Lieven Pauwels

Does the effect of self-control on adolescent offending vary by level of morality? A test in three countries

This study examines whether morality and self-control have an interactional effect on offending. Drawing from the situational action theory, the authors hypothesize that self-control has a more important effect on offending for individuals with low levels of morality than for individuals with high levels of morality. To test this hypothesis, self-report data were used from three independent samples of young adolescents in Antwerp, Belgium (N = 2,486); Halmstad, Sweden (N = 1,003); and South-Holland, the Netherlands (N = 1,978). The findings provide strong support for the hypothesis that the effect of self-control on offending is dependent on the individual’s level of morality. The similarity of the results across three independent samples suggests that the findings are robust among different cultural backgrounds and among studies with different operationalizations of the central concepts of interest.

Situational causes of offending: a fixed-effects analysis of space-time budget data

Situational theories of crime assert that the situations that people participate in contain the proximal causes of crime. Prior research has not tested situational hypotheses rigorously, either for lack of detailed situational data or for lack of analytical rigor. The present research combines detailed situational data with analytical methods that eliminate all stable between-individual factors as potential confounds. We test seven potential situational causes: 1) presence of peers, 2) absence of adult handlers, 3) public space, 4) unstructured activities, 5) use of alcohol, 6) use of cannabis, and 7) carrying weapons. In a two-wave panel study, a general sample of adolescents completed a space-time budget interview that recorded, hour by hour over the course of 4 complete days, the activities and whereabouts of the subjects, including any self-reported offenses. In total, 76 individuals reported having committed 104 offenses during the 4 days covered in the space-time budget interview. Using data on the 4,949 hours that these 76 offenders spent awake during these 4 days, within-individual, fixed-effects multivariate logit analyses were used to establish situational causes of offending. The findings demonstrate that offending is strongly and positively related to all hypothesized situational causes except using cannabis and carrying weapons.

Is a Risky Lifestyle Always “Risky”? The Interaction Between Individual Propensity and Lifestyle Risk in Adolescent Offending: A Test in Two Urban Samples

This study examines the effects on adolescent offending of lifestyle risk and the individual propensity to offend. It is assumed that lifestyle risk will have a more important effect on offending for those individuals with high levels of individual propensity, whereas for individuals with low levels of individual propensity it is assumed that a risky lifestyle will not, or will only marginally, influence their involvement in offending. The data are drawn from two different samples of young adolescents in Antwerp, Belgium (N = 2,486), and Halmstad, Sweden (N = 1,003). The data provide strong support for the hypothesis that the effect of lifestyle risk is dependent on the strength or weakness of individual propensity, indicating that lifestyle risk has a stronger effect on delinquency for individuals with a high propensity to offend. The similarity of the results across two independent samples suggests the findings are stable.

When Is Spending Time With Peers Related to Delinquency? The Importance of Where, What, and With Whom

Research has shown that time spent with peers is related to delinquency, but little is known about the conditions under which spending time with peers is most related to delinquent behavior. In this study, we contrast different categories of time spent with peers, using detailed information about the activities and whereabouts of 843 adolescents in The Hague, the Netherlands. Our findings reveal substantial differences. Time spent with peers appears to be independently related with delinquency only when it combines at least two of the following risk-inducing conditions: just socializing, being in public, and being unsupervised.

Moral emotions and offending: Do feelings of anticipated shame and guilt mediate the effect of socialization on offending?

In this study we examine whether feelings of anticipated shame and anticipated guilt when being caught for an offence mediate the relationship between parental monitoring, bonds with parents and school, deviant peers, moral values and offending. We use data from the SPAN project, a study that collected detailed information about offending, moral emotions and socialization among 843 adolescents in The Hague, the Netherlands. The results show that moral emotions of both anticipated shame and guilt have a strong direct effect on offending. The results also show that the relationship between parental monitoring, deviant peers, moral values and offending is substantially mediated by anticipated shame and guilt. This study clearly suggests that both shame and guilt need to be included in the explanation of offending.

Perceived sanction risk, individual propensity and adolescent offending: Assessing key findings from the deterrence literature in a Dutch sample

Deterrence studies have shown that perceived sanction risk is related to delinquent behaviour, independent of other variables, and that this relation may be conditioned by individual propensity towards crime. The principal goal of this study is to assess these findings with data from a sample of 843 Dutch adolescents. First, we analysed whether perceived sanction risk (perceived apprehension risk and perceived consequences if one is caught offending) has a relationship with offending, independent of one’s morality and self-control. Second, we examined possible interactions between perceived sanction risk and self-control, and between perceived sanction risk and morality. We also explored associations between specific offences (burglary, vandalism and assault), offence-specific measures of low morality (how right or wrong are burglary, vandalism and assault) and specific measures of perceived sanction risks. The findings demonstrate that perceived sanction risk is related to lower offending and that self-control is related to less offending, whereas low levels of morality are related to higher levels of offending. When offence-specific measures are used, the relation between perceived sanctions and offending seems to be dependent on one’s level of morality. Our results suggest that the less a person morally supports specific types of offending, the more strongly that person is affected by perceived sanctions. The implications of these findings for future studies of deterrence are discussed.

Measuring Community (Dis)Organizational Processes through Key Informant Analysis

The role of community (dis)organizational processes is a major issue in contemporary criminology. As a consequence, researchers have been increasingly eager to measure community-level social mechanisms such as social trust and disorder. However, community inhabitants are predominantly used to measure community (dis)organizational processes. This approach requires large numbers of respondents to generate reliable and valid measures of social trust and disorder. In this article, the use of expert key informants is discussed as an alternative method of measuring community processes. Our findings suggest that key informants can provide reliable and valid measures of social cohesion and disorder on two rather small units of analysis.

Differential Online Exposure to Extremist Content and Political Violence: Testing the Relative Strength of Social Learning and Competing Perspectives

The present study applies Social Learning (Differential Association) Theory to the explanation of political violence, focusing on exposure to extremist content through new social media (NSM) and controlling for key variables derived from rival theories. Data are gathered using (a) a paper-and-pencil study among high school students, and (b) a web survey targeting youths between 16 and 24 years old. A total of 6020 respondents form the dataset. Binary logistic regression is used to analyze the data. Results show that even when controlling for background variables, strain variables, personality characteristics, moral values, and peer influences, the statistical association between measures of extremism through NSM (ENSM) and self-reported political violence remains significant and fairly constant. The most persistent effects are found for those measures where individuals actively seek out extremist content on the Internet, as opposed to passive and accidental encounters using NSM. Furthermore, offline differential associations with racist and delinquent peers are also strongly and directly related to self-reported political violence, as are some mechanisms from rival perspectives. This indicates that political violence can only partially be explained by social learning and suggests that the impact of ENSM is mediated by real-world associations and that the offline world has to be taken into account.

How serious is the problem of item nonresponse in delinquency scales and aetiological variables? A cross-national inquiry into two classroom PAPI self-report studies in Antwerp and Halmstad

The phenomenon of item nonresponse, i.e. missing data, in surveys is well known among methodologists. Item nonresponse is a problem when it is biased to the dependent variables in aetiological research. The occurrence of item nonresponse in self-reported delinquency studies has been associated with the threatening nature of questions about previous delinquent behaviour, but item nonresponse also occurs in scales measuring aetiological variables (theoretical concepts) in aetiological research, and in sociology has also been associated with negative attitudes towards the survey, although evidence from self-reported delinquency studies in support of this concern has not yet been given. The aim of this study is to evaluate the seriousness of the problem of item nonresponse in two independently drawn self-reported delinquency data sets of two classroom delinquency studies conducted among adolescents in Antwerp (Belgium) and Halmstad (Sweden) using paper and pencil interviews (PAPI). We do this by evaluating the non-random character of item nonresponse in scales of delinquency and aetiological variables, by looking at the correlates of item nonresponse and by evaluating the effects of assigning values on the missing data with regard to reliability and correlational validity. The results are rather optimistic about the hypothesized negative effects of item nonresponse.

Societal vulnerability and adolescent offending: The role of violent values, self-control and troublesome youth group involvement

The present study aims at testing the relationship between societal vulnerability and self-reported offending using the Belgian data of the second International Self-Report Delinquency Study (ISRD-2). Societal vulnerability is a much-discussed covariate of adolescent offending. We test the hypotheses that violent values, self-control and troublesome youth group involvement are key mechanisms that mediate the relationship between societal vulnerability and offending. We found an indirect path of societal vulnerability for offending through violent values, self-control and troublesome youth group involvement, but there remains also a direct impact. The implications of these findings for policy and future studies of offending are addressed.