NCJ Number
205085
Date Published
2004
Length
23 pages
Annotation
In order to determine whether military service facilitates desistance from crime, this study examined the relationship between military service and later criminal behavior across different time periods.
Abstract
The study analyzed longitudinal data from multiple cohorts of individuals. Data were obtained from a longitudinal study of three birth cohorts in Racine, WI (Shannon, 1994). Both juvenile and adult police-contact data were collected for the members of each cohort in 1977 when the 1942 cohort was 35 years old, the 1949 cohort was age 28, and the 1955 cohort was 22 years old. Additionally, a subset of individuals from the 1942 and 1949 cohorts were interviewed, during which researchers collected information on a variety of sociodemographic characteristics, including military service, marriage, and employment. Data from these interviews were used for the current study. A total of 332 individuals were interviewed from the 1942 cohort, and 554 were interviewed from the 1949 cohort. Subjects in the 1942 cohort who entered the military served immediately prior to and during the Vietnam conflict. Among the 155 men in this cohort, approximately 40 percent had active-duty military experience, and most of those entered military service before the start of the Vietnam War in 1964. Nearly 40 percent of the 243 men in the 1949 cohort had active-duty military experience, and more than 80 percent of those who served entered the military between 1967 and 1969, which corresponded to the dramatic build-up of forces in southeast Asia about the time of the Tet Offensive in 1968. A third cohort used in this study was the 1945 Philadelphia birth cohort (Wolfgang et al., 1987), and the fourth cohort involved 515 men with active-duty military service and 4,055 men with no military experience who were in the cohort of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, a panel survey that has been conducted annually since 1979. The use of these four varied cohorts allowed an analysis of the relationship between military service and desistance over time and by conditions of military service. The results were found to be generally consistent across historical periods and types of military service. The findings suggest that the military may produce desistance from crime, particularly for the most serious offenders. Available research, including the analyses from the current study, has not yet determined the mechanisms that may be responsible for desistance from crime linked to military service. The next step in research is to identify the factors in the military experience that facilitate desistance from crime and then to determine whether such experiences can be replicated in parallel settings such as national service. 7 tables, 7 notes, and 46 references