Terence P Thornberry
Biographic Data
| ID | 171122 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Terence P Thornberry |
| GIVEN NAMES | Terence P |
| FAMILY NAME | Thornberry |
| SIGNATURE | THORNBERRY T P |
| AFFILIATIONS | University at Albany, State University of New York |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 40 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 926 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 39 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1975 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2018 |
| H-INDEX | 14 |
Reducing Crime Among Youth at Risk for Gang Involvement
Research Summary No gang prevention or intervention programs meet the standards for effectiveness promulgated by Blueprints for Healthy Youth Development. This randomized controlled trial of a well‐known program—Functional Family Therapy—that was modified to address the needs of gang‐involved adolescents yields two main findings. First, youth at high risk for gang membership and their families engaged with and successfully completed the program a…
The Effects of Parental Divorce on the Intergenerational Transmission of Crime
This study first examines the effects of parental divorce and paternal crime on offspring offending. Then, it tests whether parental divorce moderates the intergenerational transmission of crime. Diversity within the offending population is taken into account by examining whether effects are different for fathers who commit crimes at different points of the life-course and by distinguishing between violent and non-violent offending. A sample of 2…
Gang Membership and Pathways to Maladaptive Parenting
A limited amount of research examines the short-term consequences of gang membership. Rarer, though, is the examination of more distal consequences of gang membership. This is unfortunate because it understates the true detrimental effect of gang membership across the life course, as well as the effects it may have on children of former gang members. Using data from the Rochester Youth Development Study, this work investigates the impact of gang …
Does Maltreatment Beget Maltreatment? A Systematic Review of the Intergenerational Literature
In this article, the authors critically review the literature testing the cycle of maltreatment hypothesis which posits continuity in maltreatment across adjacent generations. That is, the authors examine whether a history of maltreatment victimization is a significant risk factor for the later perpetration of maltreatment. The authors begin by establishing 11 methodological criteria that studies testing this hypothesis should meet. They include …
School Disengagement as a Predictor of Dropout, Delinquency, and Problem Substance Use During Adolescence and Early Adulthood
The Cascading Effects of Adolescent Gang Involvement Across the Life Course
The short-run deleterious effects of gang involvement during adolescence have been well researched. However, surprisingly little empirical attention has been devoted to understanding how gang involvement in adolescence influences life chances and criminal behavior in adulthood. Drawing on the life-course perspective, this study argues that gang involvement will lead to precocious transitions that, in turn, will have adverse consequences on the fu…
The Impact of Parental Stressors on the Intergenerational Transmission of Antisocial Behavior
The Apple Doesn't Fall Far From the Tree (Or Does It?)
There is a growing literature on intergenerational studies of antisocial behavior and a growing understanding of the unique contributions they are likely to make. At the same time, the field has yet to agree on core design features for intergenerational study. In this article, I propose a set of defining design elements that all intergenerational studies should meet and I discuss the advantages of these studies for enhancing our understanding of …
Childhood maltreatment and antisocial behavior
Although accurate assessment of maltreatment is critical to understanding and interrupting its impact on the life course, comparison of different measurement approaches is rare. The goal of this study is to compare maltreatment reports from official Child Protective Services (CPS) records with retrospectively self-reported measures. Research questions address the prevalence and concordance of each type of measure, their relationship to social dis…
Developmental Outcomes for Children of Young Mothers
This study tested the association between mother's early age at first birth and various life outcomes for her children in later adolescence and early adulthood. Data were analyzed from the Rochester Youth Development Study, an ongoing panel study of adolescents enrolled in seventh or eighth grade in Rochester Public Schools in 1988 (N =729). Boys born to mothers who began childbearing before age 19 had elevated risks of drug use, gang membership,…
Adolescent maltreatment and its impact on young adult antisocial behavior
Notes on Theory Construction and Theory Testing
The author's article on interactional theory and on intergenerational models presented at the Albany Symposium received comments from Wayne Osgood and Janet Lauritsen. They raised several issues concerning theory construction, empirically testing developmental and intergenerational models, and collecting longitudinal data. The present article responds to those issues, continuing the discussion of life-course theories of crime begun at the symposi…
Explaining Multiple Patterns of Offending across the Life Course and across Generations
Four general topics are discussed in this article. The first section uses data fromthe Rochester Youth Development Study to explore the development of antisocial careers across the life course. The second section presents interactional theory's explanation of offending. The theory recognizes that antisocial careers can begin at any point, from childhood through adulthood, and identifies causal influences associated with varying ages of onset. It …
Linked Lives
Taking Stock of Delinquency
The Development of Panel Studies of Delinquency.- Causes and Consequences of Delinquency.- Delinquency and Crime.- The Development of Male Offending.- Key Results from the First Forty Years of the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development.- Testing an Integrative Theory of Deviant Behavior.- The Montreal Longitudinal and Experimental Study.- Understanding and Preventing Crime and Violence.- Common Themes, Future Directions
Violence Among Adolescents Living in Public Housing
Research Summary: Current knowledge about violence among public housing residents is extremely limited. Much of what we know about violence in and around public housing is derived from analysis of Uniform Crime Report (UCR) data or victimization surveys of public housing residents. The results of these studies suggest that fear of crime among public housing residents is high and that violent offense rates may be higher in areas that contain publi…
The Delinquency of Children Born to Young Mothers
This paper examines the relationship between a mother's age at first childbirth and the delinquent behavior of her children. Using data from the Rochester Youth Development Study (RYDS), an ongoing longitudinal study of adolescent development, we found that children born to mothers who began childbearing at a young age were more prone to general delinquency, violence, and arrest than were children born to mothers who began childbearing when they …
Gangs and Delinquency in Developmental Perspective
Gang membership has long been understood to have a disruptive influence on adolescent development and to contribute disproportionately to the rate of delinquent crime. The nature of the impact, and the long-term effects on individuals, have not been well understood. This book uses longitudinal data to examine the developmental consequences of gang membership, and its longer term influence on the life course. This longitudinal approach is made pos…
Crime and justice at the millennium
I: Introduction. Introduction I. Lipman. Essays in Honor of Marvin E. Wolfgang: An Overview T.P. Thornberry, B. Cohen, R.A. Silverman. Reflections on a Scholarly Career: An Interview with Marvin E. Wolfgang F. Adler. II: Crime and Justice at the Millennium. A:- The Criminal in Society. 1. Patterns of Violent Behavior. Subcultures of Violence and Beyond: Theory Integration in Criminology C.F. Wellford, D.A. Soule. Political Violence: Patterns and …
Developmental Issues in the Impact of Child Maltreatment on Later Delinquency and Drug Use
Developmental psychopathology emphasizes the impact that early childhood maltreatment has on adolescent and early adult development. The life‐course perspective, however, emphasizes more proximal events—adolescent maltreatment, for example—as developmentally disruptive. Prior research suggests that childhood maltreatment is a risk factor for adolescent delinquency and drug use. However, the results appear to depend on a loose definition of childh…
Self-Esteem, Delinquent Peers, and Delinquency
The authors test Howard B. Kaplan's self-enhancement thesis, which argues that self-esteem is negatively related to delinquency but that delinquency is positively related to later self-esteem. Previous research on these countervailing causal effects has not been supportive, possibly because of a failure to specify and test for intervening mechanisms that may link self-esteem and delinquency. The authors focus on the impact of delinquent peers as …
Developmental Theories of Crime and Delinquency
In Developmental Theories of Crime and Delinquency, Terence P. Thornberry and his contributors show that criminal behavior is not a static human attribute, but ebbs and flows over the life course of the individual. Criminal behavior tends to follow a distinct psychological pattern. It is relatively uncommon during childhood, is initiated by most offenders during adolescence, flourishes during late adolescence and early childhood, and usually dimi…
Risk Factors for Teenage Fatherhood
Fatherhood is the consequence of a series of decisions and interactions including those surrounding the initiation and maintenance of sexual activity the use of contraception and the continuation of a pregnancy to term. Fatherhood therefore results from a social process which began months or years earlier. Data from the Rochester Youth Development Study an ongoing panel study of urban youth were used to identify early risk factors for the likelih…
The Relationship Between Childhood Maltreatment and Adolescent Involvement in Delinquency
Recent research suggests a link between childhood maltreatment and later involvement in delinquency. This study examines this issue using official and self‐report data from the Rochester Youth Development Study. The analysis addresses three central issues: the magnitude of the relationship between early child maltreatment and later delinquency, official and self‐reported; the possibility of spuriousness in this relationship; and the impact of mor…
Delinquent Peers, Beliefs, and Delinquent Behavior
Three theoretical models of the interrelations among associations with delinquent peers, delinquent beliefs, and delinquent behavior are examined. The socialization model views delinquent peers and beliefs as causally prior to delinquent behavior, whereas the selection model hypothesizes that associations with delinquent peers and delinquent beliefs are a result of delinquent behavior. The interactional model combines aspects of both the socializ…
Toward an Interactional Theory of Delinquency
Contemporary theories of delinquency are seen as limited in three respects: they tend to rely on unidirectional causal structures that represent delinquency in a static rather than dynamic fashion, they do not examine developmental progressions, and they do not adequately link processual concepts to the person's position in the social structure. The present article develops an interactional theory of delinquency that addresses each of these issue…
Delinquent Peers, Beliefs, and Delinquent Behavior
Three theoretical models of the interrelations among associations with delinquent peers, delinquent beliefs, and delinquent behavior are examined. The socialization model views delinquent peers and beliefs as causally prior to delinquent behavior, whereas the selection model hypothesizes that associations with delinquent peers and delinquent beliefs are a result of delinquent behavior. The interactional model combines aspects of both the socializ…
The Relationship Between Childhood Maltreatment and Adolescent Involvement in Delinquency
Recent research suggests a link between childhood maltreatment and later involvement in delinquency. This study examines this issue using official and self‐report data from the Rochester Youth Development Study. The analysis addresses three central issues: the magnitude of the relationship between early child maltreatment and later delinquency, official and self‐reported; the possibility of spuriousness in this relationship; and the impact of mor…
School Disengagement as a Predictor of Dropout, Delinquency, and Problem Substance Use During Adolescence and Early Adulthood
Unemployment and Criminal Involvement
Current etiological theories of criminal behavior are unidirectional in structure; positing that crime is caused by a variety of social factors, these theories tend to ignore the reciprocal causal influence of crime on those factors. The present paper assesses the theoretical and empirical consequences associated with unidirectional explanations of criminal involvement. Using a linear panel model approach, it also examines the advantages of recip…
Developmental Issues in the Impact of Child Maltreatment on Later Delinquency and Drug Use
Developmental psychopathology emphasizes the impact that early childhood maltreatment has on adolescent and early adult development. The life‐course perspective, however, emphasizes more proximal events—adolescent maltreatment, for example—as developmentally disruptive. Prior research suggests that childhood maltreatment is a risk factor for adolescent delinquency and drug use. However, the results appear to depend on a loose definition of childh…
Explaining Multiple Patterns of Offending across the Life Course and across Generations
Four general topics are discussed in this article. The first section uses data fromthe Rochester Youth Development Study to explore the development of antisocial careers across the life course. The second section presents interactional theory's explanation of offending. The theory recognizes that antisocial careers can begin at any point, from childhood through adulthood, and identifies causal influences associated with varying ages of onset. It …
The Effect of Dropping Out of High School on Subsequent Criminal Behavior
Sociological theories of delinquency offer rather divergent predictions concerning the effect of dropping out of high school on subsequent delinquent and criminal behavior. For example, strain theory suggests that dropping out decreases such behavior, especially for lower class youth, while social control theory suggests that dropping out should increase the chances of criminal activity. Moreover, empirical studies provide support for each of the…
Social Correlates of Criminal Involvement
Recent studies have suggested that the relationship between social status and criminality is weak to nonexistent. They have also suggested that if status effects are present, they are observable only when crime is measured officially and not when it is measured through self-report techniques. In this paper we examine the adequacy of past measures of both status and criminality and reassess the relationship between these concepts when each is meas…
The Cascading Effects of Adolescent Gang Involvement Across the Life Course
The short-run deleterious effects of gang involvement during adolescence have been well researched. However, surprisingly little empirical attention has been devoted to understanding how gang involvement in adolescence influences life chances and criminal behavior in adulthood. Drawing on the life-course perspective, this study argues that gang involvement will lead to precocious transitions that, in turn, will have adverse consequences on the fu…
Risk Factors for Teenage Fatherhood
Fatherhood is the consequence of a series of decisions and interactions including those surrounding the initiation and maintenance of sexual activity the use of contraception and the continuation of a pregnancy to term. Fatherhood therefore results from a social process which began months or years earlier. Data from the Rochester Youth Development Study an ongoing panel study of urban youth were used to identify early risk factors for the likelih…
Self-Esteem, Delinquent Peers, and Delinquency
The authors test Howard B. Kaplan's self-enhancement thesis, which argues that self-esteem is negatively related to delinquency but that delinquency is positively related to later self-esteem. Previous research on these countervailing causal effects has not been supportive, possibly because of a failure to specify and test for intervening mechanisms that may link self-esteem and delinquency. The authors focus on the impact of delinquent peers as …
The Apple Doesn't Fall Far From the Tree (Or Does It?)
There is a growing literature on intergenerational studies of antisocial behavior and a growing understanding of the unique contributions they are likely to make. At the same time, the field has yet to agree on core design features for intergenerational study. In this article, I propose a set of defining design elements that all intergenerational studies should meet and I discuss the advantages of these studies for enhancing our understanding of …
Developmental Outcomes for Children of Young Mothers
This study tested the association between mother's early age at first birth and various life outcomes for her children in later adolescence and early adulthood. Data were analyzed from the Rochester Youth Development Study, an ongoing panel study of adolescents enrolled in seventh or eighth grade in Rochester Public Schools in 1988 (N =729). Boys born to mothers who began childbearing before age 19 had elevated risks of drug use, gang membership,…
The Delinquency of Children Born to Young Mothers
This paper examines the relationship between a mother's age at first childbirth and the delinquent behavior of her children. Using data from the Rochester Youth Development Study (RYDS), an ongoing longitudinal study of adolescent development, we found that children born to mothers who began childbearing at a young age were more prone to general delinquency, violence, and arrest than were children born to mothers who began childbearing when they …
Taking Stock of Delinquency
The Development of Panel Studies of Delinquency.- Causes and Consequences of Delinquency.- Delinquency and Crime.- The Development of Male Offending.- Key Results from the First Forty Years of the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development.- Testing an Integrative Theory of Deviant Behavior.- The Montreal Longitudinal and Experimental Study.- Understanding and Preventing Crime and Violence.- Common Themes, Future Directions
Gang Membership and Pathways to Maladaptive Parenting
A limited amount of research examines the short-term consequences of gang membership. Rarer, though, is the examination of more distal consequences of gang membership. This is unfortunate because it understates the true detrimental effect of gang membership across the life course, as well as the effects it may have on children of former gang members. Using data from the Rochester Youth Development Study, this work investigates the impact of gang …
Reducing Crime Among Youth at Risk for Gang Involvement
Research Summary No gang prevention or intervention programs meet the standards for effectiveness promulgated by Blueprints for Healthy Youth Development. This randomized controlled trial of a well‐known program—Functional Family Therapy—that was modified to address the needs of gang‐involved adolescents yields two main findings. First, youth at high risk for gang membership and their families engaged with and successfully completed the program a…
Violence Among Adolescents Living in Public Housing
Research Summary: Current knowledge about violence among public housing residents is extremely limited. Much of what we know about violence in and around public housing is derived from analysis of Uniform Crime Report (UCR) data or victimization surveys of public housing residents. The results of these studies suggest that fear of crime among public housing residents is high and that violent offense rates may be higher in areas that contain publi…
The Impact of Parental Stressors on the Intergenerational Transmission of Antisocial Behavior
The Effects of Parental Divorce on the Intergenerational Transmission of Crime
This study first examines the effects of parental divorce and paternal crime on offspring offending. Then, it tests whether parental divorce moderates the intergenerational transmission of crime. Diversity within the offending population is taken into account by examining whether effects are different for fathers who commit crimes at different points of the life-course and by distinguishing between violent and non-violent offending. A sample of 2…
Notes on Theory Construction and Theory Testing
The author's article on interactional theory and on intergenerational models presented at the Albany Symposium received comments from Wayne Osgood and Janet Lauritsen. They raised several issues concerning theory construction, empirically testing developmental and intergenerational models, and collecting longitudinal data. The present article responds to those issues, continuing the discussion of life-course theories of crime begun at the symposi…
Juvenile Justice Decision-Making as a Longitudinal Process
Journal Article Juvenile Justice Decision-Making as a Longitudinal Process Get access Terence P. Thornberry, Terence P. Thornberry State University of New York at Albany Address correspondence to Terence P. Thornberry, School of Criminal Justice, SUNY Albany, Draper Hall, Albany, NY 12222. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar R. L. Christenson R. L. Christenson University of Georgia Search for other works by th…
Anthologies and Readers on Deviance
Images of Crime
Anthologies and Readers on Deviance
Crime and Delinquency
Handbook of Criminology
Evaluating Criminology
The Criminally Insane
Criminally Insane is the largest scale in-depth follow-up study on mentally ill criminals yet to appear. This book challenges the assumption that inmates of maximum-security mental hospitals are extraordinarily violent and questions the necessity for maintaining maximum-security institutions which currently house some 15,000 persons in the United States. In 1971, 586 patients were released from a Pennsylvania maximum-security hospital for the cri…
Social Correlates of Criminal Involvement
Recent studies have suggested that the relationship between social status and criminality is weak to nonexistent. They have also suggested that if status effects are present, they are observable only when crime is measured officially and not when it is measured through self-report techniques. In this paper we examine the adequacy of past measures of both status and criminality and reassess the relationship between these concepts when each is meas…
Unemployment and Criminal Involvement
Current etiological theories of criminal behavior are unidirectional in structure; positing that crime is caused by a variety of social factors, these theories tend to ignore the reciprocal causal influence of crime on those factors. The present paper assesses the theoretical and empirical consequences associated with unidirectional explanations of criminal involvement. Using a linear panel model approach, it also examines the advantages of recip…
Juvenile Justice Decision-Making as a Longitudinal Process
Journal Article Juvenile Justice Decision-Making as a Longitudinal Process Get access Terence P. Thornberry, Terence P. Thornberry State University of New York at Albany Address correspondence to Terence P. Thornberry, School of Criminal Justice, SUNY Albany, Draper Hall, Albany, NY 12222. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar R. L. Christenson R. L. Christenson University of Georgia Search for other works by th…
The Effect of Dropping Out of High School on Subsequent Criminal Behavior
Sociological theories of delinquency offer rather divergent predictions concerning the effect of dropping out of high school on subsequent delinquent and criminal behavior. For example, strain theory suggests that dropping out decreases such behavior, especially for lower class youth, while social control theory suggests that dropping out should increase the chances of criminal activity. Moreover, empirical studies provide support for each of the…
Toward an Interactional Theory of Delinquency
Contemporary theories of delinquency are seen as limited in three respects: they tend to rely on unidirectional causal structures that represent delinquency in a static rather than dynamic fashion, they do not examine developmental progressions, and they do not adequately link processual concepts to the person's position in the social structure. The present article develops an interactional theory of delinquency that addresses each of these issue…
Criminality in a Birth Cohort
Cultural literacy in criminology
The cultural literacy perspective in education suggests that all cultural systems have a set of core ideas that form the basis of communication in that culture. Because of that the perspective holds that it is essential for the educational system to teach those ideas to successive generations of students to facilitate communication and to perpetuate the “shared” quality of culture. This article examines the relevance of this general perspective f…
Testing Interactional Theory
Attachment to parents and commitment to school are important buffers against delinquency. Adolescents who are emotionally bonded to their parents and who succeed at school are unlikely candidates for serious delinquency. These relationships have strong empirical support. In addition, however, it is possible that frequent involvement in delinquency can cause a substantial deterioration in the emotional bond between parent and child and in the adol…
The Role of Juvenile Gangs in Facilitating Delinquent Behavior
This study examines alternative explanations for why gang members are more likely to have higher rates of serious and violent crime than nongang members. Specifically, three models are posited: (a) a selection or “kind of person” model; (b) a social facilitation or “kind of group” model; and (c) an enhancement model that combines aspects of the selection and social facilitation models. Each model has different implications for the rate of delinqu…
Delinquent Peers, Beliefs, and Delinquent Behavior
Three theoretical models of the interrelations among associations with delinquent peers, delinquent beliefs, and delinquent behavior are examined. The socialization model views delinquent peers and beliefs as causally prior to delinquent behavior, whereas the selection model hypothesizes that associations with delinquent peers and delinquent beliefs are a result of delinquent behavior. The interactional model combines aspects of both the socializ…
The Relationship Between Childhood Maltreatment and Adolescent Involvement in Delinquency
Recent research suggests a link between childhood maltreatment and later involvement in delinquency. This study examines this issue using official and self‐report data from the Rochester Youth Development Study. The analysis addresses three central issues: the magnitude of the relationship between early child maltreatment and later delinquency, official and self‐reported; the possibility of spuriousness in this relationship; and the impact of mor…
Developmental Theories of Crime and Delinquency
In Developmental Theories of Crime and Delinquency, Terence P. Thornberry and his contributors show that criminal behavior is not a static human attribute, but ebbs and flows over the life course of the individual. Criminal behavior tends to follow a distinct psychological pattern. It is relatively uncommon during childhood, is initiated by most offenders during adolescence, flourishes during late adolescence and early childhood, and usually dimi…
Risk Factors for Teenage Fatherhood
Fatherhood is the consequence of a series of decisions and interactions including those surrounding the initiation and maintenance of sexual activity the use of contraception and the continuation of a pregnancy to term. Fatherhood therefore results from a social process which began months or years earlier. Data from the Rochester Youth Development Study an ongoing panel study of urban youth were used to identify early risk factors for the likelih…
Self-Esteem, Delinquent Peers, and Delinquency
The authors test Howard B. Kaplan's self-enhancement thesis, which argues that self-esteem is negatively related to delinquency but that delinquency is positively related to later self-esteem. Previous research on these countervailing causal effects has not been supportive, possibly because of a failure to specify and test for intervening mechanisms that may link self-esteem and delinquency. The authors focus on the impact of delinquent peers as …
Gangs and Delinquency in Developmental Perspective
Gang membership has long been understood to have a disruptive influence on adolescent development and to contribute disproportionately to the rate of delinquent crime. The nature of the impact, and the long-term effects on individuals, have not been well understood. This book uses longitudinal data to examine the developmental consequences of gang membership, and its longer term influence on the life course. This longitudinal approach is made pos…
Crime and justice at the millennium
I: Introduction. Introduction I. Lipman. Essays in Honor of Marvin E. Wolfgang: An Overview T.P. Thornberry, B. Cohen, R.A. Silverman. Reflections on a Scholarly Career: An Interview with Marvin E. Wolfgang F. Adler. II: Crime and Justice at the Millennium. A:- The Criminal in Society. 1. Patterns of Violent Behavior. Subcultures of Violence and Beyond: Theory Integration in Criminology C.F. Wellford, D.A. Soule. Political Violence: Patterns and …
Developmental Issues in the Impact of Child Maltreatment on Later Delinquency and Drug Use
Developmental psychopathology emphasizes the impact that early childhood maltreatment has on adolescent and early adult development. The life‐course perspective, however, emphasizes more proximal events—adolescent maltreatment, for example—as developmentally disruptive. Prior research suggests that childhood maltreatment is a risk factor for adolescent delinquency and drug use. However, the results appear to depend on a loose definition of childh…
Linked Lives
Taking Stock of Delinquency
The Development of Panel Studies of Delinquency.- Causes and Consequences of Delinquency.- Delinquency and Crime.- The Development of Male Offending.- Key Results from the First Forty Years of the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development.- Testing an Integrative Theory of Deviant Behavior.- The Montreal Longitudinal and Experimental Study.- Understanding and Preventing Crime and Violence.- Common Themes, Future Directions
Psychology (35 works) · Crime Patterns and Interventions (23 works) · Criminology (23 works) · Developmental psychology (23 works) · Juvenile delinquency (18 works) · Medicine (16 works) · Sociology (14 works) · Homelessness and Social Issues (12 works) · Social Psychology (12 works) · Crime, Illicit Activities, and Governance (9 works)