Digital Disclosure of Delinquency: Online Peers and the Sharing of Offline Crime

Digital communication poses challenges for scholars interested in the link between peers and crime since youth are often less inhibited online and can more easily share their opinions and experiences with offline activities. Drawing on longitudinal data from middle and high school students, this study explores how online communication impacts the sharing of personal and peer delinquency. Criminogenic risk factors are largely unrelated to the digital disclosure of personal delinquency among those who offend; however, peer online disclosure is related to self-reported delinquency, independent of perceived peer delinquency. These findings suggest cyberspace may extend offline mechanisms of peer influence beyond providing a unique source of online influence.

The Moderating Effect of Prosocial Peers on the Relationships Between Peer Delinquency, Neutralization, and Violent Offending

The goal of the current investigation was to determine whether prosocial peer associations can serve as protective factors by interacting with key components of the peer influence effect. A moderated mediation analysis performed on 2,474 youth (52% female) from the Gang Resistance Education and Training (GREAT) study (mean age = 12.13 years) revealed that Wave 2 prosocial peer associations moderated the peer delinquency–neutralization relationship. Alternately, Wave 3 prosocial peer associations moderated the neutralization–violent offending relationship. Hence, neutralization beliefs were disproportionately weaker in participants with fewer delinquent peer associations and more prosocial peer associations, whereas the effect of neutralization on delinquency was attenuated, though not eliminated, by strong prosocial peer associations. These results suggest that prosocial peer associations may serve a protective function at different points in the peer influence sequence and that they may be more than simply the converse of peer delinquency.

Mediating the Low Verbal Intelligence–Early Adult Offending Relationship With Pro-Aggression Attitudes

This study was designed to explore a possible mechanism for the well-documented relationship between low verbal intelligence and early adult offending. It was hypothesized that low verbal intelligence, as measured by a brief vocabulary test, would predict higher pro-aggression thinking, which would then encourage future antisocial behavior. This hypothesis was tested in a longitudinal analysis of 411 male youths from the Cambridge Study of Delinquent Development (CSDD). After controlling for school performance, truancy, impulsivity, peer delinquency, and nonverbal intelligence, a path analysis revealed that low verbal intelligence at age 14 or 15 predicted violent offending (fighting) and property offending at age 21 or 22 by way of late adolescent pro-aggression attitudes. From these results, it was speculated that one mechanism linking low verbal intelligence to early adult offending is an attitude favorable to personal violation of the rights of others, in line with predictions from general personality and cognitive social learning (GPCSL) theory.

The Impact of Life Domains on Developmental Trajectories of Peer Delinquency among Korean Adolescents: A Partial Test of Agnew’s General Theory of Crime and Delinquency with a Group-Based Trajectory Modeling Approach

Agnew introduced a new integrated theory; the General Theory of Crime and Delinquency, in which he attempted to corral the most influential predictors of criminal behavior into more parsimonious propositions of multiple life domains—self, family, peer, school, and work—as well as constraints against crime and motivations for it. This study presents a partial test of the theory using longitudinal data of 2,351 Korean adolescents. A group-based modeling approach (latent class growth analysis) was run to examine direct effects of life domains on peer delinquency as well as mediating effects of constraints and motivation on their relationships. The study identified three subgroups: early onset/decreasing (3.2%), moderate (12.4%), and low/none (84.4%). The findings revealed that the self and peer domains exhibited a positive impact on the early onset/decreasing trajectory group compared to the low/none group with the constraint exhibiting a negative impact. The moderate trajectory group demonstrated that the self-domain was significant but was not rendered insignificant after controlling for constraints and motivations. The study provided moderate support for life domains within Agnew’s new theory for peer delinquency in nonwestern countries.

The Co-development of Friends’ Delinquency with Adolescents’ Delinquency and Short-term Mindsets: The Moderating Role of Co-Offending

The companions in crime hypothesis suggests that co-offending moderates the link between peer delinquency and adolescent delinquency. However, this hypothesis has rarely been investigated longitudinally. Hence, this study investigated the co-development of friends’ delinquency and adolescents’ delinquency, as well as the co-development of friends’ delinquency and short-term mindsets (impulsivity and lack of school future orientation). Whether this co-development is stronger when adolescents engage in co-offending was also investigated. Three data waves with two year lags from an ethnically-diverse adolescent sample (at wave 1: N = 1365; 48.6% female; Mage = 13.67; age range = 12.33–15.09 years) in Switzerland were used. The results from parallel process latent growth modeling showed that the co-development between friends’ delinquency and adolescents’ delinquency was stronger when adolescents engaged in co-offending. Thus co-offending likely provides direct access to a setting in which adolescents continue to model the delinquency they learned with their peers.

Low Self-Control, Peer Delinquency, and Crime: Considering Gendered Pathways

Objectives: We extend prior research by considering how low self-control and peer delinquency may work together in a mediating process whereby low self-control increases association with delinquent peers, which in turn increases criminal offending. Further, we draw on gender crime research to suggest that the indirect effect of self-control on offending will be greater for boys than girls. Methods: We use three waves of data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods to test these hypotheses for violent offending, property offending, and substance use, using multi-group multilevel generalized structural equation models that address issues of time ordering, spuriousness, and the measurement of criminality. Results: The hypothesized mediation process is supported by our results. We also find that the indirect effect of low self-control on violence and property crime is greater for boys, primarily driven by a stronger effect of delinquent peers for boys. In contrast, and in support of expectations, the results for substance use reveal little gender difference. Conclusions: We conclude that rather than treating self-control and peer delinquency as competing explanations, we should view them as working together to affect crime and delinquency. Moreover, researchers must give careful attention to gender differences in the pathways to offending.

Modeling the Reciprocal Relationships Between Group-Based Developmental Trajectories of Peer Delinquency and Self-Reported Delinquency During Adolescence: An Application of Interactional Theory

This study examines whether one’s own delinquency and peer delinquency are reciprocally related and how prior delinquency and bonding variables influence peer delinquency trajectories. Using data from a 6-year follow-up study of 2,351 Korean adolescents, the study incorporates a group-based model to identify subgroups, each having a unique pattern of peer delinquency trajectories. The models yielded three subgroups: the early-onset and declining, the late-onset, and the nonoffending groups. The results reveal that compared with the nonoffending group, prior delinquency was significant for both the early-onset and decreasing and late-onset groups. Membership in the early-onset and decreasing group was associated with a greater likelihood of prior delinquency compared with the late-onset group. Commitment to school rule differentiated the early-onset and decreasing group from the nonoffending group, and partially mediated the effect of prior delinquency. The late-onset group members reported the highest probability of later delinquent behavior among the three groups.

Peer Delinquency among Digital Natives: The Cyber Context as a Source of Peer Influence

Objectives: This study examines the influence of online peers who are not regularly seen in person by considering if online, pro-delinquent support is associated with self-reported delinquency independently of delinquent peers. Methods: Data come from a longitudinal, panel survey of two cohorts of middle and high school students located within six school districts (N = 1,177). Analyses first examine the overlap between online peer support for delinquency and perceived peer delinquency. Next, models consider how measures of online peer support for delinquency are associated with the prevalence (logit), variety (negative binomial), and changes (first difference) in self-reported delinquency. Results: Online peers generally do not enable exposure to new messages supportive of delinquency; rather, they supplement influences derived from delinquent peers. Little evidence was found that online peer support was associated with general delinquency and violence, although changes in online peer support were associated with changes in these outcomes. Partial evidence was found that online peers are associated with the prevalence, variety, and changes in self-reported theft and substance use. Conclusions: The influence from unique online peers is largely secondary to offline peers, although this depends upon the crime type under investigation.

Unraveling the Bidirectional Relationship Between Bullying Victimization and Perpetration: A Test of Mechanisms From Opportunity and General Strain Theories

This study tested two theories designed to explain the bullying perpetration–victimization relationship. Peer delinquency was hypothesized to mediate the pathway from bullying perpetration to victimization, in line with opportunity, lifestyle, and routine activities theories, and anger was held to mediate the pathway from bullying victimization to perpetration as set forth in general strain theory. These pathways were tested in a sample of 3,411 youth (1,728 boys, 1,683 girls) from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children. A causal mediation analysis performed on three nonoverlapping waves of data, in which prior levels of each predicted variable were controlled, uncovered support for peer delinquency as a mediator of the perpetration–victimization pathway but failed to identify anger as a mediator of the victimization–perpetration pathway. Additional research is required to identify a mediator for the victimization–perpetration pathway and determine whether variables other than peer delinquency mediate the perpetration–victimization pathway.