Explaining the Adoption of Street Code Attitudes among Latinos and its Effects on Criminal Offending

• In Event: Race, Ethnicity, and Criminal Offending

Abstract

The code of the street is a normative system that emphasizes the use of violence to achieve respect and status among individuals who reside in economically-deprived neighborhoods (Anderson, 1999). Previous research has examined the role of neighborhood and individual level variables in the adoption of code related attitudes, and the effects of code-related attitudes on offending and victimization outcomes. However, most studies tend to examine differences between Whites and African-Americans in the adoption of code-related attitudes, while ignoring the role of other groups such as Latinos. This study uses two waves from Pathways to Desistance; a large longitudinal study of serious adolescent offenders (Mulvey, 2013), to examine whether code-related attitudes mediate the effects of race/ethnicity (i.e., Latino) and other relevant independent variables on offending, and whether the adoption of code-related attitudes among Latinos explains greater likelihood of offending compared to other groups, while accounting for contextual and compositional variables.

Authors

• Carlos Rojas-Gaona, University of Cincinnati

• Christopher Sullivan, University of Cincinnati

• Ben Feldmeyer, University of Cincinnati

• Pamela Wilcox, University of Cincinnati