THREE ESSAYS ON CRIMINALS' INDEBTEDNESS
Open Access
- Author:
- Siennick, Sonja Elayne
- Graduate Program:
- Sociology
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- June 11, 2009
- Committee Members:
- D Wayne Osgood, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
D Wayne Osgood, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Eric Silver, Committee Member
Glenn A Firebaugh, Committee Member
Marion Kathryn Hood, Committee Member - Keywords:
- family relations
young adulthood
personal financial behavior
crime and deviance - Abstract:
- During the crime-prone years of young adulthood, many people are not yet firmly connected to the work and family institutions that are most studied by criminologists. Instead, they tend to remain closely connected to their parents and often fall somewhere in between complete financial dependence and complete financial independence. In an age range characterized by increased freedom from adult control and new possibilities for expressions of agency, how does offending relate to other key domains of life? In this dissertation, I shed light on the relational and behavioral correlates of crime through three studies of offenders' personal finances and connections with their families of origin. I draw on data from three different national surveys: The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (1997 cohort), and the National Survey of Families and Households. I show that (1) young adult offenders receive more financial support from their parents than do their non-offending peers and even their own non-offending siblings, and this is not due to their financial need; (2) young adult offenders' financial need appears to be highly subjective, because they have higher incomes and earnings than do their non-offending peers but still incur more debt and experience more economic hardship; and (3) parents more often have conflicted, socially distant, and instrumentally imbalanced relationships with offending young adult offspring than they do with non-offending offspring, but most offender-parent relationships are not particularly troubled. These findings suggest that parental support may be more unconditional than social control theorists might expect. They also suggest that offenders are fully committed neither to crime nor to conformity, but rather show versatility in the means that they are willing to use to pursue their material goals.