Peer Risk Factors

Peer influences on child delinquency usually appear developmentally later than do individual and family influences. Many children entering school, for example, already show aggressive and disruptive behaviors. Two major mechanisms associated with peer factors or influences are association with deviant peers and peer rejection.

Association With Deviant Peers

Association with deviant peers is related to increased co-offending and, in a minority of cases, the joining of gangs. Since a 1931 report showing that 80 percent of Chicago juvenile delinquents were arrested with co-offenders, empirical evidence has supported the theory that deviant peer associations contribute to juvenile offending (Shaw and McKay, 1931). The unresolved question is whether deviant peers model and reinforce antisocial behaviors or whether the association with deviant peers is simply another manifestation of a child’s predisposition to delinquency. In other words, do “birds of a feather flock together” or does “bad company corrupt”?

The Study Group found that a strong case could be made that deviant peers influence nondelinquent juveniles to become delinquent. For example, according to data from the National Youth Survey on a representative sample of U.S. juveniles ages 11 to 17, the most frequent pattern was a child moving from association with nondelinquent peers to association with slightly deviant peers, and then on to commission of minor offenses. More frequent association with deviant peers and more serious offending followed, leading to the highest level of association with deviant peers (Elliott and Menard, 1996; Keenan et al., 1995).

Deviant peers influence juveniles who already have some history of delinquent behavior to increase the severity or frequency of their offending. A few studies of children younger than 14 support this hypothesis. For example, in a study of Iowa juveniles, involvement in the juvenile justice system was highest for those who engaged in disruptive behavior and associated with deviant peers at a young age (Simons et al., 1994). The Study Group concluded that deviant peers contribute to serious offending by child delinquents during the period of their transition to adolescence.

Although an extreme form of association with deviant peers, gangs provide a ready source of co-offenders. Not surprisingly, gang membership reflects the highest degree of deviant peer influence on offending. The Rochester Youth Development Study, the Denver Youth Survey, and the Seattle Social Development Project have all shown that gangs appear to exert a considerable influence on the delinquent behavior of individual members. Juveniles are joining gangs at younger ages, and the role of gangs in crimes committed by youthful offenders appears to be an increasing problem (Howell, 1998). In the case of violence, even after accounting for other risk factors (such as association with delinquent peers who are not gang members, family poverty, lack of parental supervision, and negative life events), gang membership still has the strongest relationship with self-reported violence (Battin et al., 1998).

Peer Rejection

The evidence that peer rejection in childhood is a risk factor for antisocial behaviors is relatively new compared with evidence about association with deviant peers. Recent findings have shown that young aggressive children who are rejected by peers are at significantly greater risk for later chronic antisocial behaviors than children who are not rejected, whether or not they were aggressive early on. For example, one study found that peer rejection in third grade predicted increasingly greater antisocial behaviors from sixth grade onward, even when boys’ earlier aggressiveness was accounted for in the predictions (Coie et al., 1995). The frequency of violent offending in adolescence was greater for these rejected, aggressive juveniles, and they were more likely to persist in violent offending in early adulthood. In the early school years, peer rejection accentuates the relation between early attention and hyperactivity problems and conduct problems in fourth grade.

One explanation for the role of peer rejection in increasing antisocial behaviors is that it leads to greater suspiciousness of other people’s motives as hostile and hence to greater aggression in response. A second explanation is that rejection causes children to have fewer positive social options and, consequently, to become part of lower status and deviant peer groups. Rejected, aggressive children are more likely than others to be members of deviant peer groups and tend to be peripheral members of these groups (Bagwell et al., 2000). Their tenuous sense of belonging may dispose them to engage in more antisocial activity in an effort to gain standing in these groups.

Peer rejection and deviant peers are mediating factors rather than primary causes of child delinquency. As shown in the diagram, early community, family, and individual risk factors can lead to early aggressive and disruptive behaviors. The already “at-risk” child then enters school, where peer risk factors can culminate in preadolescent or very early adolescent serious offending. The Study Group concluded that three factors combine to account for a juvenile’s accelerated movement toward more serious offending in early adolescence:

• The high-risk juvenile's own antisocial tendencies.

• The negative consequences of peer rejection resulting from these tendencies.

• The resulting deviant peer associations.

Risk and Protective Factors of Child Delinquency	Child Delinquency Bulletin • April 2003