Criminology & Criminal Justice Theses and Dissertations

Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2758

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Expanding the Impact of Peer Networks: Pathways to Turning Points
(2007-12-13) O'Neill, Lauren; McGloin, Jean M; Criminology and Criminal Justice; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Scholars highlight the importance of both adolescent peers and prosocial life events in explanations of continuity and change in deviant behavior. Thus far, research has evaluated the pathway to desistance by focusing on what happens to one's trajectory after experiencing prosocial adult activities, including the role of adulthood friendships. This research shifts the focus to an earlier stage of the process and combines these two research realms to investigate the influence of one's adolescent peer network on shaping the pathway to marriage, educational achievement, and job stability. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health allows this investigation to evaluate the level of deviance within one's peer group as well as the conditioning effect of network characteristics (e.g. density, centrality, popularity, attachment, and involvement) on peer deviance, while controlling for background characteristics. This research finds that the level of deviance in a peer network is particularly detrimental for educational attainment. Deviant peers also play a significant role in shaping educational expectations. The results do not, however, find peers to be influential for marriage and employment outcomes. The analyses show minimal support for the conditioning effect of network characteristics and highlight the importance of considering background characteristics in conjunction with these more dynamic influences. Lastly, the results draw attention the fact that these processes do not operate uniformly and that the pathways to prosocial adult outcomes sometimes vary by gender and race. Theoretical and policy implications are also discussed.
SEX, CRIME, AND SELF-CONTROL: COMPARING OUTCOMES OF LOW SELF-CONTROL FOR HETEROSEXUAL AND GAY/BISEXUAL MEN
(2022) Scocca, Jacob; Dugan, Laura; Criminology and Criminal Justice; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Objective: The purpose of the current thesis is to further explore Gottfredson and Hirschi’s General Theory of Crime by examining adult outcomes of low self-control in a heterosexual and gay/bisexual sample. It argues that self-control in these populations is differentially related to outcomes of violent crime and analogous behaviors, which contradicts the general nature of the theory. Methods: The current study uses self-reported measures in the Adolescent Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) for self-control (Wave 3) to examine outcomes of violent crime and risky sexual behavior (Wave 4). Risky sexual behaviors in this study are conceptualized as number of different sexual partners, sex without prophylactics, or sex with more than one person around the same time. Men are the primary focus of this thesis due to the presence of culturally and socially specific factors in the heterosexual and gay male community that could differentially affect the outcomes of interest. Hypothesis: I hypothesize that both the relationship between low self-control and violent crime and low self-control and risky sexual behavior will differ based on the sexual orientation of the respondent. To frame this hypothesis, I argue that the gay male subculture is more openly accepting of risky sexual behaviors, and therefore that this analogous behavior will be less related to self-control in gay populations. I also argue that heterosexual masculinity facilitates violent behavior/crime within heterosexual men, meaning that self-control plays a larger role in controlling urges in this group. Results: Differences in the association between self-control and risky sexual behaviors were found between heterosexual and gay/bisexual men indicating support for the hypothesis. Differences in the relationship between self-control and violent criminal activity in the two groups were not found in the tested samples. These findings provide evidence that Gottfredson & Hirschi's theory may not be generalizable for analogous behaviors in all populations, but that it still may hold for violent crime.