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Abstract
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Violent juvenile crime is disproportionately concentrated in urban neighborhoods, and accordingly an understanding of the sources of serious delinquency is con founded by components of urbanism. These milieus usually have high rates of absolute poverty and relative economic deprivation, as well as weak social institutions. The persistent findings of delinquent peer contributions to delinquency have yet to be tested under conditions where social class and milieu effects are controlled. There is little empirical evidence to determine how adolescents in high-crime neighborhoods avoid delinquency despite frequent contact with delinquent peers. The differences between violent delinquents and other youths from comparable neighborhoods are little understood. This study contrasts a sample of chronically violent male juvenile offenders with the general male adolescent population (students and school dropouts) from inner-city neighborhoods in four cities. Violent delinquents differ from other male adolescents in inner cities in their attachments to school, their perceptions of school safety, their associations with officially delinquent peers, their perceptions of weak maternal authority, and the extent to which they have been victims of crime. Peer delinquency and drug"problems" predict the prevalence of three delinquency offense types for both violent offenders and neighborhood youths. Among violent delinquents, there appear to be different explanatory patterns, with one type better described by internal controls (locus of control), a developmental measure. Overall, there is strong support for integrated theory including control and learning components, and similar associations exist among inner-city youths as in the general adolescent male population. Despite the generally elevated rates of delinquency in inner cities, the explanations of serious and violent delinquency appear the same when subjects are sampled at the extremes of the distribution of behavior. VioLit summary:
OBJECTIVE:
This study by Fagan et al. analyzed the differences between violent delinquents and general youth populations in comparable urban neighborhoods. The authors utilized integrated theory based on control, strain, and learning theories (Elliott, Ageton, and Canter 1979) as their theoretical model.
METHODOLOGY:
A quasi-experimental design was employed using cross-sectional data from two samples of youth (one violent, one general) who live in urban areas. The Violent Delinquent Sample included 203 male adjudicated delinquents from four urban juvenile courts over a three year period. The subjects were selected based on the offense criterion of committing a Part I index felony (homicide, aggravated assault, armed robbery, kidnap, rape, or sodomy) and a prior adjudication for a major felony, (burglary, auto theft, felonious robbery or assault, and grand theft, as well as including he committing offenses). Field researchers completed an inventory of court records for prior delinquency history. Face to Face interviews with the subjects and the subjects' primary caretaker were given. The General Urban Youths Sample included 403 male and 351 female student in grades 10-12. It was conducted at two time intervals and included both high school students and dropouts from four inner city, high crime neighborhoods. The samples were identified from classrooms randomly selected in high schools in the target areas. School dropouts were not participants in the student survey but were included in the study as a separate sample for they represented a significant proportion of the adolescent population in inner-city neighborhoods. A total of 257 male and 251 female dropouts were selected by means of a "snowball" sampling procedure which is useful when the dimensions of a population are not fully known. This procedure was used when it was discovered that none of the school districts maintained records of school dropouts. The interview items for all samples included explanatory and behavioral measures corresponding to the integrated theory. Self Reported Delinquency questions on delinquent behavior were derived from the National Youth Survey. The prevalence of the Self Reported Delinquency items within the past 12 months was measured dichotomously. Frequency was ascertained by how many times the had committed the act. The scale measures were derived by summing the reported prevalence scored for the items within the scale and by scaling the type of behavior for broader offense types. General scales were constructed as summary scales for all types of behavior. The scales measuring commitments and integration bonds, social environment, locus of control, parental discipline and youths prior victimization were included. The National Youth Survey was left intact for the violent delinquent sample, but it was modified in two ways for the student sample. First, adjustments to eliminate trivial offenses were necessary and resulted in the refinement and specification of items which measure "high consensus" deviance and include only acts which harm, injure, or do damage. Second, certain items were eliminated, modified, or collapsed from the school survey only, if school officials deemed the items sensitive or intrusive. The results from the surveys were aggregated and analyzed using ANOVA and discriminant functions analysis.
FINDINGSDISCUSSION:
Preliminary AVOVA analyses found that the social area characteristics for the two samples were significantly comparable (i.e. no significant differences) for 6 of 10 variables (total population, adolescent population, percent female-headed households, percent black population, household size, and percent female-headed households < poverty). The remaining variables concerned poverty and differed by measure, but it was concluded that these differences were small when the total measure of poverty was examined. The analyses of SRD prevalence revealed significant differences between groups in the prevalence of individual SRD items and offense-specific SRD scales. The violent delinquent sample reported considerably more involvement in delinquency for every behavior. The estimates for the most serious offense types were quite high among all three groups, even though violent delinquents rated the highest. One male youth in twelve reported shooting someone in the preceding year; one in seven "beat someone so badly they had to see a doctor." Similar rates were found for property destruction. The rates found for urban youth were only slightly higher than prevalence rates for working-class male adolescents found by Elliott and Huizinga. Dropout status had a positive relationship with the prevalence of self-reported crime. The differences were less pronounced for global scales (Violence, Property, General) than for offense-specific scales. For Minor Theft, Property Damage, and Minor Assault, differences between students and dropouts were small. But for more serious offenses as well as for Illegal Services, Weapons offenses, Drug Sales, and Substance Abuse, dropouts were significantly more involved in crime than students who remained in school. Through controlling for age, it was shown that delinquency in school preceded dropping out. Violent delinquents were more often involved in all types of offenses, and reported two and three times the involvement of their counterparts in the community. Univariate f-tests were used to compare explanatory variables--social bonds, personal bonds, and social environment--between samples. The differences between violent delinquents and in-school youths tended to be in the expected directions. ANOVA revealed significant differences between the three groups in school integration, student delinquency, work integration, quality of work experience, drug problems, peer integration, peer JJS experience, peer delinquency, locus of control, attitudes found violent, victimization, conventional values, father attachment, father authority, mother authority (significant at p=<.01), drinking problems and attitude toward law (significant at p=<.001). Discriminant analysis was done entering social bonds, personal bonds, and combined bonds to compare the violent youth to in-school youth and then to an aggregated sample of in-school/dropouts. All three discriminant models were significant (p=<.001), though the social bonding variables correctly classified a greater percentage of cases. Adding the dropout sample to the in-school sample produced virtually no differences. The strongest contributors to the social bond model included peer influences and school-related variables. For the personal bond model, strong contributors included attitudinal variables and personal victimization. The combined model did not provide a more efficient explanation of the differences between the three groups; the social bonds were more significant. The highest standardized discriminant coefficients for the combined model were obtained for school delinquency environment (negative), peer delinquency, and peer justice system experience suggesting that violent delinquents have lower peer delinquency but higher peer contacts with authorities. Regression analyses were conducted to determine whether the samples differed in the explanatory variables contributing to the prevalence of self-reported delinquency using summary scales of violence. property, and general as dependent variables. All equations were significant (p=<.001). Among the violent delinquents, there were important differences in the predictors of their offense-specific behaviors. Drug problems and locus of control dominated the violence model while school integration was a weak contributor to this offense type. Victimization did not contribute to violence but bared strongly on the other two behaviors. Social attachments were stronger contributors to property and general delinquency. The student and dropout samples shared predictable similarities with the violent delinquent sample and with each other in the presence of peer influences. They differed from the violent sample in the contributions of victimization, social integration, and locus of control. Drug problems and victimization and drug problems were strong predictors of all offense types for students but not for dropouts. Drinking problems were present in both samples, and there were few differences by offense type. AUTHORS' RECOMMENDATIONS:
The authors recommended that current delinquency control policy should include community programs which will aid in efforts to strengthen the family. Also, they suggested that delinquency policies need to simultaneously account for the complex array of social, economic, and political factors. Economic development policy, the authors argued, should be brought in to delinquency policy in an effort to strengthen social institutions and control. EVALUATION:
This study takes on one of the major criticisms of learning theories of deviance--how do some youth avoid delinquency when they are surrounded by it? The comparison of students, school dropouts, and violent delinquents that these researchers do begins to address this question. The sample size of this study is adequately large to make some generalizations and, because of the regional variation of the sample, provides a stronger base to make some broad inferences. The recruitment of the three groups--student, dropout, and delinquent--varied somewhat, but the restraints on the current information made this unavoidable. There were variations in the content and administration of the questionnaires depending on the groups. Cross-validation was not done because other studies have found estimates to be conservative. It would have lended more rigor to the data if there had been uniformity and cross-validation. Overall, the findings of this study are both necessary and important. (CSPV Abstract - Copyright © 1992-2007 by the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence, Institute of Behavioral Science, Regents of the University of Colorado)
KW - Urban Youth
KW - Urban Violence
KW - Urban Crime
KW - Juvenile Crime
KW - Juvenile Delinquency
KW - Juvenile Offender
KW - Juvenile Violence
KW - Juvenile Male
KW - Male Crime
KW - Male Delinquency
KW - Male Offender
KW - Male Violence
KW - Violence Causes
KW - Social Learning Theory
KW - Social Control Theory
KW - Strain Theory
KW - Violence Causes
KW - Delinquency Causes
KW - Crime Causes
Language: en |