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Delinquent Behavior, Violence, and Gang Involvement in China

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Abstract

Objectives

This study examines the relationship between delinquent behavior and gang involvement in China. We assess the feasibility of self-report methodology in China and whether established findings in US and European settings on the relationship between gang involvement, violence specialization, and delinquent behavior extend to the Chinese context.

Methods

Data were gathered from 2,245 members of a school-based sample in Changzhi, a city of over 3 million people in Northern China. Drawing from a detailed survey questionnaire that measures prominent theoretical constructs, multi-level item response theory modeling was used to examine the association of gang involvement with general and specific forms of delinquency, notably violence specialization.

Results

Over half of the sample engaged in some form of delinquency over the prior year. Eleven percent of the sample reported gang involvement. Large bivariate differences in overall delinquency and violence specialization between gang and non-gang youth were observed. Multivariate analyses with measures of low self-control, household strains, family and school attachment, parental monitoring, and peer delinquency reduced the bivariate effect sizes, but current and former gang members had higher log odds of overall delinquency and violence specialization.

Conclusion

In helping fill gaps of knowledge on gangs and delinquency in the world’s most populous country, this study observed self-reported rates of delinquency and gang involvement not unlike Western countries. Findings on the relationship between gangs and delinquency, particularly violence, are consistent with the current literature and support the invariance hypothesis of gang involvement.

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Notes

  1. The estimate of 36,000 gangs and 138,000 gang members in China compares to estimates in the US of 28,100 gangs and 731,000 gang members (Egley and Howell, 2011). On average, this means that gangs in China have fewer than four members per gang compared to 26 in the US.

  2. We concentrate on violence specialization based on theory and research (Osgood and Schreck, 2007; Piquero, 2000; Piquero et al., 2003), as the facilitative effects of gang membership are hypothesized to be strongest in the context of violence (Decker, 1996; Thornberry et al., 2003). Melde and Esbensen (2012) demonstrated this in a US school-based sample, using (1) an analytic technique to detect specialization that we also use, and (2) an identical set of survey items (although they omitted three theft-related items that we use). Although inconsistent with our hypotheses, we observed no relationship between gang involvement and specialization in property offending or substance use. Thus, we concentrate solely on violence specialization.

  3. See, for example, the recent works of Holtfreter et al. (2010), Reisig and Pratt (2011), Reisig et al. (2011). Examples of these items include “I have a hard time breaking bad habits” (healthy habits), “Pleasure and fun sometimes keep me from getting work done” (work ethic), and “I often act without thinking through all of the alternatives” (impulsivity). This study used 11 and the 13 items included in the Brief Self-Control Scale. A principal components factor analysis revealed that several items did not perform as expected, especially those related to self-discipline (e.g., “I wish I had more self-discipline”). Given the school and cultural context of this study, this is not entirely unexpected. Removing these items improved the internal consistency of the scale.

  4. As with many studies in criminology, item non-response presents issues for individual-level research (Brame et al. 2010). There were 506 missing cells (0.24 %) across 298 cases at level-2 (or in wide form). Listwise deletion would reduce the sample by 14 percent. To preclude respondents from listwise deletion, Stata 12.0’s multiple imputation suite (mi impute) was used for the independent variables. MI is a simulation-based approach based on M = 20 imputations, with the imputation model specified using all study variables. MI is a well-established approach for handling missing data (Allison 2001; Rubin 1987, 1996). A benefit of the multi-level IRT framework, compared to say, negative binomial regression with delinquency variety scores, is the ability to group-mean center Spec to avoid eliminating cases based on our decision to not impute on the dependent variable. As a result, we retained 96.4 % the total respondents, and removed those missing at least one-half of their delinquency responses.

  5. These findings—especially with regard to delinquency—might be contrary to some expectations. We return to this in the final section of the paper.

  6. A reviewer raised a point that our data are not derived from what is typically viewed as a school-based sample. As such, given the modal age of our respondents, there is the possibility that some of our adolescence-oriented criminological covariates might perform differently among older respondents. We addressed this concern by correlating age with school attachment (b = −.05, p < .05), school performance (b = .05, p < .05), parental attachment (b = .02, p > .05), parental monitoring (b = −.04, p < .05), and peer delinquency (b = .06, p < .05). Given the prominent role of delinquent peers in our models, we carried out supplementary analyses with it interacted with age, but observed no statistically significant relationship. In summary, we believe that the school context creates similarity across these measures, and there is little evidence to suggest otherwise.

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Acknowledgments

We gratefully acknowledge the editors, Alex Piquero and Cathy Widom, and the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Criminal Justice, Sam Houston State University, Box 2296, Huntsville, TX, 77341, USA

    David C. Pyrooz

  2. School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Arizona State University, Phoenix, AZ, USA

    Scott H. Decker

Authors
  1. David C. Pyrooz
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  2. Scott H. Decker
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to David C. Pyrooz.

Appendix

Appendix

See Table 4.

Table 4 Descriptive statistics and item parameters of self-reported offending measures
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Pyrooz, D.C., Decker, S.H. Delinquent Behavior, Violence, and Gang Involvement in China. J Quant Criminol 29, 251–272 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10940-012-9178-6

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