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Author: Doherty, Elaine Eggleston
Resulting in 3 citations.
1. Bersani, Bianca Elizabeth
Doherty, Elaine Eggleston
Disrupting Desistance? Minor Criminal Justice Contact and the Age Crime Curve
Presented: Philadelphia PA, American Society of Criminology (ASC) Annual Meeting, November 2017
Cohort(s): NLSY97
Publisher: American Society of Criminology
Keyword(s): Adolescent Behavior; Adolescent Sexual Activity; Crime; Criminal Justice System; Delinquency/Gang Activity; Substance Use; Transition, Adulthood

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

The consistency with which the age-crime curve has been replicated across time, space and sample signifies it as a brute fact in criminology. One facet of this curve is the decline in crime in young adulthood. Research focusing on desistance has been dominated by studies of factors that accelerate the reduction in offending. Less is know about the factors that may hinder desistance within the general population. Drawing on data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, we examine the age distribution of deviant behaviors (e.g., self-reported offending, substance use, sexual partners) stratified by criminal justice system involvement. Controlling for a host of background factors, we examine whether the age crime curve differs for justice-involved youth and non-justice-involved youth. Whereas research finds that incarceration can detrimentally impact offending among high-risk samples, testing for detriments of criminal justice system interaction is equally important among low-risk individuals who are most apt to naturally desist. This research asks: Do minor interactions with the criminal justice system hold the potential to alter offending trajectories?
Bibliography Citation
Bersani, Bianca Elizabeth and Elaine Eggleston Doherty. "Disrupting Desistance? Minor Criminal Justice Contact and the Age Crime Curve." Presented: Philadelphia PA, American Society of Criminology (ASC) Annual Meeting, November 2017.
2. Bersani, Bianca Elizabeth
Doherty, Elaine Eggleston
When the Ties that Bind Unwind: Examining the Enduring and Situational Processes of Change Behind the Marriage Effect
Criminology 51,2 (May 2013): 399-433.
Also: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1745-9125.12008/abstract
Cohort(s): NLSY97
Publisher: American Society of Criminology
Keyword(s): Crime; Divorce; Life Course; Marriage

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

Despite the continued growth of research demonstrating that marriage promotes desistance from crime, efforts aimed at understanding the mechanisms driving this effect are limited. Several theories propose to explain why we observe a reduction in offending after marriage including identity changes, strengthened attachments, reduced opportunities, and changes to routine activities. Although mechanisms are hard to measure, we argue that each proposed mechanism implies a specific change process, that is, whether the change that ensues after marriage is enduring (stable) or situational (temporary). Drawing on a medical model framework, we cast the role of marriage as a treatment condition and observe whether the effect of marriage is conditional on staying married or whether the effect persists when the “treatment” is taken away (i.e., divorce). We use 13 years of monthly level data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY97), a nationally representative sample containing close to 3,000 individuals with an arrest history, to examine changes in relationship status and arrest from adolescence into young adulthood. Estimates from multilevel within-individual models reveal greater support for situational mechanisms in that divorce is detrimental particularly for those in longer marriages; yet they also reveal important caveats that suggest a closer examination of the marriage effect. This research adds to the growing body of knowledge regarding the marriage effect by redirecting desistance research away from asking if marriage matters to asking how marriage affects desistance. A better understanding of this change process has important implications for criminal justice policy.
Bibliography Citation
Bersani, Bianca Elizabeth and Elaine Eggleston Doherty. "When the Ties that Bind Unwind: Examining the Enduring and Situational Processes of Change Behind the Marriage Effect." Criminology 51,2 (May 2013): 399-433.
3. Bersani, Bianca Elizabeth
Jacobsen, Wade C.
Doherty, Elaine Eggleston
Does Early Adolescent Arrest Alter the Developmental Course of Offending into Young Adulthood?
Journal of Youth and Adolescence published online (5 February 2022): DOI: 10.1007/s10964-022-01576-7.
Also: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10964-022-01576-7
Cohort(s): NLSY97
Publisher: Springer
Keyword(s): Adolescent Behavior; Arrests; Crime; Delinquency/Gang Activity; Transition, Adulthood

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

Adolescent involvement in risky behavior is ubiquitous and normative. Equally pervasive is the rapid decline in risky behavior during the transition to adulthood. Yet, for many, risky behavior results in arrest. Whereas prior research finds that arrest is associated with an increased risk of experiencing a host of detrimental outcomes, less understood is the impact of an arrest on the developmental course of offending compared to what it would have looked like if no arrest had occurred--the counterfactual. This study examines the developmental implications of an arrest early in the life course. The sample (N = 1293) was 37% female, 42% non-white, with a mean age of 13.00 years (SD = 0.82, range = 12–14) at baseline and followed annually for 15 years. Analyses combine propensity score matching and multilevel modeling techniques to estimate the impact of early arrest (i.e., 14 or younger) on the development of offending from adolescence into adulthood. The results indicate that early arrest alters the developmental course of offending in two primary ways. First, early arrest heightens involvement, frequency, and severity of offending throughout adolescence and into early young adulthood even after controlling for subsequent arrests. The detrimental influence of early arrest on the developmental course of offending is found regardless of gender or race/ethnicity. Second, even among youth with an early arrest, offending wanes over time with self-reported offending among all youth nearly absent by the mid- to late-twenties. The findings advance understanding of the developmental implications of early arrest beyond typical and expected offending.
Bibliography Citation
Bersani, Bianca Elizabeth, Wade C. Jacobsen and Elaine Eggleston Doherty. "Does Early Adolescent Arrest Alter the Developmental Course of Offending into Young Adulthood?" Journal of Youth and Adolescence published online (5 February 2022): DOI: 10.1007/s10964-022-01576-7.