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Violent Youth Group Involvement, Self-reported Offending and Victimisation: An Empirical Assessment of an Integrated Informal Control/Lifestyle Model

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Abstract

The present study assesses the relationship between family and educational disadvantage on self-reported offending, victimisation and violent youth group involvement in a Belgian medium-sized city. Many studies have focused on the relationship between family disadvantage (one-parent families, immigrant background) and educational disadvantage (vocational tracking, school failure) and violent youth group involvement, offending/victimisation in surveys. The present study primarily assesses to what extent social bonds (parental monitoring and the school social bond), deviant beliefs, low self-control and lifestyle risk are stable mediators of the relationship between family and educational disadvantage and self-reported offending, victimisation and troublesome youth group involvement among young adolescents. The results indicate that the lifestyle-exposure model, which was initially used to explain individual differences in victimisation is much better capable of explaining differences in selfreported offending and violent youth group involvement than victimisation. The implications for further studies are discussed.

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Notes

  1. The Eurogang network consists of leading European and American scholars in the field. They are now working together to develop a common framework for comparative research, based on standardised methodological instruments and a common research design.

  2. Belgian research concerning youth and delinquency has primarily focused on the social and penal reaction towards the delinquent behaviour of minors as well as the treatment of delinquent youth, i.e., the juvenile justice system (Christiaens et al. 2005). For an overview of self-reported delinquency studies in Belgium and the Netherlands, see Pauwels and Pleysier (2009).

  3. An overview of risk factors that are correlated with joining a VYG can be found in Klein and Maxson (2006).

  4. Although the above-mentioned criticism is important for future inquiries into VYG on offending and victimisation, it should be stated that we did not encounter empirical problems of multicollinearity among either construct. None of the multivariate analyses that are reported below suggested that multicollinearity (especially between VYG and lifestyle risk) was a problem.

  5. We are grateful for the assistance of Katty De Bruyn (MSc in Criminology), an experienced teacher, who introduced us to the field and paved the way for participation in the survey.

  6. In the classroom paper and pencil survey, the item non-response is also supposed to occur as a consequence of “bystanders” who may influence the response behaviour of students, but little research has been conducted in that field. Bjarnason (1995) and Pauwels (2007) showed no significant differences in response behaviour due to administration bias (teacher administration versus researcher administration) in their respective studies under the survey condition of closed envelopes.

  7. Additional tests suggest that the results are not biased by our decision, while the nett sample decreased substantially. This remains an important issue in quantitative analysis.

  8. To define the risk end of a variable we consistently used one standard deviation above the mean as a criterion for the scale variable (peer delinquency) and the two risk end answer categories for the ordinal variables.

  9. Both empirically defined subscales as methodologically derived subscales obtained through factor analyses are highly correlated (> 0.80, p < 0.001) and additional analyses do not suggest that a distinction between such scales leads to different results.

  10. Previous Belgian studies revealed that all neighbourhood variation in violent youth group involvement was due to compositional effects, i.e. neighbourhood differences in the demographic make-up of an area were found to be responsible for area variations in violent youth group involvement, but it should be noted that these previously mentioned studies were conducted in one major city. This finding cannot be generalised.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Criminology and Criminal Law, Ghent University, Universiteitsstraat 4, 9000, Gent, Belgium

    Lieven J. R. Pauwels

  2. Department of Criminology, Malmö University, 205 06, Malmo, Sweden

    Robert Svensson

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  1. Lieven J. R. Pauwels
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Correspondence to Lieven J. R. Pauwels.

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Pauwels, L.J.R., Svensson, R. Violent Youth Group Involvement, Self-reported Offending and Victimisation: An Empirical Assessment of an Integrated Informal Control/Lifestyle Model. Eur J Crim Policy Res 19, 369–386 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10610-013-9205-7

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