ABSTRACT
The link between adolescent employment and delinquency is well documented in the empirical literature (Mortimer, 2003). Adolescents who work, especially those who work long hours, are generally found to be at increased risk of delinquency (e.g. Bachman and Schulenberg, 1993; Mortimer et al., 1996; Wright et al., 1997). While the theoretical explanations offered for this association vary, all involve an age-graded element in the sense that they specifically refer to the social conditions that uniquely apply to the period of adolescence. Learning theory, for instance, suggests that through their jobs adolescents may associate with older, less conventional co-workers who provide definitions and opportunities favourable to ‘adult’ behaviours, like staying out late and going to clubs and bars (Wright and Cullen, 2000). Likewise, emphasizing changes in routine activities following the transition to paid work, Osgood (1999) argued that paid work provides adolescents with the monetary means to shirk from parental supervision and spend their leisure time in unstructured socializing with age-mates in settings conducive to deviance. Finally, social control theory sees paid work as providing a stake in conformity that is pivotal to adult desistance from crime (Sampson and Laub, 1993). However, given that adolescent employment usually entails working low-skilled service and retail jobs, which do not provide much social or personal capital, adolescent employment's capacity to constrain delinquencymay be limited. Contrarily, adolescent work is argued to weaken the bonds to parents and school, which both provide important sources of social control during the adolescent period (e.g. Pickering and Vazsonyi, 2002; Steinberg and Avenevoli, 1998).Weakening the bond to age-appropriate institutions of social control without providing adequate replacement, adolescent employment tends to increase rather than decrease delinquency (Staff and Uggen, 2003).
