Stressful life events and delinquency escalation in early adolescence

A recent emphasis in criminology has been on trajectories, life transitions , and turning points that affect the escalation stabilization, or desistanc e of deviant behavior. The purpose of this article is to describe and exami ne one potential pathway of delinquency escalation in early and mid-adolesc ence. It draws upon Agnew's general strain theory and research on adolescen t stress to describe a significant transitory stage of the life course. A k ey organizing principle underlying the proposed pathway is that although st ressful life events are highly variable among adolescents, experiencing a p ersistent or increasing number over time cart lead to an escalation of deli nquency. Using four years of sequential data from the Family Health Study ( 651 adolescents aged 11-14 during year one), we estimate a hierarchical gro wth-curve model that emphasizes the effects of life events on delinquency. The model assumes that delinquency is distributed as an overdispersed Poiss on random variable. The results indicate that experiencing a relatively hig h number of life events over time is related to a significant "growth" of d elinquency but that this relationship is not affected by sex, family income , self-esteem, or mastery.