Individual, Family, and Socio-structural Precursors of Delinquent Behaviors: Revisiting the Gluecks’ Data

• In Event: Longitudinal Predictors of Delinquent Behavior, Adolescent Decision Making, and Firearm Fatalities

Abstract

The current study re-analyzed the Gluecks’ longitudinal dataset of 1,000 boys to test competing criminological explanatory models which include effects by socio-structural, parental, and individual-level predictors of delinquency. Previous work by Sampson and Laub led to the development of informal social control theory focusing on sociological milestones, including marriage and employment. However, much recent research has consistently identified individual-level predictors as key in understanding variability of crime and deviance. Thus, the current study tested longitudinal predictors of delinquent behaviors across three timepoints: during adolescence, early adulthood, and middle adulthood. It re-analyzed key explanatory models by Sampson and Laub, but importantly expanded them by employing a longitudinal design involving different conceptualizations of several focal variables, by adding individual difference variables, and through the application of more advanced quantitative techniques. Findings support some main points of Sampson and Laub’s work, namely the salience of marriage in preventing crime and delinquency. However, they highlight the salience of low self-control in explaining delinquent behaviors (and its changes over time) contemporaneously during adolescence as well as longitudinally during adulthood, above and beyond all other tested factors.

Authors

• Albert J. Ksinan, University of Kentucky

• Alexander T. Vazsonyi, University of Kentucky