Citation

Ngo FT, Paternoster R. J. Criminol. (New York) 2014; 2014: 1-20.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2014, Hindawi Publishing)

DOI

10.1155/2014/320486

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

In 2005, Robert Agnew introduced his general theory of crime and delinquency with the publication of Why Criminals Offend: A General Theory of Crime and Delinquency. Agnew's general theory is an integrated inductive theory built upon a foundation of empirical research findings of the causes of crime with a focus on those variables having direct effects on crime and the relationship among them. At the heart of the theory are five clusters or "life domains" of variables and each one Agnew claims has been proven to be a robust correlate of crime. These five domains--self, family, peers, school, and work--represent the best known covariates in the existing literature for explaining why some individuals are more likely to engage in crime than others. Agnew's risk-factor based general theory was intended to account for between-individual differences in the risk of committing crime. Agnew's general theory is an even more ambitious theory in that it seeks to account for all types of crime, address the "known facts" of crime, explicate micro- and macro patterns of crime, and guide policies in preventing and controlling crime.

This study presents a partial test of Agnew's general theory of crime and delinquency. Relying on a sample of adolescents and employing measures of the self, family, school, and peers domains, this study examines the contemporaneous and lagged effects of these four life domains on the likelihood of consuming alcohol and using marijuana. This study also assesses the contemporaneous and lagged effects of the life domain variables on themselves and on one another. Overall, the results lend support for Agnew's general theory. The results also reveal several notable puzzles and underscore the complexity of this potentially important contemporary theoretical perspective.

Keywords: Juvenile justice

Language: en