Understanding Youth Crime

An Australian Study

Mark Lynch, John S. Western, John S. Western

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351772839
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Social Sciences
• Categoría: Sociology

This title was first published in 2003. Adolescence is popularly understood as a transitional phase of turbulence and extremes. It is also often associated with 'trouble'. Criminal justice statistics, however, reveal that youth criminality remains a relatively rare phenomenon, less than one percent of the total adolescent population in any given year. This exceptional book is based upon a major Australian research programme to consider the key social factors impacting upon the lives of young people. A sample of 1, 300 young people was divided into three major subgroups: a 'control' group, drawn from state secondary schools and closely approximating the general population; a chronically marginalized cohort representing a 'vulnerable group', and a group of offenders, most of whom were incarcerated at the time of the research. With its rich data source and highly integrated structure, the book makes a major contribution to our understanding of adolescent criminality and associated policy both in Australia and internationally.

Chapter 1

The Sibling Study: Theory, Research and Guiding Principles

Mark Lynch, Stephanie McGrane, Emma Ogilvie and John S. Western

Introduction

At the heart of sociology is the Hobbesian question of why it is that people conform to normative structures. In a very real sense, the writings of the ‘founding fathers’ of sociology, Marx, Weber and Durkheim, constitute a seminal body of work aimed at revealing the hitherto hidden reasons for the conformity of people to the dominant values and ideas of the day. As a field of sociology, criminology shares this interest in the basis of conformity; however, what marks out criminology as a discipline in its own right is its focus upon why it is that (some) people do not conform and instead embrace criminality in a (perhaps) explicit rejection of the norms and values of the day.

Any examination of the factors associated with criminality and conformity is vastly more complicated than a simple listing of the characteristics of ‘baddies’ and ‘goodies’. Risk factors consistently associated with criminality, such as poverty, family abuse and inadequate social support mechanisms, are not the exclusive prerogative of offenders. Similarly, protective factors such as socio-economic advantage and high levels of family support are not the exclusive preserve of non-offenders. As sociologists and criminologists, we are surprisingly ill-equipped to explain why it is that some adolescents from backgrounds characterized by neglect and marginalization do not engage in criminal behaviours while others from very advantaged backgrounds, with high levels of access to educational and cultural capital, do. Finally, but most importantly, we are especially poorly equipped to explain how it is that adolescents who do engage in crime may nonetheless simultaneously adhere to many of the norms and values of their non-offending counterparts. Our difficulty in explaining this contradiction points very directly to our inability to satisfactorily theorize both the nature of, and relations between, conformity and criminality.

To date, the major criminological explanations of conformity and criminality have developed on the basis of very different conceptions of the nature of human beings and human social relations. However, despite their differences, these divergent schools of thought are alike in the way in which, until quite recently, they tended to focus upon particular aspects of either conformity or criminality.

For example, control theory, the school of thought most explicitly dependent upon the concept of conformity, uses the concept to both signal and highlight law-abiding behaviours. To over generalize, for control theorists, deviance is taken for granted and it is conformity that must be explained. Somewhat similarly, developmental approaches draw upon the notion of conformity to investigate ‘protective’ factors, which may shield youth from dangerous and risk-taking behaviours, some of which are criminal. In contrast, classic strain theory begins with the premise that virtually all individuals accept the dominant cultural values, but that some may adopt illegitimate means to attain the goals enshrined in these values. For strain theorists, it is conformity that is taken for granted and deviance that must be explained. This focus is not dissimilar to the orientation central to the differential association theory pioneered by Sutherland. Differential association theorists emphasize the importance of significant others in the lives of adolescents, in that criminal behaviours are acquired when the values and judgments characterizing one’s immediate social milieu run counter to the values of the larger society.

Notwithstanding their differences, each of these approaches yields important insights into how and why it is that the social order is characterized by certain enduring features. While most people conform most of the time, many people nevertheless engage in criminality at certain times and in certain circumstances. In seeking to disentangle the factors underpinning both conformity and criminality, criminology addresses the fundamental issues defining the social sciences. Criminology may have begun as a relatively junior player in the sociological arena, but with each advance in our understanding of conformity and criminality, it stakes a larger claim upon the broader terrain of the social sciences.

With these issues in mind, the objective of this introductory chapter is threefold. Firstly, to provide a brief overview of the key ways to date in which criminologists have sought to reconcile the tensions between conformity and criminality. Secondly, to describe in broad terms the research design of the Sibling Study project, and, thirdly, to outline how we see the Sibling Study research as making a substantive contribution to the current debates concerning law-breaking and law-abiding behaviours. In order to address these (related) objectives, it is useful to begin by very briefly considering the four theoretical orientations that have most decisively shaped the development of criminology as a discipline in its own right.

Social Control

Those who see the world from a social control perspective take as their starting point the view that humankind is essentially hedonistic, aggressive and manipulative, necessitating well-developed psycho-social barriers in order for individuals to adhere to the social order. Developing from the work of Travis Hirschi (1969), this approach seeks to explain the deviant and/or criminal by problematizing conformity. It asks the question: why is it that people conform? The social bond between individuals and society is central to the theory and consists of four major elements: attachment to significant others, commitment to social conformity, involvement in conventional activities, and belief in the moral validity of existing social norms. Delinquent and criminal behaviours are said to result from a or of these bonds.

Gottfredson and Hirschi have further developed this perspective, claiming that criminality can be understood as a subset of behaviours in which individuals prioritize immediate pleasure over long-term consequences. The crucial factor underpinning this preference is ‘self-control’, or the ‘tendency to avoid acts whose long-term costs exceed their momentary advantages’ (Gottfredson and Hirschi, 1990:3). This is not to say that low self-control causes criminality, but, rather, that individuals with low self-control are the most likely to take advantage of opportunities for and/or reckless acts in general.

There is considerable empirical support for this position, and, as a result, it has markedly influenced criminological research over the past three decades. Indeed, a survey identified more than seventy publications using the concept of control (Kempf, 1993). Hirschi’s approach has been used to explain the gendering of crime (Hagan, Gillis and Simpson 1985, Zager 1994), school experiences and delinquency (Empey and Lubeck 1971, Kruttschnitt et al 1986, Cernkovich and Giordano 1992, Zingraff et al 1994) and perhaps most extensively, the impact of family on delinquency.

The interest in the influence of family-related factors upon delinquency has typically involved a concern with both family structure (including ‘broken’ homes) and the nature of intra-familial relationships. Two major findings from studies examining these issues have been, firstly, that adolescent offenders are disproportionately likely to come from single parent families (Rosen and Neilson, 1978; Haskell and Yablonsky 1982), and, secondly, that an inverse relationship exists between attachment to parents and delinquency, regardless of social class or ethnicity (Hirschi 1969, Hindelang 1973, Gibbs, Giever and Martin 1998). Of these two factors, parental attachment has consistently proved to be the stronger predictor of adolescent offending.¹

Despite the apparent strength of these findings, recent longitudinal research suggests that social control variables actually have a rather weak effect on adolescent offending (see Kempf 1993, Greenburg 1999, Thornberry 1987 1994, Agnew 1985 1991a). However, it may be that future longitudinal studies should more closely examine the impact of social bonds among pre-adolescents (Agnew 1991a). The argument here being that family and school factors have a significant impact on the formation of delinquent predispositions during pre-adolescence, but that their importance declines during adolescence, when the peer group becomes more influential.

Developmental Perspectives

A related approach focuses on the ‘pathways’ of adolescent trajectories (Cairns and Cairns 1994, Farrington 2002, Robins and Rutter 1990),² in which it is recognized that there are multiple pathways to conformity and criminality and that different individuals may choose alternative routes to these outcomes. A considerable body of research is currently aimed at identifying possible developmental pathways that lead to crime and substance abuse, with considerable attention being paid to risk and protective factors that may influence individuals during critical transition points in their lives (National Crime Prevention 1999, see also Bor, Najman, O’Callaghan, Williams and Anstey 2001, Greenwood, Model, Rydell and Chiesa 1996, Keating and Hertzman 1999, Loeber and Farrington 1994). The social context is a crucial element identified in this approach, particularly the level of support available to those choosing different paths (Homel, Lincoln and Herd 1999). Developmental theorists can thus be seen to be working to identify those pathways that are injurious to adolescents and the broader community, and those pathways that are beneficial.

Developmental approaches have been criticized, however, particularly with respect to their conceptualization of ‘risk’. It has been argued that programs based upon ‘at risk’ transition points serve to define youth as ‘the problem’ (Lubeck and Garrett 1990), in that ‘young people who do not conform to the standards of the mainstream are identified as ‘at risk’, requiring specific attention to bring them into line with the mainstream’ (Wyn and White 1997:52). This scepticism regarding the explanatory power of developmental and social control approaches invites attention to other ways of understanding the conditions for criminality and conformity. It is to these perspectives that we now turn.

Strain Theory

Classical strain theory argues that while most people adhere to the dominant values of society and so share the desire for material success, status and prosperity, many lack the legitimate means to fulfil these desires. Problems arise not because people have rejected societal goals, but because, in order to realize these goals, they have had to resort to illegitimate means such as theft or property crime. For early strain theorists, such as Robert Merton (1938)...