Crime, Delinquency and Mental Health: A Marginal Structural Model

• In Event: 282 - Section on Medical Sociology Paper Session. Trauma, Victimization, and Health (co-sponsored with the Section on Sociology of Mental Health)

Abstract

The increasing interest in the role of the criminal justice system in population health has not been paralleled by research on the role of crime. Motivated by the social stress and the "cycle of violence" perspectives, we use five waves of panel data from the National Youth Survey to examine the effect of crime and serious delinquency on social isolation and emotional problems. Because there are predictors of crime that also predict health outcomes, a critical concern in this analysis is time-dependent confounding. Offending, for one, may lead to victimization yet over time victimization may affect both offending and mental health outcomes. We account for the impact of such potential time-varying confounders by using marginal structural models estimated with inverse-probability-of-treatment weights. Given gender differences in offending, we examine mental health effects separately for men and women. Preliminary results suggest a robust though relatively small impact of serious delinquency and crime on health. We discuss the implications of these findings and plans for further analysis.

Author

• Valerio Bacak, University of Pennsylvania