Abstract
The first part of this chapter describes the basic structural contours of youth crime and victimization in a comparative perspective; the second part of the chapter focuses on the importance of school, education and social learning. Accordingly, this chapter reports on the results of a large international collaborative study of juvenile delinquency and victimization (International Self Report Delinquency Study—ISRD2) conducted in 30 countries between 2006 and 2008. About 68,000 pupils in grades 7, 8 and 9 (12–15 year old) answered questions about alcohol and drug use, offending, victimization, family, school, friends, neighborhood and attitudes towards violence. Presentation of the results uses six country clusters, based on an expansion of Esping-Andersen’s (1990) welfare regimes: Anglo-Saxon countries (liberal model), West-European countries (corporatist model), Scandinavian countries (social democratic model), South European countries (Mediterranean model), Post-socialist countries, and a Latin American group. The overall result is that delinquent behavior and victimization is a rather common, typical experience among most youth. Youth who spend more time with family rather than friends, and youth who like school and perform well are less likely to commit delinquent acts (and be victimized) than their counterparts. This finding is true for all 30 countries in the study.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
Canada was excluded from some of the analyses because of concerns related to data protection.
- 3.
See Junger-Tas (2012) for more details.
- 4.
It goes without saying that the family is the primary and most important socializing influence on a child. That is where most of the informal learning takes place in early childhood. However, in the early teen years, typically, there is a shift of the importance of the family towards friends and peers instead.
- 5.
In some schools, morality is an explicit part of the curriculum, for example in faith-based schools. Virtually all schools, however, focus on the importance of following rules, and of acceptable and appropriate behavior. Schools have a crucial socializing function, teaching youth the norms and values of society.
- 6.
In Lucia and colleagues’ (2012) controlled analysis of school-related variables, the strongest contribution in terms of explained variance in versatility of delinquency came from truancy in all 6 country clusters, although the strength of the association varied by cluster (Anglo-Saxon cluster 0.29; West European cluster 0.25, North European cluster 0.28; Southern Europe 0.21; Post-socialist 0.19 and Latin American cluster 0.17) (pp. 215–216).
- 7.
These individual-level school factors appear to play a role—albeit small and with some variability—in all six country clusters (Lucia et al. 2012, pp. 215–216).
- 8.
Mean of the scale is 37.9 (range 1–100); standard deviation = 25.1; Cronbach’s alpha = 0.75 which means it is a reliable scale.
- 9.
Multivariate regression analysis on control variables (age, gender and immigration status) and school variables (repeating classes, educational aspirations, truancy, liking schools, school bonding and school disorganization) with delinquency versatility for the six country clusters shows that the impact of school disorganization was quite comparable in the six country clusters (Anglo-Saxon beta = 0.16; West Europe beta = 0.15; Northern Europe beta = 0.14; Southern Europe beta = 0.12; Post-socialist beta = 0.11; Latin American cluster beta = 0.10; Lucia et al. (2012), pp. 216–217).
- 10.
In the third round of ISRD which will be concluded by the end of 2015, for a number of countries we will collect more information on the participating schools so we can conduct more complete analyses than those possible on the ISRD2 data.
- 11.
See Lucia et al. (2012) for a more in-depth review of relevant research and literature.
- 12.
The two other elements are differential reinforcement and imitation (Brown et al. 2013, p. 321).
- 13.
The responses were transformed to Pomp scores (mean = 33.7, standard deviation = 22.3, Cronbach’s alpha = 0.71).
- 14.
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Marshall, I.H. (2016). Results of the Second Round of the International Self-Report Delinquency (ISRD2) Study: Importance of Education and Social Learning for 12–15 Year Olds. In: Kury, H., Redo, S., Shea, E. (eds) Women and Children as Victims and Offenders: Background, Prevention, Reintegration. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-08398-8_11
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