Examining the Salience of Marriage to Offending for Black and Hispanic Men

Abstract

Despite a considerable body of research demonstrating the beneficial effects of marriage for criminal desistance, data limitations have resulted in much of this work being based on predominantly white, male samples. In light of the rapidly changing demographic landscape of the US—and particularly the tremendous growth in the Hispanic population—the question of whether the benefits of marriage are generalizable to racial and ethnic minorities is an important one. This research extends prior work on the relationship between marriage and offending by assessing whether the benefits of marriage for criminal offending extend to today’s racial and ethnic minority populations. Using a contemporary sample of 3,560 young adult Hispanic, black and white males followed annually for 13 years spanning the transition to adulthood, we find that while marriage is a potent predictor of desistance for all groups, the benefits of marriage vary substantially across both race and ethnicity.

Keywords:

• marriage
• race–ethnicity
• crime
• desistance
• life course

Notes

¹ The Hispanic sample excludes first- and second-generation immigrants so as to not confound ethnic influences with immigrant influences (see Bersani & DiPietro, 2013).

² We analyzed models contrasting married and non-married states (single, divorced, and separated). We also analyzed models including a measure of marital separation as a form of marital dissolution. The results of these additional analyses are substantively similar to those reported here and are available upon request.

³ Data on parental education is missing for 5% of the sample.

⁴ This modeling approach is commonly used to study life events and their impact on offending trajectories (see e.g. Bersani and Doherty 2013; Horney et al., 1995; Osgood 2009; Slocum, Simpson, & Smith, 2005). For this reason, we refer readers to that body of work for more detail and provide a brief description of the analytic strategy here.

⁵ The formula to compare coefficient differences across models is: (Paternoster, Brame, Mazerolle, & Piquero, 1998).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Bianca E. Bersani

Bianca E. Bersani is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Massachusetts Boston and a W.E.B. Du Bois fellow with the National Institute of Justice. Her areas of interest include examining crime over the life course, desistance and persistence in offending, immigration and crime, marriage, martial dissolution, and offending. Recent publications have appeared in Criminology, Justice Quarterly, the Journal of Quantitative Criminology, and the Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency.

Stephanie M. DiPietro

Stephanie DiPietro is an assistant professor in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Missouri—St. Louis. She received her MA in sociology from the George Washington University and her PhD in criminology and criminal justice from the University of Maryland, College Park. Her research focuses primarily on the adaptation outcomes of immigrants and refugees, with particular emphasis on youth violence and delinquency. She is a W.E.B. Du Bois fellow of the National Institute of Justice and the recipient of a 2013–2014 J. William Fulbright Award for her research on family and community dynamics and criminal trajectories in post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina.