Extant literature examining the impact of psychosocial maturity on offending finds that diminished psychosocial maturity is related to increases in offending in adolescence, and gains in psychosocial maturity are related to desistance from offending in adulthood. Yet, we know less about the reverse of this relationship—the effect of offending on psychosocial development. To fill this gap, this study examines how within-individual changes in offending relate to within-individual changes in psychosocial maturity among a school-based sample of middle adolescents. Using 3-year panel data from a sample of 2,619 7th and 8th graders from a Midwestern county, we estimate a series of fixed-effect regression models to examine the within-individual effect of delinquency on six indicators of psychosocial maturity—impulse control, anger control, future orientation, self-esteem, school orientation, and resistance to peers. Results consistently show that engaging in higher levels of delinquency during the previous 6 months is related to lower self-reported levels of psychosocial maturity. We discuss how this finding informs our theoretical understanding of psychosocial maturity’s complex relationship with offending across the life course as well as its implications for school-based programming.

现有研究社会心理成熟度对犯罪影响的文献发现，社会心理成熟度的下降与青春期犯罪的增加有关，而社会心理成熟度的提高与成年后不再犯罪有关。然而，我们对这种关系的逆转——犯罪对社会心理发展的影响——知之甚少。为了填补这一空白，本研究调查了一个以学校为基础的中青少年样本中，个人内部的犯罪变化与心理社会成熟度的个人内部变化之间的关系。使用来自中西部县的 2,619 名 7 和 8 年级学生样本的 3 年面板数据，我们估计了一系列固定效应回归模型，以检查违法行为对心理社会成熟度的六个指标（冲动控制、愤怒）的个人内部影响控制，未来导向、自尊、学校导向和对同龄人的抵抗。结果一致表明，在过去 6 个月内犯罪率较高与自我报告的社会心理成熟度较低有关。我们讨论了这一发现如何为我们对心理社会成熟度与整个生命历程中的犯罪的复杂关系及其对学校规划的影响的理论理解提供信息。