Positive and negative social influences and crime acceleration during the transition from childhood to adolescence: The interplay of risk and protective factors.

BACKGROUND: Social influences are believed to play a vital role in delinquency development within the context of the child-to-adolescent transition.

AIMS: It was hypothesised that (a) positive social influences would be at least as important as negative social influences in shaping later offending behaviour during the child-to-adolescent transition; (b) parental social influences would be more prominent during childhood, and sibling and peer social influences would be more prominent during adolescence; and (c) parents would have a more positive influence than siblings or peers.

METHODS: Participants were 857 adult respondents (416 men, 441 women) from the 1942 and 1949 Racine birth cohorts. Most were White (87%), with 8% African Americans, and 5% Hispanics. Participants provided retrospective accounts of positive and negative social influences during childhood (ages 6-13) and offending both then and during adolescence (ages 14-18). These retrospective accounts, which were organised into positive and negative influence scales by the original researchers, were then subjected to multiple regression analyses.

RESULTS: A range of positive and negative social influences, not confined to parenting, were associated with adolescent offending, after allowing for the effects of sex, race, education, family structure, and parental and peer criminality. Change was a predominant theme in these data; whereas parental and sibling influences peaked during childhood and were overwhelmingly positive, peer influences peaked during adolescence and were less preponderantly positive.

CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS: These results support a risk model in which positive and negative social influences accumulate to determine a person's propensity for future offending. This propensity can be reduced by encouraging positive influences and discouraging negative ones during the child-to-adolescent transition.