Changing routine activities and the decline of youth crime: A repeated cross‐sectional analysis of self‐reported delinquency in Sweden, 1999–2017^*

Abstract

This study examines the declining crime trend among Swedish adolescents between 1999 and 2017 using data from eight repeated cross‐sectional waves of a nationally representative school survey (N = ca. 49,000). We examined to what extent changes in parental monitoring, school bonds, attitudes toward crime, routine activities, and binge drinking were related to the noticeable decline in youth crime. Multilevel modeling was employed for the analysis of temporal trends. We found strong empirical support for our hypotheses, that is, that changes in social bonds, attitudes toward crime, and routine activities were all associated with the decline in youth crime. Routine activities had the strongest explanatory power, and all predictors combined accounted for most of the variance attributed to the decline in youth crime. This study moves research on the crime drop closer to the analysis of social mechanisms by demonstrating that micro‐level associations between theoretically relevant, proximal variables, and delinquency account for macro‐level change.

17 Is the New 15: Changing Alcohol Consumption among Swedish Youth

“…Today's youth seem to belong to a generally well-behaved generation as there are observations of declines in crime [34] and other risk behaviours [35] parallel to the declines in youth drinking. There are also reports of normalising non-drinking in this generation [36,37], with small or no differences seen between drinkers and non-drinkers [38].…”

Trends in Tobacco Use among 9th Graders in Sweden, 1991–2020

“…During the past two decades, there has also been a large decline in alcohol use among Swedish adolescents [ 22 , 23 ] and internationally [ 24 , 25 ]. Involvement in criminal behaviour has also declined among youth in Sweden during this period [ 26 ]. There are also reports of declines in risk behaviors in general among adolescents [ 27 ].…”

For Whom Do Unstructured Activities Matters? The Interaction Between Unstructured and Structured Activities in Delinquency and Cannabis Use: A National Self-Report Study

“…Second, we have not included any measures of online activities. It is important for future research to examine and include measures of young people’s online activities (e.g., Bunders & Weerman, 2020), since a number of studies have shown that there has been a decline in levels of participation in offline unstructured activities over time (Baumer et al, 2021; Svensson & Oberwittler, 2021). Third, the measures used for both unstructured and structured activities could be developed further to include other types of activities, and also to look in more detail at the effects of participation in team and individual sporting activities respectively (e.g., Badura et al, 2015).…”