Sonia Lucia

The School and its Impact on Delinquency

The school is an important social context for young people’s socialization as they spend a considerable amount of time there. At school, they make friends and are supervised by their teachers. However, the role of the school in the lives of children is often underestimated. When compulsory education was introduced in most countries in the nineteenth century, the school taught – in addition to reading, writing and arithmetic- cultural norms and values, such as industriousness, hard work and how to behave according to the social norm. Teachers used to reward orderliness, diligence, self-control and respect for others, while they would punish children when they were careless or wouldn’t pay attention. Virtues such as the love for God and one’s country, a child’s duties towards his parents, thrift and honesty found their roots in Christian morality and traditional conceptions of good citizenship.

Entre-Parents: initial outcome evaluation of a preventive-parenting program for French-speaking parents.

Entre-Parents is the French adaptation of Parenting Our Children to Excellence, an eight-session group-parenting program for parents of preschoolers. An evaluation conducted in the French-speaking part of Switzerland with 132 parents provides initial evidence for the community acceptability and efficacy of Entre-Parents. Program attendance was high (average of 6.6 out of the 8 sessions), and parents participated actively in sessions and expressed high levels of program satisfaction. Results indicate that, over time, the program contributed to more effective parenting practices, a reduction in parenting stress, an increase in family adaptability, and increases in children’s social competence and reductions in their disruptive and anxious behaviors. Some of these benefits were stronger for parents who attended more sessions.

Juvenile Victimization from an International Perspective

Delinquency and victimization are correlated. However, this does not imply that all victims are offenders, or that all offenders become victims of crimes. Elderly people and women especially commit substantially fewer offences, but nonetheless at times may experience victimization. However, among juveniles, the correlation between victimization and delinquency is generally assumed to be stronger, given that (young) offenders often expose themselves to increased risks of victimization. A delinquent lifestyle may indeed be among the strongest predictors of violent victimization. This in itself is one of many good reasons to look more closely at victimization among juveniles. A second motivation is that juveniles are being victimized disproportionately compared to other age groups, and crime is an essential aspect of the quality of life at this age. Many juveniles are obviously not regularly involved in delinquency, but are genuinely affected if violence occurs frequently in the age group they socialize with in everyday contexts. Since minors are notoriously poorly represented in national and international crime victimization surveys, this study offers a good occasion to look more closely at the factors which influence the probability of such experiences at this age, which may not necessarily be the same during later periods in life.

Integrated vs. differentiated school systems and their impact on delinquency

The Swiss school system is based on selectivity and classification. From a relatively young age, students are assigned to levels leading to different professional orientations, from apprenticeship to university. Using data from the Swiss ISRD-2 (Second International Self-Reported Delinquency Study), this study analyses the link between Swiss schools and delinquency, as measured by prevalence in the 12 months before filling out the questionnaire. Three dependent variables with large prevalence rates were considered: shoplifting, vandalism and a composite variable, all offences. The results were generated using two analytical methods, controlling for sociodemographic and individual characteristics and variables related to the family and the neighbourhood. The analyses reveal that being in the lowest track either in the school itself or in the school system is not related to increased risk of delinquency.