Self-reported youth delinquency in Europe and beyond: First results of the Second International Self-Report Delinquency Study in the context of police and victimization data

Abstract

This article reports on the first results of the Second International Self-Report Delinquency Study (ISRD-2), a large international collaborative study of delinquency and victimization of 12—15-year-old students. The analysis is based on a subsample of the data set: 43,968 respondents from 63 cities and 31 countries. The prevalence rates of the major categories of delinquency, both for individual countries as well as for 6 country clusters, are presented as well as data for victimization experiences (theft and robbery/extortion). Using different measures, significant differences in level and type of offending are found between country clusters, with the Western European and Anglo-Saxon countries generally (but not always) scoring highest, followed by Northern Europe, Latin American and Mediterranean countries, with post-socialist countries at the bottom. The results for victimization experiences do not follow this pattern. The second part of the article compares ISRD-2 offending and victimization rates with two other main sources of internationally available crime-related statistics: International Crime Victim Survey (ICVS) data and European Sourcebook (i.e. police-based) data. The analyses show a moderate level of support for a convergence of different measures. The article concludes with implications and suggestions for further research.

Parental violence and adolescent mental health

“…The Nordic countries have shown to have many similarities in youth victimization studies [9] but especially related to parental maltreatment, countries also have remarkable differences. Although across the Nordic countries, violence and maltreatment have been rather strictly defined and legislated against, there is a major difference between the two countries included in this study regarding the time when corporal punishment was made a penal act.…”

¿Explican las características macro-contextuales los índices individuales de desviación adolescente? Un estudio en nueve países

“…We are unaware of any similar previous work that has linked the two in this manner as most comparative scholarship based on self-reported data has been largely descriptive (e.g., Enzmann et al, 2010) or it has exclusively focused on predictors and dependent measures based on country-level, official data (Pridemore, 2011).…”

“…Switzerland (e.g., Clinard, 1978) and Japan (Komiya, 1999;cf., Kobayashi, Vazsonyi, Chen, & Sharp, 2010), for example, are regarded as having comparatively few problems with young people violating social norms, local mores, and laws. However, most recent scholarship and theorizing about the etiology of crime and deviance (e.g., self-control theory, Gottfredson & Hirschi, 1990), including cross-national comparative work focused mostly on individual-level or selfreported perpetration or victimization data (Enzmann et al, 2010;Vazsonyi & Belliston, 2007;Vazsonyi, Pickering, Hessing, & Junger, 2001), suggest that the problem of crime and deviance exists within most -if not all -human societies. This is certainly true of the data collected as part of the International Self-report Delinquency Study (ISRD), which most recently included 31 countries (Enzmann et al, 2010), mostly European ones, and which as an initial step has documented fairly large variability in rates of delinquency across cultures, but also some degree of overlap between self-reported delinquency and measures of victimization from other data sources.…”

La necesidad de aceptación por los iguales como motivo subyacente del comportamiento agresivo y el acoso a los demás entre los jóvenes inmigrantes que viven en Austria y Noruega

“…In Norway, these rates were much smaller ranging between 3% for the 13 and 15 year old Norwegian girls and 10.7% for the 13 year old Norwegian boys and 11.3% for the 15 year old Norwegian boys. Another important source of comparative data is the Second International Self Reported Delinquency Study, ISRD-2 (Enzmann et al, 2010). This study reported the 12 month prevalence rates of self reported delinquency measured by 12 differently serious offences in 31 countries.…”