Military Service: A Pathway to Conformity or a School for Deviance?

Abstract

Military service has been shown to affect individuals’ criminal and deviant tendencies. Studies on military service and deviance, however, has generally focused on combat veterans, utilized cross-sectional data, and ignored the potentially differential impact of military service based on sociodemographic variations. Utilizing the Add Health data and multilevel growth curve modeling, this study intends to reveal (a) trajectories of deviance from adolescence through adulthood, (b) whether military service in young adulthood moderates these trajectories, and (c) whether any of these relationships change by race, gender, and parental education. Findings revealed that military service was associated with a reduction in rates of delinquency, aggressive behavior, and drug use over time, and these patterns did not change by sociodemographic differences.