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Commitment to Work: Assessing Heterogeneity in the Work-Crime Relationship from a Social Control Perspective

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Abstract

Research evaluating the employment-crime relationship has paid little attention to individuals’ behavior at work, despite the strong conviction that commitment to work should reduce offending. This study evaluates the relationship between job commitment and offending, and examines the role of job quality in the relationship. Hybrid fixed effects models are applied among a sample of high-risk adults. Findings suggest that transitioning from not working to working in a job that one has low commitment to can be criminogenic. In addition, increased commitment is associated with a reduced likelihood of offending. There is no significant evidence that the association between job commitment and offending is mediated or moderated by changes in job quality. Results also indicate “red flag” work behaviors associated with offending. These findings highlight the importance of job commitment in evaluating the work-crime relationship and caution criminologists against making assumptions about the role of job quality.

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Notes

  1. Although the Pathways data has monthly-level data available, the present study’s key independent variable, job commitment, is only available at the annual level. Therefore, all forthcoming analysis are conducted at the annual recall level.

  2. I also considered the robustness of the forthcoming findings by disaggregating the outcome into violent, property, and drug offending. These results are available within the Online Supplemental Material Table OS3. Findings are consistent across violent and property offending, but not drug offending.

  3. Count outcomes were also evaluated. These findings, available within the Online Supplemental Material Table OS3, demonstrate that substantive findings are robust across alternative operationalizations of offending.

  4. Respondents reported on the quality of each job during the recall period. The maximum number of unique jobs reported within a single recall was 7. Job commitment behaviors, however, were only asked about at the recall level. The commitment behavioral items are therefore not necessarily job specific for those who held more than one job in the recall period. This is a data limitation that will be discussed further in the Discussion section. However, the modal number of jobs for each recall period was 1.

  5. While the measure was originally continuous ranging from 1–5, 1 was subtracted from the measure and the variable was then recoded into 5 categories such that 0 = [0,.5), 1 = [.5,1.5), 2 = [1.5, 2.5), 3 = [2.5, 3.5) and 4 = [3.5, 4]. This was done so that Romantic Relationship indicates the presence of a relationship, and Relationship Quality indicates the quality of the relationship conditional on being in a relationship. This operationalization is consistent with how work and job quality are operationalized and interpreted within this study which will be further discussed in the forthcoming Analytic Plan section.

  6. The hybrid approach was selected for its advantages including its ability to facilitate mediation analysis. However, substantive conclusions are robust when using a conditional maximum likelihood fixed effects logit model (Chamberlain, 1980). These findings are also consistent when implementing a linear probability specification, which is important to assess because logistic models using fixed effects may be subject to an incidental parameters problem (Heckman, 1987). In addition, a chi-squared test of the difference between deviation coefficients and mean coefficients favor the fixed effects estimates (Chi-sq = 94.97, p < .001).

  7. This lack of statistical association is also replicated at the monthly level (OR = 1.04, p > .05). It is not possible to conduct all analysis at the monthly level because job commitment is only available annually.

  8. Three additional sensitivity tests were conducted to demonstrate the robustness of these findings. Descriptive statistics for variables used in these sensitivity tests are available within the Online Supplemental Material Table OS2. These findings are available within the Online Supplemental Material Table OS3, Section C. The first sensitivity test selects only on waves in which individuals were working to demonstrate that findings are not sensitive to incorporating both those who are working and not working within the analyses. Second, some could argue that self-control is not time-stable and therefore may not an eliminated source of bias when relying on fixed-effects estimates (e.g., Hay and Forrest, 2004), and that low commitment is merely a behavioral manifestation of low self-control (Keane, Maxim, & Teevan, 1993). Therefore, analysis was also run with an attitudinal measure of self-control included as a control variable within the second column. Finally, this analysis did not account for differential amounts of time-employed within a recall period. Therefore, within the third sensitivity test, a variable accounting for the proportion of time-employed within a recall period in the third column. All of these findings demonstrate results are robust.

  9. A formal test of mediation was also performed because informal tests with logistic models can be problematic because the exclusion of variables may cause changes in magnitude or significance due to the rescaling of coefficients rather than due to mediation. Specifically, the “KHB” method of decomposition was used (Karlson, Holm, & Breen, 2012). These findings were consistent with the informal tests of mediation in that they indicate there are not only no significant total or direct effect of job quality (p > .05), but also that there is no indirect influence of job quality on crime through increasing commitment to the job (p > .05).

  10. This result is also substantively consistent in a fully specified model (all controls added) if job quality is omitted (available upon request).

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Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Tom Loughran, Jean McGloin, Sally Simpson, Sarah Tahamont, Debra Shapiro, John Cochran, Richard Moule, and Bryanna Fox for their valuable feedback. I would also like to thank the Charles Koch Foundation for contributing early funding to support my research agenda.

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  1. Department of Criminology, University of South Florida, 4202 E. Fowler Ave, SOC 332, Tampa, FL, 33620, USA

    Chae M. Jaynes

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Jaynes, C.M. Commitment to Work: Assessing Heterogeneity in the Work-Crime Relationship from a Social Control Perspective. J Dev Life Course Criminology 8, 394–418 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40865-022-00188-w

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