Abstracts
Résumé
Le capitalisme de consommation est devenu dominant dans les pays occidentaux. Un train de vie jugé « normal » coûte de plus en plus cher et la plupart des adolescents nord-américains en sont parfaitement conscients. Il n’est donc pas surprenant que beaucoup d’entre eux estiment qu’ils n’ont pas assez d’argent personnel pour participer convenablement aux activités sociales propres à leur classe d’âge. De nombreuses théories stipulent qu’un manque de revenus constitue en soi une bonne raison pour commettre des délits. Mais cette thèse, classique au demeurant, soulève bien des doutes. Certains pensent qu’il n’y a pas de relation de cause à effet entre les besoins d’argent et le penchant à la délinquance. D’autres études notent que ce sont les adolescents qui ont le plus de revenus personnels qui commettent le plus de délits. Ces travaux ont deux défauts. Ils ne tiennent pas compte des effets de l’utilité marginale décroissante d’un supplément de revenus sur les choix de délinquance. Ils négligent aussi d’envisager que la relation causale envisagée puisse être conditionnelle. Dans cet article nous montrons qu’un supplément de revenu personnel incite les adolescents à ajuster à la baisse les vols qu’ils commettent, mais que cet effet décroît proportionnellement à leurs revenus personnels et qu’il n’est opérant que pour les adolescents dont les parents se retrouvent exclus du marché du travail.
Abstract
Consumer capitalism dominates western society and most North American youth recognize the centrality of consumption and the resources it requires. As expected, many of them complain that they do not have the financial resources a contemporary teenage lifestyle requires. A shortage of funds may therefore increase the attractiveness of crimes that provide a financial return. Several theories of offending suggest that crime should decrease as adolescents’ financial resources increase; yet, other approaches argue that money should have the opposite effect and predict that crime will increase with income. A third perspective maintains that economic resources have no effect on juvenile crime. We argue that economic capital plays an important role in crimes that provide a financial return, and that other factors condition this relationship. We also maintain that measurement issues compromise previous analyses of the effect of adolescent resources on offending. Our research indicates that a logged measure of adolescent resources (income and allowance) is negatively associated with involvement in theft and that gender and class condition this relationship: increases in economic resources appear to have the greatest consequences for offending among males and youth from the unemployed class. These findings suggest that financial resources play an important role in the genesis of crime, particularly among those groups that are most vulnerable to offending.
Appendices
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