When Poverty Doesn’t Lead to Crime: Understanding Buffering Effects for Women Offenders

• In Event: “Navigating Reentry in a Life Course Framework”

Abstract

Cumulative disadvantage theory posits that relatively minor events, for those with other disadvantages, snowball into larger and more negative events than for those with greater resources. Strain theory posits that, in the absence of coping mechanisms, individuals are more likely to turn to criminal behavior. In these ways, experiences of poverty often become penalized by the criminal justice system. In this study, I seek to examine for women who are enmeshed in poverty and other disadvantages (financial, mental health, substance), when doesn’t poverty and disadvantage lead to self-reported criminal behavior? Using life history calendars as well as questions about agency, I look more closely at these women who have all the strikes against them but yet are not committing crimes to figure out what they may have in common, over the 5 years in their calendars or longer term, in the previous three waves of data collection. Measures of locus of control, financial changes, social service changes, physical and mental health, support from family and friends, and neighborhood characteristics are examined independently and for change over time.

Author

• Miriam Northcutt Bohmert, Indiana University