Reconceptualizing Crime as an Independent Variable

As a discipline, criminology has long focused its attention on explaining crime and has thus placed crime almost exclusively as an outcome. As a result, little attention has been paid to the effect that criminal involvement has on other social domains, such as education, work, and relationships. To do so, criminal behavior must be understood as one of several social domains that interact within the broader context of social development. Grounded in this developmental perspective, this research used the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1997 to examine the consequences of adolescent criminal involvement on social development in early adulthood. In all, the results suggest that adolescent criminal involvement has a detrimental impact on a variety of social outcomes in early adulthood. The data also suggest that social outcomes are interrelated and that criminal involvement is better viewed as one of a variety of social domains which are connected within the context of general social development.