Do the adult criminal careers of African Americans fit the “facts”?

Abstract

Purpose A major gap in the criminal career research is our understanding of offending among African Americans, especially beyond early adulthood. In light of this gap, this study describes the criminal career patterns of a cohort of African American males and females. Methods This paper uses official criminal history data spanning ages 17 to 52 from the Woodlawn Study, a community cohort of 1,242 urban African American males and females. We use basic descriptive statistics as well as group-based modeling to provide a detailed description of the various dimensions of their adult criminal careers. Results We find cumulative prevalence rates similar to those for African Americans from national probability sample estimates, yet participation in offending extends farther into midlife than expected with a substantial proportion of the cohort still engaged in offending into their 30s. Conclusions The descriptive analyses contribute to the larger body of knowledge regarding the relationship between age and crime and the unfolding of the criminal career for African American males and females. The applicability of existing life course and developmental theories is discussed in light of the findings.

Desistance from Offending in the Twenty-First Century

“…Research conducted with the Woodlawn community cohort of urban African Americans followed to age 52 (Doherty & Ensminger 2014) also reveals that arrest counts do not decline until the mid-thirties for blacks; however, estimates of the prevalence of desistance into later adulthood for this cohort are similar to the white male serious juvenile offenders who constitute the Glueck sample . Looking at the reduction in the number of offenders from ages 25 to 49 across samples, the prevalence in offending declined 32% for the Glueck men compared to a similar 38% decrease for the Woodlawn men.…”

“…A few consistent findings of note from research spanning a large portion of the life course have been replicated over time and across studies, researchers, and data (e.g., Bersani et al 2009, Doherty & Ensminger 2014, Ezell & Cohen 2005, Piquero et al 2007. First, consistent with estimates of the aggregate age-crime curve, analyses of individual offending trajectories reveal a unimodal-offending trajectory that peaks in late adolescence and declines with age.…”

Life Course Offending Pathways Across Gender and Race/Ethnicity

“…Internationally, few studies have examined age-graded offending patterns disaggregated by race/ethnicity [31]. This reflects both a lack of theoretical guidance as to how race/ethnicity might influence life course offending patterns and sample size limitations that preclude disaggregation by race/ethnicity [48].…”

“…Although our approach is largely descriptive, this is an important step in theory building and articulating the intersectionality of gender and race/ethnicity in life course offending patterns. Few studies have examined the impact of gender and race/ethnicity on life course offending [23,28,31,57]. Furthermore, in recent years, multiracial feminist scholars have focused attention not only on the gender differences in offending but also on understanding intersecting inequalities, particularly the intersections between race/ethnicity and gender and their combined influence on crime [23].…”

Handgun carrying among White youth increasing in the United States: New evidence from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health 2002–2013

“…In addition to males more likely to carry handgun than females (Pickett et al, 2005), research has identified racial and ethnic differences. Studies in the U.S. indicate that African-Americans and Latinos are more likely to carry weapons such as handguns compared to Whites and Asians (e.g., Craun & Detar, 2015;Durant, Krowchuk, Kreiter, Sinal, & Woods 1999;Spano, 2012) in part because of more extensive and greater duration of involvement in criminal violence (Bierie, 2014;Craun & Deter, 2015;Doherty & Ensminger, 2014). However, there is a relative dearth of nationally representative studies on racial/ethnic differences in handgun carrying among youth.…”