Abstract
This research investigates the influence of spatial contagion and neighborhood socioeconomic character on drug offense juvenile delinquency and recidivism among urban male youth. For this purpose we use a data set of all juvenile delinquents sentenced to court-ordered programs in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania from 1996 to 2003. U.S. Bureau of the Census data are used to capture various dimensions of socioeconomic character, including concentrated disadvantage, ethnicity, and residential mobility. A regionalization algorithm is used to generate neighborhood boundaries that maximize within-unit socioeconomic homogeneity while preserving large counts of juveniles so that reliable rates of drug offense delinquency may be calculated. Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression and spatial econometric modeling are employed to model the effects of neighborhood socioeconomic character and, where appropriate, spatial contagion, on delinquency, drug offense delinquency, and repeat drug offense delinquency outcomes. Results indicate that concentrated disadvantage enhances not only delinquency generally but also drug delinquency and repeat drug delinquency. In addition, modeled drug delinquency indicates spatial contagion among neighborhoods, while controlling for the influence of concentrated disadvantage, providing evidence for cross-neighborhood peer contagion.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
ABC News (1995) The badlands: death of an American neighborhood. http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/video/badlands-death-american-neighborhood-10033816. Accessed 19 July 2011
Agnew R (1994) Delinquency and the desire for money. Justice Q 11(3):411–428
Akers RL (1998) Social learning and social structure: a general theory of crime and deviance. Northeastern University Press, Boston
Anderson E (1999) Code of the street: decency, violence and the moral life of the inner city. WW Norton, New York
Anselin L (1988) Lagrange multiplier test diagnostics for spatial dependence and spatial heterogeneity. Geogr Anal 20(1):1–17
Anselin L, Bera A, Florax RJ, Yoon M (1996) Simple diagnostic tests for spatial dependence. Reg Sci Urban Econ 26:77–104
Apparicio P, Petkevitch V, Charron M, (2008) Segregation analyzer: A C#.Net application for calculating residential segregation indices. Cybergeo Eur J Geogr 414:27
Assunção RM, Neves MC, Câmara G, Freitas CDC (2006) Efficient regionalization techniques for socio-economic geographical units using minimum spanning trees. Int J Geogr Inf Sci 20:797–811
Bandura A (1996) Social cognitive theory of human development. In: Husen T, Postlethwaite TN (eds) International encyclopedia of education, 2nd edn. Pergamon Press, Oxford
Baumer EP, Gustafson R (2007) Social organization and instrumental crime: assessing the empirical validity of classic and contemporary anomie theories. Criminology 45:617–664
Bursik RJ Jr (1988) Social disorganization and theories of crime and delinquency: problems and prospects. Criminology 26:519–552
Cloward RA, Ohlin LE (1960) Delinquency and opportunity. Free Press, Glencoe
Daigle LE, Cullen FT, Wright JP (2007) Gender differences in the predictors of juvenile delinquency. Youth Violence Juv Justice 5:254–286
Fotheringham SA, Wong DW (1991) The modifiable areal unit problem in multivariate statistical analysis. Environ Plan A 23:1025–1044
Grunwald H, Lockwood B, Harris P, Mennis J (2010) Influences of neighborhood context, individual prior history and parenting behavior on recidivism among juvenile offenders. J Youth Adolesc 39:1067–1079
Guo D (2008) Regionalization with dynamically constrained agglomerative clustering and partitioning (REDCAP). Int J Geogr Inf Sci 22(7):801–823
Haining RP, Wise SM, Blake M (1994) Constructing regions for small area analysis: material deprivation and colorectal cancer. J Public Health Med 16:429–438
Little M, Steinberg L (2006) Psychosocial correlates of adolescent drug dealing in the inner city – potential roles of opportunity, conventional commitments, and maturity. J Res Crime Delinq 43(4):357–386
Lloyd CD (2007) Local models for spatial analysis. CRC Press, New York
Matsueda RL, Gartner R, Piliavin I, Polakowski M (1992) The prestige of criminal and conventional occupations: a subcultural model of criminal activity. Am Sociol Rev 57(6):752–770
Mennis J, Harris P (2011) Contagion and repeat offending among juvenile delinquents. J Adolesc 34:951–963
McCord J (2003) Cures that harm: unanticipated outcomes of crime prevention programs. Ann Am Acad Pol Soc Sci 587:16–30
Mennis J, Mason MJ (2011) People, places, and adolescent substance use: integrating activity space and social network data for analyzing health behavior. Ann Assoc Am Geogr 10(2):272–291
Mennis J, Harris P, Obradovic Z, Izenman A, Grunwald H, Lockwood B (2011) The effect of neighborhood characteristics and spatial spillover on urban juvenile delinquency and recidivism. Prof Geogr 63(2):174–192
Moran PAP (1948) The interpretation of statistical maps. J R Stat Soc Ser B 10:243–251
Nguyen H, Bouchard M (2012) Need, connections, or competence? Criminal achievement among adolescent offenders. Justice Q DOI: 10.1080/07418825.2011.589398
Openshaw S (1977) A geographical solution to scale and aggregation problems in regionbuilding, partitioning, and spatial modelling. Trans Inst Br Geogr 2:459–472
Openshaw S (1984) The modifiable areal unit problem. Concepts and techniques in modern geography, vol 38. Geo Books, Norwich
Sampson RJ, Raudenbush SW, Earls F (1997) Neighborhoods and violent crime: a multilevel study of collective efficacy. Science 227(5328):918–924
Sampson RJ, Morenoff JD, Earls F (1999) Beyond social capital: spatial dynamics of collective efficacy for children. Am Sociol Rev 64:633–660
Shaw CR, McKay HD (1942) Juvenile delinquency and urban areas. University of Chicago Press, Chicago
Sutherland EH, Cressey D (1992) Principles of criminology, 11th edn. AltaMira Press, Lanham
Twigg L, Taylor J, Mohan J (2010) Diversity or disadvantage? Putnam, Goodhart, ethnic heterogeneity, and collective efficacy. Environ Plan A 42:1421–1438
Valente T (2003) Social networks influence on adolescent substance use: an introduction. Connections 25(2):11–16
Warr M (1996) Organization and instigation in delinquent groups. Criminology 34(1):11–37
Warr M (2002) Companions in crime: the social aspects of criminal conduct. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Acknowledgements
This project was supported by a Summer Research Award by Temple University and Award No. 2006-IJ-CX-0022 awarded by the National Institute of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice. The opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Department of Justice.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2013 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Mennis, J., Harris, P. (2013). Spatial Contagion of Male Juvenile Drug Offending Across Socioeconomically Homogeneous Neighborhoods. In: Leitner, M. (eds) Crime Modeling and Mapping Using Geospatial Technologies. Geotechnologies and the Environment, vol 8. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4997-9_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4997-9_10
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-007-4996-2
Online ISBN: 978-94-007-4997-9
eBook Packages: Earth and Environmental ScienceEarth and Environmental Science (R0)