Do Disadvantaged Neighborhoods Cause Well‐adjusted Children to Become Adolescent Delinquents? A Study of Male Juvenile Serious Offending, Individual Risk and Protective Factors, and Neighborhood Context*

Abstract

This paper presents a study of the relationship between type of neighborhood socioeconomic context, individual characteristics (individuals are classified by a set of selected key measures of individual dispositions and social situation) and serious male juvenile offending (prevalence and early and late onsets) in the city of Pittsburgh. The analytical strategy may best be described as holistic and epidemiological. The key research question is whether onset and prevalence of juvenile serious offending is invariant by neighborhood socioeconomic context when controlling for individual sets of risk and protective characteristics. The results do not support the notion that neighborhood socioeconomic context has any greater direct impact on the early onset of serious offending. However, neighborhood socioeconomic context appears to have a direct impact on the late onset of offending for those juveniles who score high on protective factors, or who have a balanced mix of risk and protective factors. No support was found for the notion that individual risk characteristics and neighborhood risk are additive. Children and adolescents with high scores on risk characteristics offend in serious crime at a similar high rate regardless of the socioeconomic context of their neighborhood.

Protective Factors and the Development of Resilience in the Context of Neighborhood Disadvantage

“…For data from assessments collected between 1990 and 1995, the 1990 census data were used; for data from assessments collected between 1996 and 2003, the 2000 census data were used. Based on methods devised by Wikström and Loeber (2000) and adapted by Winslow (2001), a composite variable of neighborhood disadvantage was generated using the following census block group level variables: (1) median family income, (2) percent families below poverty level, (3) percent households on public assistance, (4) percent unemployed, (5) percent single-mother households, (6) percent African American, (7) percent Bachelor degree and higher. Wikström and Loeber (2000) selected these variables based on previous research investigating neighborhood census structural characteristics associated with antisocial behavior.…”

A Longitudinal Examination of the Relationship between Physical Aggression and Violent Victimization among Urban Minority Chicago Youth and Young Adults

“…It is quite possible that other theoretical explanations with unique risk factors that were not incorporated into our multivariate models may be able to account for the shared overlap in the error terms for physical aggression and violent victimization. Future research should make an effort to include other theoretical explanations and risk factors such as parental supervision and attachment [34], neighborhood disadvantage [35], and self-control [36].…”

Teorías y evidencias del “dilema urbano” en el Perú: ¿Por qué crecimos económicamente con violencia? (2000-2012)

“…Esto influye en la provisión desigual de servicios sociales a la población de cada círculo y en las posibilidades de caer en violencia para cada población. Para Wikström y Loeber (2000), dichas posibilidades se relacionan con el ambiente del barrio. Identificaron que los niños con mayores probabilidades de convertirse en delincuentes adolescentes son los que viven bajo condiciones limitantes pero incluso también catalizadoras de violencia.…”