since the 1986 publication of the National Academy of Sciences report on criminal careers and career criminals, a variety of theoretical, empirical, and policy issues have surfaced. Data on key criminal career dimensions of prevalence, frequency, specialization, and desistance have raised theoretical questions regarding the patterning of criminal activity over the life course. Recent research has identified important methodological issues, including the relationship between past and future criminal activity, and potential explanations for this relationship: state dependence and persistent heterogeneity. Advanced statistical techniques have been developed to address these challenges. Criminal career research has identified important policy issues such as individual prediction of offending frequency and career duration, and has shifted the focus toward the interplay between risk and protective factors.

The Criminal Career Paradigm

The effects of correctional interventions on recidivism have important public safety implications when offenders are released from probation or prison. Hundreds of studies have been conducted on those effects, some investigating punitive approaches and some investigating rehabilitation treatments. Systematic reviews (meta-analyses) of those studies, while varying greatly in coverage and technique, display remarkable consistency in their overall findings. Supervision and sanctions, at best, show modest mean reductions in recidivism and, in some instances, have the opposite effect and increase reoffense rates. The mean recidivism effects found in studies of rehabilitation treatment, by comparison, are consistently positive and relatively large. There is, however, considerable variability in those effects associated with the type of treatment, how well it is implemented, and the nature of the offenders to whom it is applied. The specific sources of that variability have not been well explored, but some princ...

The Effectiveness of Correctional Rehabilitation: A Review of Systematic Reviews

We examine whether self-esteem and depressive symptoms influence sexual onset when important controls such as age, dating, race, and income are examined. Analyses are based on the first two waves of the restricted-use sample of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. We examine adolescents who reported at wave 1 that they had not had sexual intercourse. Using logistic regression models run separately for males and for females, we find that depressive symptoms, when entered simultaneously, exert a greater effect than self-esteem on sexual onset. Depressive symptoms have less effect on sexual onset for African-American girls than for white girls. Higher self-esteem is associated with greater likelihood of sexual debut at older ages for boys. Our findings suggest that although many positive benefits of self-esteem have been suggested, the conceptual and empirical link between depressive symptoms and adolescent sexual onset may be more crucial.

Self-Esteem, Depressive Symptoms, and Adolescents' Sexual Onset:

This study focuses on factors associated with women's self-reports of relationship violence “perpetration.” We analyzed data derived from personal interviews with 942 respondents who were originally contacted when they were adolescents and then 10 years later as young adults (N=721). Level of delinquency in adolescence was a signicant predictor of adult reports of involvement in relationship violence, for both male and female respondents. In addition, women's scores on the Conflict Tactics scale were related to adolescent and adult identities-higher scores were found among women who reported that they had been viewed as troublemakers as adolescents and who endorsed statements indexing an angry self-concept in adulthood. Although male perpetration represents a much more serious social and public health problem, these data do suggest that there may be a social learning basis for female as well as male expressions of violence.

Delinquency, identity, and women's involvement in relationship violence*

Although strain and social control theories assign a central role to the influence of the American dream on criminal behavior, little research has examined its impact on African Americans. Furthermore, while the criminology literature is replete with studies of the influence of aspirations and expectations on behavior, few of these have exphasized the economic goals so central to the core tenets of the American dream. In contrast, this study is based on a sample approximately half African American and measures the American dream in economic terms. The findings indicate that African Americans maintain a stronger commitment to the American dream than do Whites, but the nature of its influence on behavior offers little support for social control theory among either Whites or Blacks. Its effect is, however, consistent with strain theory, but only among Whites. The implications of the inapplicability of both strain and control theories to African Americans are discussed.

Race, Crime, and the American Dream:

This research investigates the relationship between contraceptive self-efficacy and contraceptive use, measured one year later, among adolescent boys and girls. Data are obtained from the two waves of the restricted use sample of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (n = 3,577). Employing multiple regression and logistic regression strategies, we examine whether demographic and background characteristics influence contraceptive self-efficacy, and whether contraceptive self-efficacy increases the likelihood of contraceptive use. We find that adolescents who are female, older, live with step-parents, and whose mothers approve of contraceptive use report higher contraceptive self-efficacy, while adolescents whose mothers did not complete high school report lower contraceptive self-efficacy. Results partially support the expectation that adolescents with higher contraceptive self-efficacy act accordingly by using contraceptives.

Jennifer L. Rudolph

Papers

Gender, Crime, and Desistance: Toward a Theory of Cognitive Transformation

Self-Esteem, Depressive Symptoms, and Adolescents' Sexual Onset:

Delinquency, identity, and women's involvement in relationship violence*

Race, Crime, and the American Dream:

Contraceptive self-efficacy: does it influence adolescents' contraceptive use?