Opportunities and Risks in the Lives of Young Adults with Low Levels of Schooling - Occupational Careers and Delinquency in a Longitudinal Study with Comparative Perspectives

Team: Prof. Dr. Karl F. Schumann, Dr. habil. Andreas Böttger, Dipl.-Soz. Beate Ehret, Dipl.-Soz. Fred Othold, Dr. Gerald Prein, Dr. Lydia Seus

This prospective panel study of a Bremen schoolleaving cohort from 1989 has reached its fifth and last phase (2000-2001). Coming from Haupt- and Sonderschulen, the respondents entered the labour market with the lowest possible level of schooling in Germany. The observation window covers 11 years and provides a good database to arrive at conclusions about the opportunities and risks of low-educated members of the German society at the turn of the millennium.

Our main focus lies on occupational careers as well as joblessness or unemployment in relation to delinquency. In particular, we study processes of social integration or exclusion and their gender-specific impact. These occupational dynamics are analysed in their relation to the development of delinquency over time.
We are going to collect a last wave of data which includes self-reported delinquency measures for the years 1997, 1998 and 1999. Since this database covers a long period of time, it enables us to examine the dynamics of desistance from criminal behaviour. However, we are also able to study possible switches from juvenile delinquency to a more "adjusted", adult criminality, which does not mean more conformity but rather less visible offences (e.g. fraud or tax evasion) than in the case of juvenile delinquency.

In addition, a close cooperation with the Denver Youth Survey (DYS), which began in 1997, has been extended. The longitudinal Bremen data set will finally have the same observation window (1989-1999) as our US-Co-Study which allows for the comparison of the effects of two differently punitive formal control systems of ado-lescence on later life courses of young people.

Moreover, the - fairly unique - qualitative five-wave panel, that has been carried out alongside, is going to arrive at concluding interpretations. It has been drawn from guided interviews, which allow for the reconstruction of biographical selfassertion in confronta-tion with selection processes in the field of vocational education as well as on the labour market.

Again, the focus of the analysis is on possible correlations with the development of delinquency or deviance. In particular, we also study group dynamics in terms of gang delinquency or co-offending, as well as the so far rarely-examined phase of desistance from criminal behaviour.

The main finding of A3 points out that there is no linear relationship between problems in vocational education or the labour market on one hand and delinquency on the other. This has lead to controversies among criminologists. What is on the agenda now is to substantiate these results based on all three research levels:
the macro-panel, the micro-panel and the parallel data set of the Denver Youth Survey.

Overall, we are working on the following research questions:

• How do processes of social exclusion on the labour market interact with processes of criminalisation?
• How do risks of social exclusion or integration problems differ for males and females?
• How do different juvenile justice systems affect delinquency and later criminality of youths? Is it possible to show negative effects of the, in comparison to Germany, more punitive, more intervening US-American system?
• What role does the detachment from peer groups (cliques, gangs) and/or processes of family-founding play for delinquency? What are the gender differences?
• Which biographical events cause desistance and which ones are responsible for persistence?