Recent Scientific Accomplishments

Paternoster’s research over the past 36 months has included the study of youth employment and crime, and an examination of the roles of population heterogeneity and state dependence in criminal conduct. With a contract from the U.S. Department of Labor, Paternoster and his colleagues examined the effect of employment during the school year and summer employment on delinquency and “problem behaviors?(smoking, drinking, and drug use). Previous research had reached a consensus that working during the school year put youths at risk for anti-social behavior. Unfortunately, this research had not squarely addressed the issue of selection effects, restricting their concern to selection on observables. Using 3-wave panel data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, Paternoster and colleagues estimated both traditional models and fixed and random effect models that incorporate unobserved population heterogeneity. They found that working during the school year, even intensive working (defined as more than 20 hours per week) was not related to delinquency and problem behaviors. These findings will place the issue of work back on the table for researchers to investigate. They also found summer employment was positively and strongly related to delinquency and problem behaviors and are in the process of investigating some of the differences between summer and school year employment as well as race and gender differences in the “school effect.?Paternoster is also in the process of finding a data set that will allow him to investigate the role of “planful competence?in job and mate selection and the role these factors play in desistance from crime. Previous research has found that those offenders who find stable jobs and satisfying partners are more likely to desist from crime. It is not clear, however, what the causal process is that generates variation in job and marital opportunities and whether or not the correlation among job stability, marital satisfaction and desistance from crime is causal or spurious.

Funded Research

In the past 36 months, Paternoster and colleagues have received two small contracts from the Department of Labor to investigate the role of adolescent employment in delinquency and problem behaviors. Paternoster is currently the principal investigator on a contract from the Office of the Governor, State of Maryland to study the administration of capital punishment in the state. This research was funded for two years, and examined the role of racial discrimination and geographic disparity in capital charging and capital sentencing decisions.

Future Plans

Paternoster has several papers in review that look at adolescent employment and crime, as well as a methodological paper that looks at statistical methods used to estimate desistance from crime and the importance of functional form. He is working with Professors Shawn Bushway, Daniel Nagin, and Robert Brame in using semi-parametric trajectory models to establish covariate balance in understanding the treatment effects of adolescent employment.