Delinquent Friends, Delinquency, and the Importance of Friend’s Opinions: A Cross-National Analysis Using the ISRD-3

• In Event: Globalizing Criminology: Culture, Context, and Cross-National Inquiry

Abstract

The delinquent friends/one’s own delinquency relationship is often explained through a combination of unstructured socializing (Osgood & Anderson, 2004) and differential association (Sutherland, 1947) theories/frameworks. For the latter, Sutherland (1947) argued that definitions related to delinquency may exert greater influence if they are high in frequency, priority, intensity, and duration. In other words, how connected and close one feels to one’s friends might affect the delinquent friends/delinquency relationship. Delinquency, the presence of delinquent friends, and closeness with one’s (delinquent) friends may vary between countries. The purpose of this study was to examine how closeness with one’s delinquent friends might affect the delinquent friends/delinquency relationship in a cross-national context using the International Self-Reported Delinquency study (ISRD-3). As expected, findings indicate that those with delinquent friends are significantly more likely to engage in delinquency themselves than those without delinquent friends. However, among individuals with delinquent friends, those who care strongly about what their friends think of them are somewhat less likely to engage in delinquency than those with delinquent friends who don’t care about what their friends think of them. The implications of these findings related to criminological theory will be discussed.

Author

• Jonathan Uhl, Carlow University