Relations between neighborhood factors, parenting behaviors, peer deviance, and delinquency among serious juvenile offenders

Abstract

The present study examined relations among neighborhood structural and social characteristics, parenting practices, peer group affiliations, and delinquency among a group of serious adolescent offenders. The sample of 14-18-year-old boys (N=488) was composed primarily of economically disadvantaged, ethnic-minority youth living in urban communities. The results indicate that weak neighborhood social organization is indirectly related to delinquency through its associations with parenting behavior and peer deviance and that a focus on just 1 of these microsystems can lead to oversimplified models of risk for juvenile offending. The authors also find that community social ties may confer both pro- and antisocial influences to youth, and they advocate for a broad conceptualization of neighborhood social processes as these relate to developmental risk for youth living in disadvantaged communities.

Figure 1

Hypothesized model of adolescent offending.

Figure 2

Standardized estimates for the final model predicting individual offending. An effective sample size (N = 310) used to test the structural model, χ²(37, N = 310) = 45.13, ns (RMSEA = .027, p[close] = .95, CFI = .996); all three neighborhood structural factors were allowed to correlate with each other and with parental education. ^†p < .10. *p < .05. ***p < .001.