Investigating the Effects of Neighborhood Context on Youth Decisions to Engage in Violence

• In Event: Situational Context, Motivation and Offender Decision Making

Abstract

The criminal justice system presumes that people, including youth, make “rational” decisions to engage in crime based on some weighing of the costs and benefits. This perspective fails to consider what risk and decision-making scholars know about decision making and ignores the influence of varying life contexts on that process. Theoretically, living in neighborhoods high in concentrated disadvantage and violence may shape multiple components of decisions regarding crime, including violence. The objective of our current study is to examine how youth living in such conditions make decisions to engage in or otherwise respond to violent encounters. Specifically, we examine youth’s preferred resolution and the types of processing that underly their ultimate response. Our thematic analysis is based on 20 in-depth interviews with boys and girls between the ages of 13 and 19 who have participated in or witnessed neighborhood violence in a small to mid-size midwestern city. We use mental models to depict their contextual influences, preferences, and types of processing. Preliminary results indicate that youth prefer not to engage, and that anticipated and experienced emotions are less relevant than the informal rules governing violence. Implications for criminological theory and criminal justice policy will be discussed.

Authors

• Carole Gibbs, Michigan State University

• Louie Rivers, III, North Carolina State University

• Jennifer Cobbina-Dungy, Michigan State University

• Alaina De Biasi, Wayne State University