Abstract
Theoretical and empirical consideration has long been given to the role of subcultural attitudes and how they relate to delinquency and crime. Recently, Anderson has reconceptualized these early attitudinal depictions by considering the formation and role of these specific attitudes or ‘code of the street’ among African-Americans in inner-city neighborhoods. A number of important findings have emerged from this literature, yet much remains to be considered. We contribute to this literature in three specific ways by examining: (1) the scope of street code attitudes across a wide variety of individuals—and not just inner-city African American (males) to assess the generalizability of these attitudes; (2) the correlates of street code attitudes; and (3) the extent to which street code attitudes mediate the relationship between various demographic and attitudinal (self-control) variables and crime. Theoretical implications and directions for future research are addressed.
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Notes
The sampling frame for this research is all US households with working land-line phones. Also, households with land-line numbers ported to cellular phones would be included in the sampling frame. Only one member of each household was interviewed. If a juvenile answered the phone, the interviewers asked for a parent to continue the interview.
AAPOR response rate calculation RR6.
Of increasing concern to survey research is the use of call-screening devices (Tuckell & O’Neill, 2002). The Data-Tel predictive dialer used in this research anticipates call screening devices used to indicate that a household is ineligible, commercially known as a “Tele-Zapper.” This software also passes calls that it deems as screened through the use of privacy blockers and screening services to an operator to determine the appropriate disposition code or action. This operator then continues the call normally.
The prior crime index evinced strong positive skew, as 78% of respondents reported a zero frequency.
We conceive of this measure as tapping into the perception of a lack of faith in the criminal justice system and one of its agents, the police. Consistent with the street code thesis argument, this item correlates as expected with the street code measure, r = .14 (p < .05).
Recall that our original criminal offending measure was a count of the number of different criminal acts. Given the large skew (only one person reported committing three of the four offenses, and over 78% reported committing zero offenses), we dichotomized the criminal offending index to zero offenses vs. one or more offenses. A comparison of results using the dichotomous and variety measures produced substantively similar results.
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Piquero, A.R., Intravia, J., Stewart, E. et al. Investigating the Determinants of the Street Code and its Relation to Offending among Adults. Am J Crim Just 37, 19–32 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12103-011-9115-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12103-011-9115-5