L’enchâssement social et la délinquance des pairs

At the end of his career, Carlo Morselli started to be interested in how the structure of social relations could influence offenders’ prospects for reintegration and desistance. This article analyzes the data from his research project on that topic. The impacts of offenders’ relationships have traditionally been discussed from a dichotomous, risk-centered perspective opposing antisocial and prosocial peers. Social network studies allow a step back and a global view of the contexts and processes in which relationships shape trajectories. This article focuses on the ego networks of offenders as they reintegrate with society and sheds light on triadic patterns associated with increased optimism toward desistance. Interviews were conducted with residents of halfway houses (48 men and 24 women), with offenders followed by a community agency (25 men), and with incarcerated youth offenders (24 male teenagers). Structured interviews addressed multiple aspects of the lives of the offenders, including their social relations, prosocial and antisocial. A mixed-method approach was used to understand the influence of social relations in the perception of desistance potential success. First, logistic regressions were used to assess the effect of individual’s and egocentric networks’ characteristics on optimism toward desistance. Second, case studies of ego network sociograms illustrate the results and suggest hypotheses about processes that may explain them. Results show that optimism is higher when prosocial personal networks are denser, and is lower when antisocial networks are open, and as antisocial peers are connected to prosocial ties. The implications of these patterns for offenders’ desistance and network-based interventions are discussed.

show abstract

Getting By: Low Wages and Income Supplementation

Nur

Nguyen

2022

Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We examine income-generating strategies of “getting by” in a sample of young adults who have an offending record. First, we examine if human capital, conventional social capital, and criminal social capital are associated with decisions to supplement legal income with income from informal or illegal activities. Second, we explore which of those factors differentiate supplementing with informal activities from supplementing with illicit activities. Random effects linear probability models are used to analyze a subsample of the Pathways to Desistance Study, a longitudinal data set of adolescents who have begun the transition to adulthood. We find that, among individuals in low-wage jobs, neither conventional social capital nor conventional human capital was related to supplementing legal work with informal work. Criminal social capital and low legal wages in the prior year increased the probability of supplementing legal work with illicit income-generating activities. The current study corroborates previous findings that many individuals are engaged in various income-generating activities. Different mechanisms are associated with decisions to supplement licit work with informal work as opposed to supplementing licit work with income-generating crime.

show abstract

L’enchâssement social et la délinquance des pairs

Cited by 7 publications

References 31 publications

Remembering Carlo Morselli

Remembering Carlo Morselli

The Effect of Prosocial and Antisocial Relationships Structure on Offenders’ Optimism towards Desistance

Getting By: Low Wages and Income Supplementation

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About