Legacies of Crime: A Follow-Up of the Children of Highly Delinquent Girls and Boys

by Peggy C. Giordano

• ISBN13: 9780521705516
• ISBN10: 0521705517
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-02-26
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Legacies of Crime explores the lives of seriously delinquent girls and boys who were followed over a twenty-year period as they navigated the transition to adulthood. In-depth interviews with these women and men and their children - a majority now adolescents themselves - depict the adults' economic and social disadvantages and continued criminal involvement, and in turn the unique vulnerabilities of their children. Giordano identifies family dynamics that foster the intergenerational transmission of crime, violence, and drug abuse, rejecting the notion that such continuities are based solely on genetic similarities or even lax, inconsistent parenting. The author breaks new ground in directly exploring - and in the process revising - the basic tenets of classic social learning theories, and confronting the complications associated with the parent's gender. Legacies of Crime also identifies factors associated with resilience in the face of what is often a formidable package of risks favoring intergenerational continuity.

Author Biography

Peggy C Giordano is Distinguished Research Professor at Bowling Green State University. Her research - published in leading journals such as Criminology, American Sociological Review, and the American Journal of Sociology - has long focused on the causes of juvenile delinquency, particularly on similarities and differences in male and female pathways to criminal involvement. Her analyses of the adult lives of a sample of delinquent youth have twice won the American Sociological Association's James F. Short, Jr., award for best article. This book extends this research in a unique exploration of the lives of the children of the original study subjects.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. xi
Introduction	p. 1
Literature Review and Conceptual Framework	p. 7
The Ohio Life-Course Study	p. 35
OLS Adult Respondents: Offending, Surviving, Parenting	p. 53
How Have the OLS Children Fared?	p. 96
The Intergenerational Transmission Process	p. 125
"Success Stories": It's All Relative	p. 163
Theoretical and Policy Implications of the OLS Study	p. 205
References	p. 231
Index	p. 245
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