Actions for Queer and Delinquent? The Role of Sexual Orientation on Adolescent Delinquency

Email RIS file
Bookmark
Report an Issue

Queer and Delinquent? The Role of Sexual Orientation on Adolescent Delinquency

Author
Ramirez, Nayan
Published
[University Park, Pennsylvania] : Pennsylvania State University, 2015.
Physical Description
1 electronic document
Additional Creators
Staff, Jeremy
Access Online

Availability

I Want It
I Want It

Finding items...

Graduate Program
Restrictions on Access
Open Access.
Summary
Although sexual minorities have largely been absent in criminological literature, recent studies have begun to address the dearth of research on this sub-population. Using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health), previous studies have found that adolescents who report same- or both-sex attraction are more likely to engage in non-violent delinquency (Conover-Williams 2014) and are more likely to have contact with the criminal justice system compared with their sexual majority peers (Himmelstein and Brückner 2011). However, several researchers have called into question the validity of studies that only use Add Health's romantic attraction question at Wave I due to possible inaccurate reporting by "mischievous" adolescent respondents (Udry and Chantala 2005; Fan et al. 2006; Savin-Williams and Joyner 2014). I examine whether respondents' answers to a sexual identity question asked in latter waves of the survey lead to different conclusions regarding the role of sexual orientation on crime than previously reported in the literature. I also address how gender and race/ethnicity affect the role of sexual orientation on crime to move beyond analyzing sexual minorities as a monolithic population. In contrast to previous findings, results suggest that being sexual minority tends to be negatively associated with delinquency. In particular, sexual minority boys have much lower odds of engaging in violent and non-violent delinquency compared with their sexual majority peers. Even when results show a positive association between sexual orientation and delinquency, the magnitude of the effects is attenuated using the new operationalization of sexual minority status. Thus, previous findings appear to have erroneously reported a positive relationship between sexual minority status and delinquency due a reliance on an inaccurate indicator of sexual orientation. Last, I find that patterns of delinquent involvement are susceptible to different configurations of sexual, gender, and ethnic/racial identities.
Other Subject(s)
Genre(s)
Dissertation Note
M.A. Pennsylvania State University, 2015.
Technical Details
The full text of the dissertation is available as an Adobe Acrobat .pdf file ; Adobe Acrobat Reader required to view the file.
View MARC record | catkey: 16834336