Crime & Delinquency

A large body of research has examined racial and gender disparities in juvenile justice decision making, generally concluding that disparities continue to plague the system. However, little research has examined disparities in “noncompliance” cases, even though youth charged with these offenses comprise a considerable percentage of youth under the jurisdiction of the juvenile justice system. Using Black’s theory of law, the current study investigates the impact of race and gender on juvenile detention and adjudication decisions in “noncompliance” cases (e.g., probation violations, contempt, failure to appear) in a mid-Atlantic state. Findings suggest that Black’s theory does an adequate job of explaining the detention and adjudication decisions, and that race and gender continue to condition juvenile justice processing.

This study examined the impact of business improvement districts (BIDs) on street block robbery counts in Cincinnati, OH. The relationships among BIDs (as well as other relevant control measures) and street block robbery counts were then examined using negative binomial regression models. Results showed that BIDs played an important role in the spatial patterning of robbery at the street block level. Street blocks within BIDs experienced higher street robbery counts even after controlling for street network betweenness and the presence of potentially criminogenic places within and around BIDs. Although previous research suggests BID implementation leads to crime reductions, the present study shows BIDs still provide ample opportunities for criminal activity as one component of the environmental backcloth.

This study examines the extent to which a third-party policing experiment designed to prevent truancy in disadvantaged adolescents is able to weaken the effect of impulsivity on self-reported antisocial behavior over time. Data are used from the Ability School Engagement Program (ASEP), a randomized controlled trial of 102 high truant youth from Brisbane, Australia who were followed for 2 years postrandomization. We find that ASEP weakened the effect of impulsivity on the diversity of self-reported antisocial behavior throughout the study for those in the experiment. This study provides evidence that an intervention that was designed to prevent truancy has the additional benefit of hindering the relationship between impulsivity and self-reported antisocial behavior variety.

Little is known about the longitudinal effect of peer victimization on deviant behavior in non-Western cultural contexts and the mediating role of theoretically relevant variables, such as anger, on this association. The current study aimed to address this gap by analyzing data from a nationally representative sample of South Korean youth. Peer victimization was found to increase risk for anger and deviant behavior. Anger accounted for 27.06% of the total direct effect of peer victimization experienced during late childhood on deviant behavior during early adolescence. Results from the current study provide support for the cross-cultural application of general strain theory to help explain the longitudinal link between peer victimization and deviant behavior in a non-Western context such as South Korea.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of parental migration and alternative caretaking arrangements on children’s delinquency in rural China. Using data from the Parental Migration and Children’s Well-Being Survey, our results suggest that children’s delinquency is influenced by a dynamic interaction between caretaking arrangements and children’s self-control. More specifically, grandparenting appears to be an equivalent substitution for normative nuclear family parenting and has some advantage over caretaking by a remaining parent, especially for children with low self-control. These findings can serve as a starting point for a further conversation on the benefit of extended families and collective parenting, and on how to best use cultural resources in rural China under the constraint of parental migration and other structural barriers.

The study examines the longitudinal relationship between religious involvement and substance use within emerging adulthood, accounting for changes in religious involvement over time and exploring variations across age, sex, race/ethnicity, and substance (i.e., alcohol, marijuana, and hard drugs). To this end, random effects models are used focusing on 11 waves of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1997. The findings demonstrate that increases in religious attendance are associated with reduced odds of all forms of substance use. In addition, the religious attendance–substance use relationship becomes weaker with age. Overall, religious attendance has a similar relationship with substance use among males and females, as well as Whites and non-Whites, with a few notable exceptions.