The Role of Radical Economic Restructuring in Truancy from School and Engagement in Crime

Of late, criminologists have become acutely aware of the relationship between school outcomes and engagement in crime as an adult. This phenomenon—which has come to be known as the ‘school-to-prison-pipeline’—has been studied in North America and the United Kingdom, and requires longitudinal data sets. Typically, these studies approach the phenomenon from an individualist perspective and examine truancy in terms of the truants’ attitudes, academic achievement or their home life. What remains unclear, however, is a consideration of (1) how macro-level social and economic processes may influence the incidence of truancy, and (2) how structural processes fluctuate over time, and in so doing produce variations in truancy rates or the causal processes associated with truancy. Using longitudinal data from two birth cohort studies, we empirically address these blind spots and test the role of social-structural processes in truancy, and how these may change over time.