The Influence of Delinquent Peers on Delinquency:

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• The Influence of Delinquent Peers on Delinquency
  
• Does Gender Matter?
• Social Learning Theory on Gender Differences in
  Delinquency

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The Influence of Delinquent Peers on
Delinquency Does Gender Matter?

• The association with delinquent peers is an
  important predictor of delinquent behavior
• At its core, social learning theory assumes that
  the general process of delinquency is invariant
  across gender
• How to explain gender differences in delinquency?
  

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Girls in trouble

• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vKzxazCM8N98feature
  relmfu

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The Influence of Delinquent Peers on
Delinquency Does Gender Matter?

• May be there is something unique about male peer
  groups in facilitating delinquency?

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The Influence of Delinquent Peers on
Delinquency Does Gender Matter?

• Boys and girls tend to associate within their own
  gender groups
• Boys have more delinquent friends than girls

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Does Gender Matter?

• Girls who spent time in groups with boys are more
  likely to engage in delinquent acts than girls
  who only associated with other girls
• There is evidence that girls learn delinquency
  from boys
• Similarly, boys learn delinquency from other boys

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Research on Aggression

• Females use aggression as often as adolescent
  males
• Unlike boys, girls typically shun physical
  aggression, but they use gossip, ridicule,
  exclusion and other forms of relational
  aggression, particularly toward other females

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Relational aggression?

• Mean Girls
• Thirteen

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Empirical fact

• Female-dominated networks discourage crime more
  than male-dominated networks

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Explanations (Cauce et al., 1994 Cotterell, 1996)

• Females have more intimate friends
• Most of these friends are other girls
• Females consistently report that
• they spend more time with friends
• expect and receive more kindness, commitment, and
  empathy from them
• have more open, intimate, and disclosing
  relationships

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Explanations

• Females favor activities that involve intimate
  discussions
• A large proportion of males describe a close male
  friend as someone who did not express his true
  feelings to them and from whom they hid their
  feelings
• Other research suggests that males may regret the
  lack of intimacy in their same-sex friendships
  but accept it as the norm (Way, 1996).

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Gendered Opportunities

• Female friends may further deter crime by
  reducing offending opportunities
• Female friends tend to meet in places supervised
  by parents and other adults, and regardless of
  where they meet, spend much of their time talking
  intimately

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Gendered Opportunities

• Male friends spend more time in their routine
  activities in public settings away from family
  and other supervision
• And they are more often engaged in activities
  that are impersonal, physical and involve
  interactions with strangers

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Girls who have male friends

• Involvement in antisocial behavior increased for
  girls who are affiliated with male friends, and
  who know more delinquent peers (Caspi et al.,
  1993).

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Conclusions

• In sum, female friendships clearly differ from
  male friendships
• Female and male friendships differ in how they
  originate and unfold
• Female friendships involve more social control
  and present fewer opportunities and motivations
  for crime.

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Can friendship network predict delinquency

• Delinquent network
• Non-delinquent network
• Mixed network

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Mixed network

• When friendship networks contain access to both
  delinquent and non-delinquent friends, the
  network is less effective in providing clear
  behavioral guidelines and consistent values
  regarding behavior expectations

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Employing a Network Perspective

• The friendship network can be mapped out
• We ask respondents to describe their own
  behavior and to identify their friends
• We locate and interview the friends about their
  own behavior and their friends, and so on.

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Employing a Network Perspective

• The results indicate that the proportion of
  delinquent friends is the most important aspect
  of peer influence
• This finding supports Sutherlands (1947) premise
  that the ratio of definitions favorable to those
  unfavorable to law violations is key to
  understanding why adolescents engage in
  delinquency