Term of Award

Winter 2015

Degree Name

Master of Arts in Social Sciences (M.A.)

Document Type and Release Option

Thesis (restricted to Georgia Southern)

Copyright Statement / License for Reuse

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Department

Department of Sociology and Anthropology

Committee Chair

Laurie Gould

Committee Member 1

Bryan Miller

Committee Member 2

Laura Agnich

Abstract

The current study is an examination of how familial, psychological, and social support/capital factors effect juvenile recidivism. Grounded in the foundation of life course perspective and strain theory, the study uses events/conditions to help determine which subjective and objective variables may increase criminal offending differentially among ethnicities. The findings revealed that neither race nor the familial strain variables significantly contributed to the total frequency of delinquency. The findings also revealed that some psychological factors increase the chances that the adolescent will engage in delinquent acts (e.g. phobic anxiety, being exposed to violence as either a victim or witness, obsessive compulsive, hostility, and temperance). Overall, this may suggest that neither ethnicity nor familial strain contribute to overall offending; however psychological may increase participation in specific criminal acts.

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