Societal vulnerability and adolescent offending: The role of violent values, self-control and troublesome youth group involvement
| Author | Nicole Vettenburg,Claire Gavray,Lieven J.R. Pauwels,Ruben Brondeel |
| DOI | 10.1177/1477370812470777 |
| Published date | 01 July 2013 |
| Date | 01 July 2013 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
2013
Article
European Journal of Criminology
10(4) 444 –461
Societal vulnerability and
© The Author(s) 2013
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DOI: 10.1177/1477370812470777
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of violent values, self-control
and troublesome youth group
involvement
Nicole Vettenburg and Ruben Brondeel
Ghent University, Belgium
Claire Gavray
University of Liege, Belgium
Lieven J.R. Pauwels
Ghent University, Belgium
Abstract
The present study aims at testing the relationship between societal vulnerability and self-reported
offending using the Belgian data of the second International Self-Report Delinquency Study (ISRD-
2). Societal vulnerability is a much-discussed covariate of adolescent offending. We test the
hypotheses that violent values, self-control and troublesome youth group involvement are key
mechanisms that mediate the relationship between societal vulnerability and offending. We found
an indirect path of societal vulnerability for offending through violent values, self-control and
troublesome youth group involvement, but there remains also a direct impact. The implications
of these findings for policy and future studies of offending are addressed.
Keywords
ISRD2, self-control, societal vulnerability, troublesome youth group involvement, violent values
Introduction and research questions
At the beginning of the 1980s, Vettenburg, Walgrave and Van Kerckvoorde (1984) pro-
posed an integrative theory of serious offending: the societal vulnerability theory (SVT).
Corresponding author:
Nicole Vettenburg, Department of Social Welfare Studies, Ghent University, Ghent, B-9000, Belgium.
Email: nicole.vettenburg@ugent.be
Vettenburg et al.
445
The key assumption of the SVT is that an accumulation of negative experiences or con-
tacts with official societal institutions (ranging from schools to probation officers and
juvenile courts) may lead to an unfavourable societal perspective, just as was outlined
later by Sampson and Laub (1997) in their theory of cumulative disadvantage. The accu-
mulation of negative experiences may have a psychological impact because they could
direct individuals towards specific social-psychological coping strategies that help them
to handle these incurred frustrations (Agnew, 1992). Offenders may persist because the
so-called labelling process helps the offender to adapt the deviant master status and thus
offending becomes reinforced.1
Although the relationship between societal vulnerability and offending has received
some empirical support in the past few decades (Vettenburg, 1988; Vettenburg and
Huybregts, 2003), there has been little research into the mechanisms that translate soci-
etal vulnerability into offending.
Various mechanisms have been identified that explain why societal vulnerable groups
exhibit higher levels of serious offending. In the present study we examine the role of
violent values, self-control and troublesome youth group involvement. Violent values is
one frequently reported intervening mechanism that relates structural background char-
acteristics to offending (Hawkins et al., 1998). Self-control has also consistently been
mentioned as a key mechanism that directly affects offending (Evans et al., 1997;
Gottfredson and Hirschi, 1990). Troublesome youth group involvement has been men-
tioned within subcultural theories of offending. Early scholars such as Miller (1958)
referred to the important role of socioeconomic status (SES) in shaping crime-prone
values among gang members. More recently, and much under the influence of the work
of the Eurogang working group (for example, Esbensen and Weerman, 2005), scholars
point to the independent effect of troublesome youth group involvement on offending
(Pauwels et al., 2011). The question examined here is whether these mechanisms, that is,
violent values, self-control and troublesome youth group involvement, mediate the rela-
tionship between societal vulnerability and frequencies of self-reported offending. The
aim of the present enquiry is to identify statistical paths through which societal vulnera-
bility is related to adolescent offending. The analyses are conducted on a property crime
scale and a violent crime scale, which allows us to get some preliminary insight into the
robustness of the findings.
Societal vulnerability theory
Both societal groups and individuals in society are defined as ‘societally vulnerable’
when they derive little benefit from their contacts with societal institutions and addition-
ally are mainly and recurrently confronted with the negative effects of these institutions
(Vettenburg, 1988). The term ‘vulnerability’ refers to a state involving a heightened risk
of contacts that have a negative effect. Vulnerability is by definition an interactional
concept. One is always vulnerable to something, in our case societal institutions. The
potentiality of societal vulnerability lies in the structural position of the population
group, namely its belonging to a lower societal stratum. A key characteristic of the lower
strata is that they share an increased risk of lacking the authority to have their own cul-
ture integrated into and accepted by the socially recognized culture. This implies that the
446
European Journal of Criminology 10(4)
interests of the members of low-SES groups are less defended, that their specific needs
and requirements are not adequately met and that they experience serious difficulties in
protecting themselves against the negative labelling that surrounds them. This cultural
aspect explains why societally vulnerable people or groups cannot call on social institu-
tions to reduce inequality. As a result, they will start developing their own coping strate-
gies when trying to solve problems related to their state of vulnerability. These strategies
may include delinquent behaviour. Within the theoretical framework of SVT, societal
vulnerability is explicitly recognized as a cumulative process. A key characteristic of
vulnerable groups is that they are confronted with a series of social institutions through-
out the entire life course.
In the process of becoming societally vulnerable, social bonds play a crucial role.
Young people with few or no bonds to society offend at a higher rate (Hirschi, 1969) and
are at risk of developing a street-oriented lifestyle. The main argument is that adolescents
who are freed from their ties to society no longer have any stakes in conformity and have
nothing to lose. The development of social ties interacts with social institutions and is
essentially related to the cultural gap between adolescents and institutions. Schools play
a crucial role in the process of socialization (Gottfredson, 2001). Schools differ with
regard to their pupil and staff composition (for example, pupils with poor conduct stand-
ards, well-trained staff members) and social climate (informal control). Therefore the
school also has an important function with regard to the development of vulnerability
among pupils. Schools can make a positive offer: they can teach pupils to read and to
write, they can help them to acquire skills and attitudes. Pupils can fully benefit from this
offer if they meet certain conditions, for example, if they can express themselves fluently
and if they are willing to accept authority. As a consequence, pupils who meet these
standards generally tend to develop a series of ties at school that will subsequently attach
them to society at large.
The socialization process is, however, much less favourable for pupils who fail to
meet these standards. Children from lower social strata are often less well prepared for
school, since what they learn at home bears little relation to what they are taught at
school (Nicaise, 1997). As a result they are at risk of not being accepted by their teachers
(Vettenburg, 1988). Such pupils fail to develop personal ties between teachers and them-
selves. As a consequence, they are at risk of quickly being negatively labelled (that is,
stigmatized as stupid and unruly). In addition, teachers expect them to perform inade-
quately and hence give few positive stimuli (which can result in a self-fulfilling proph-
ecy; see Rosenthal and Jacobson, 1968). These pupils are consequently less committed
to their school tasks and as a result they will effectively end up knowing less, performing
badly and losing social prestige. They will gradually start feeling incompetent them-
selves. Adjustment to school discipline becomes less meaningful (what do they have left
to lose?) and more difficult; as a consequence, they will be punished more frequently.
They internalize less the norms and values of the school. They tend to show a positive
attitude towards violence and a low level of self-control.
In addition, it has been argued that pupils who suffer bad experiences and therefore
develop negative expectations of the future start seeking each other’s company
(Preveaux et al., 2004; Staff and Kreager, 2008). They look for support among their
peers and as a result they will start developing their own system of anti-values. In this
Vettenburg et al.
447
group, prestige is gained not through adjustment to conformist values but through chal-
lenging these values.
These characteristics – the lack of social ties, the feeling of stigmatization, the devel-
opment of a negative self-image – initiate a...
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