Adolescent delinquency and diversity in behavior settings
| Date | 01 December 2013 |
| Author | Gerben JN Bruinsma,Frank M Weerman,Lieven JR Pauwels,Wim Bernasco |
| Published date | 01 December 2013 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0004865813490949 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Australian & New Zealand
Journal of Criminology
46(3) 357–378
!The Author(s) 2013
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DOI: 10.1177/0004865813490949
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Article
Adolescent delinquency and
diversity in behavior settings
Wim Bernasco
Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement
(NSCR) and Department of Spatial Economics, VU University
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Gerben JN Bruinsma
Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement
(NSCR), The Netherlands
Lieven JR Pauwels
Ghent University, Department of Criminal Law and Criminology,
Belgium
Frank M Weerman
Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement
(NSCR), The Netherlands
Abstract
Purpose: This study aimed to test whether adolescents’ delinquency is related to the geo-
graphic, functional and social diversity of the behavior settings that they are exposed to.
Methods: Data were collected in a two-wave panel study amongst 616 adolescents. In the
first wave, diversity was measured using a space-time budget interview recording their activ-
ities from hour to hour during four days. Self-control, morality, peer deviance, unsupervised
peer activity, and parental supervision were measured using a self-report questionnaire.
Delinquency was measured using self-report questions in the second wave. Results: The
findings demonstrated that setting diversity is positively related to delinquency. For geo-
graphic and functional setting diversity, a substantial part of the positive association is inde-
pendent of gender, age and the other explanatory variables. Conclusions: Adolescents’
delinquency is not only affected by the overall contents of the settings that they encounter,
but also by how much the content of settings varies over the course of the day.
Keywords
activity pattern, adolescent delinquency, behavior setting, diversity, routine activity,
space-time budget
Corresponding author:
Wim Bernasco, NSCR, P.O. Box 71304, 1008 BH Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Email: wbernasco@nscr.nl
Introduction
Environmental theories of crime, in particular crime pattern theory (Brantingham and
Brantingham, 2008) and routine activity theory (Felson, 1994) emphasize that knowing
the situations that people are exposed to – where they go, when and with whom – is
crucial to understanding whether they become involved in crime. Although both theories
have been around for over three decades and have strongly influenced criminological
scholarship, their core concepts have seldom been measured explicitly. As a result,
detailed empirical data on where people go, when, and with whom, are seldom collected
in criminological research (notable recent exceptions are Bichler et al., 2011; Wikstro
¨m
et al., 2010, 2012).
This article reports on a two-wave panel study in which a space-time budget interview
was used to record, hour by hour, the activities and whereabouts of 616 adolescents over
the complete course of four days. The measurements included the geographic locations,
the functions of the places, and the people present in the settings where they spent their
time. The recorded data provide detailed information on the daily (routine) activities
that are part of the adolescents’ lifestyles, which is more precise than the self-report
questionnaire items that have been used in prior criminological research (e.g. Osgood
et al., 1996) asking adolescents how frequently they generally perform certain activities
(e.g. hanging around with friends, going on dates, performing active sports or watching
TV). Just within the limits of what was feasible, both time and space were measured at
fine scales: time by hour, and space by position in a 200 by 200 meter grid that was
overlaid over the study area. A major advantage of the detailed measurement of routine
activities across time and space is that it allows us to gain insight into how diverse the
situations are that the adolescents are exposed to, whereas the more common question-
naire formats only measure how often they are exposed to specific situations.
We use these data to establish whether adolescents’ involvement in delinquency is
related to the diversity of the settings that they are exposed to, and whether this
relation is independent of the relation of delinquency with the nature of those settings
(in particular time spent with peers in unstructured activities in the absence of adult
supervision) and with other well-established individual correlates of delinquency. These
hypotheses are straightforward and simple, yet have never before been explicitly for-
mulated as part of either crime pattern theory or routine activity theory. The main
argument for expecting these associations is that for an individual who finds him or
herself in a given setting, the only way to become exposed to new criminal opportu-
nities is to be confronted with a setting change, a change that can be geographic (by
traveling to another location), functional (by moving into a location with a different
function) or social (by someone else leaving or entering the individual’s setting), or a
combination of these three types of setting changes. If this is true, being exposed to a
more diverse array of settings implies being confronted with more criminal
opportunities.
Our diversity hypothesis focuses on the geographic, functional and social structure of
activities in addition to the nature of the content of these activities. We expect that the
more geographically, functionally and socially diverse the settings are that adolescents
are exposed to, the greater their involvement in delinquency, that is, the likelihood of
becoming involved in delinquency, and if involved in delinquency, the number of
358 Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology 46(3)
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