Testing the Persistence of Interpersonal Exclusion: Adolescent Arrest, Institutional Exclusion, and Peer Relationships in Emerging Adulthood

• In Event: Labelling and Interactionalist Perspectives

Abstract

Legal system involvement in adolescence is associated with declines in close friendships, an important source of social capital in the transition to adulthood. Interpersonal exclusion theory (Jacobsen 2020), an extension of labeling theory, explains these findings by articulating the micro-level processes by which legal system involvement weakens normative peer relationships (i.e., rejection, withdrawal, separation, homophily). These processes are thought to alter both the structure and composition of the peer networks of arrested youth. Our objective is to extend interpersonal exclusion theory to examine the consequences of adolescent arrest for early young adulthood. We expect adolescent arrest to be associated with smaller friendship networks (structure) and greater involvement with delinquent or arrested peers (composition) in early young adulthood. We propose that these outcomes are driven by two key mechanisms. First, fewer opportunities for network transition may occur as a manifestation of institutional exclusion. In particular, young adults who were arrested as adolescents may have limited access to education or employment, leaving them with fewer opportunities to escape the context in which the stigma of their arrest history is perceptible, resulting in fewer friends and more deviant networks (i.e., peers who are involved in antisocial behavior or have been similarly stigmatized by an arrest). Second, greater maintenance of ties from high school to early young adulthood may occur as a result of fewer opportunities for network transition and because deviant peers tend to be “sticky,” meaning that when youth become embedded in deviant networks, they do not escape them easily. We test these propositions using PROSPER, a study of adolescent peer networks in the United States, followed from early adolescence to emerging adulthood.

Authors

• Wade C Jacobsen, University of Maryland

• Guyu Sun, University of Maryland, College Park

• Cassie McMillan, Northeastern University

• Nayan G Ramirez, California State University Northridge