NCJ Number
224910
Journal
Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency Volume: 45 Issue: 4 Dated: November 2008 Pages: 429-455
Date Published
November 2008
Length
27 pages
Annotation
Research has identified several characteristics of schools and communities related to delinquency that might be manipulated in efforts to reduce these problems, and study focused on two of these predictors: communal school organization and student bonding.
Abstract
Findings of the study confirm that the social organization of a particular school influences an individual student’s involvement in delinquency. As predicted, students who attend more communally organized schools are less likely to engage in delinquency than students who attend less communally organized schools. Also, as predicted, students who attend more communally organized schools are more bonded to school than those who attend less communally organized schools. As predicted, students who are more bonded to school are less likely to engage in delinquency than students who are less bonded to school. Lastly, as predicted by hypothesis four, the relationship between student bonding and delinquency is tempered by communal school organization. These findings regarding the positive effects of communal school organization also confirm the great potential for school-based delinquency prevention. Research has identified school-related factors that are predictive of a new student’s involvement in delinquency: specifically, school-level communal school organization and individual-level student bonding. This study examined the multilevel relationships among these concepts in a nationally representative sample of 13,597 students in 253 schools. Tables, notes, and references