TY - JOUR
T1 - The Socioeconomic Determinants of Ill-Gotten Gains
T2 - Within-Person Changes in Drug Use and Illegal Earnings
AU - Uggen, Christopher
AU - Thompson, Melissa
PY - 2003/7
Y1 - 2003/7
N2 - Generalizing from the sociology of earnings attainment, we develop a conceptual model of social embeddedness in conventional and criminal activities to explain illegal earnings among criminal offenders. To isolate the effects of time-varying factors such as legal earnings, drug use, and criminal opportunities, we use data from the National Supported Work Demonstration Project to estimate fixed-effects models predicting month-to-month changes in illegal earnings. We find that criminal earnings are sensitive to embeddedness in conforming work and family relationships, criminal experience, and the perceived risks and rewards of crime. Moreover, heroin and cocaine use creates a strong earnings imperative that is difficult to satisfy in the low-wage labor market, and offenders earn far more money illegally when they are using these drugs than during periods of abstinence.
AB - Generalizing from the sociology of earnings attainment, we develop a conceptual model of social embeddedness in conventional and criminal activities to explain illegal earnings among criminal offenders. To isolate the effects of time-varying factors such as legal earnings, drug use, and criminal opportunities, we use data from the National Supported Work Demonstration Project to estimate fixed-effects models predicting month-to-month changes in illegal earnings. We find that criminal earnings are sensitive to embeddedness in conforming work and family relationships, criminal experience, and the perceived risks and rewards of crime. Moreover, heroin and cocaine use creates a strong earnings imperative that is difficult to satisfy in the low-wage labor market, and offenders earn far more money illegally when they are using these drugs than during periods of abstinence.
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U2 - 10.1086/378036
DO - 10.1086/378036
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:1642450875
VL - 109
SP - 146-185+i
JO - American Journal of Sociology
JF - American Journal of Sociology
SN - 0002-9602
IS - 1
ER -