Citation

Bernburg JG, Thorlindsson T. Criminology 2007; 45(2): 415-444.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2007, American Society of Criminology)

DOI

10.1111/j.1745-9125.2007.00083.x

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The current study examines the contextual effects of community structural characteristics on adolescent delinquency in Iceland, focusing on how specific individual-level mechanisms work to mediate the contextual effects. Using multilevel data on 68 school communities and 6,458 adolescents, we find a contextual effect of community social instability (residential mobility, family disruption) on delinquency. Moreover, the findings indicate that specific individual-level social control mechanisms (Coleman, 1988) explain a part of this effect, namely, embeddedness in community-based social ties linking parents and adolescents and normlessness. Also, the findings indicate that the individual-level effect of unsupervised peer activity on delinquency is contingent on embeddedness in social ties as well as on community social instability. The findings have bearing on the cross-societal generalizability of social disorganization theory.