JUVENILE DELINQUENCY AND JUVENILE CRIME

The twentieth century ended amid an explosion of violence in all corners of the globe. However, juvenile violence has probably been center stage more in the United States than in any other industrialized nation. As the 1998–1999 school year ended, we had just experienced a massive display of violence by two young men at a high school in Littleton, Colorado. Both seniors, these two killed twelve of their fellow students and a teacher before turning their assault weapons on themselves. The decade of the 1990s ended in the way it started, with a public grown increasingly apprehensive of its youth. This increase was not limited to the United States; it has been detected in many other countries—England, Spain, France, Italy, and Germany, among others.

It is important to note here also that this anxiety and disquiet induced by youth is not limited to the modern area. Citing the code of Hammurabi, which dates back to 2270 b.c., Regoli and Hewitt (1991) note that "legal prohibitions of specific behavior by juveniles is centuries old" (p.6). Still, they note that in the Middle Ages "little distinction was made between juveniles and adults who were older than 12" (p. 6). In a comment made in 1959, but which is still relevant to those who are intrigued, frightened, or perplexed by the "heedlessness" of today's youth, Teeters and Matza (1959) stated: "It has always been popular for each generation to believe its children were the worst" (p. 200). We are also reminded by them that "Sir Walter Scott in 1812 deplored the insecurity of Edinburgh where groups of boys between the ages of 12 and 20 years scoured streets and knocked down and robbed all who came in their way" (p. 200). Apropos of delinquency, such remarks underscore the relativity of opinions and the brevity of trends. They also remind us that while juvenile delinquency is a relatively new legal category that subjects children to court authority, it is also a timeless and ubiquitous part of life. Regoli and Hewitt (1991) suggest that postcolonial American delinquency was similar to that found in Spain in the seventeenth century and in Britain in the eighteenth century. By the mid-1800s, teenage gangs were frequently found in the larger cities in the United States. "The habits of hanging out on street corners, verbally abusing pedestrians, and even pelting citizens with rocks and snowballs were among the least threatening of their behaviors. More serious were the violent gangs of juvenile robbers" (p. 7). They also note that "the latter decades of the nineteenth century saw a number of changes in the public's understanding of the causes of delinquency and [of] appropriate approaches to its control and treatment . . . the common law distinction between child and adult had changed for purposes of criminal prosecution" (p. 7). The change contrasted greatly with practices in the early part of the century: In America, children as young as three years of age could be brought before the court, while in England a girl of seven was hanged. In Massachusetts, in 1871, 1,354 boys and 109 girls were handled by the courts. Reform schools proliferated during the nineteenth century and were criticized for failing to prevent the apparent increase in delinquency. Reformers—called "child savers"—believed that juveniles required noninstitutional treatment that would reflect the natural family (Platt 1969). This legal and humanitarian concern for the well-being of children led to the establishment of the first juvenile court in Cook County, Illinois, in 1899. By 1925, all but two states had followed the Illinois example. Thus, it seems fair to say that the idea of "juvenile delinquency" is a relatively modern construction, a notion shared by writers such as Gibbons and Krohn (1991), Empey (1982), and Short (1990). The data on delinquency, however, are not limited to the legal status of "juvenile delinquent," because sociologists are just as interested in unofficial as in official acts of delinquency. More specifically, it is well known that much of the behavior defined by law as delinquent is not detected, not reported, or not acted on by legal agents.

Moreover, different jurisdictions have different legal definitions of delinquency. In the United States, for example, while the statistics defining delinquency are similar in the fifty states and District of Columbia with respect to age and type of offense requiring juvenile court control, there are more differences than similarities. First, laws vary in terms of the age limits of juvenile court jurisdiction: thiry-one states and the District of Columbia set seventeen years of age as the upper age limit, twelve states set sixteen years, six set fifteen years, and one sets eighteen years. Moreover, in many states the delinquency laws empower the juvenile court to remand youths under the maximum juvenile court age to criminal courts. In such cases, the offenses are often those for which adults may be arrested: index crimes (see below). In addition, some states have passed legislation that requires certain cases, such as homicides, or youths charged with other serious offenses, to be dealt with by the criminal court. In these cases, the juvenile acquires the legal status of criminal. Finally, it should be noted that all U.S. state jurisdictions contain an omnibus clause or provision, referred to as status offenses, that awards the court jurisdiction over youths who have behaved in ways not forbidden by criminal law. While these provisions differ from state to state, it is of interest to note a few examples of these conditions. They include engaging in indecent behavior, knowingly associating with vicious or immoral persons, growing up in idleness or crime, being incorrigible, and wandering the streets at night. Critics note that these behavior categories are so vaguely defined that nearly all youngsters could be subjected to them.

Such different procedures and practices caution us against making easy generalizations both within and between countries when examining official data. Indeed, other shortcomings likewise warn against drawing firm conclusions when unofficial data are examined. Although methodological shortcomings may exist in the study of delinquency, there may be advantages in utilizing all the data of delinquency (official and unofficial) in pursuit of its understanding. Thus, the study of official delinquency data places much of the focus on the actions of official agents of control (the police, the courts), while the study of unofficial—including hidden—delinquency often allows students to examine the processes leading to the behavior. Moreover, as Vold and Bernard (1986) and others have noted, unofficial data, especially self-reports, frequently focus on trivial offenses, while the more serious offenses often do not appear in self-reports but are limited to reports of official agencies.

In sum, our concern here will be to discuss those topics of delinquency that are of the greatest concern: the frequency, severity, and duration of delinquency. Attention will also be devoted to trends. In the following section, the focus is on the extent of delinquent behavior.

EXTENT OF AND TRENDS IN DELINQUENCY

In addressing the matter of the extent of delinquency, it is important to note the admonitions of Empey and Erickson (1966), Hirschi (1969), Matza (1964), and others that delinquency is not only transient but also widespread. Many juveniles engage in delinquency only occasionally, but some engage in it more frequently. Gibbons and Krohn (1991) call delinquency "a sometime thing," while Matza (1964) describes the process of drifting into and out of delinquency. Moreover, it should be kept in mind that some acts of delinquency are serious acts of criminality and others are petty, trivial acts. As we consider both official and unofficial data on juvenile delinquency and juvenile crime, we will encounter these various clarifying factors.

Official Delinquency. The most serious crimes committed by youths and adults in the United States are referred to as index crimes; data on them are compiled by the FBI, based on reports of law enforcement agencies throughout the country. These index crimes, reported in Uniform Crime Reports, are divided into two major types: violent (homicide, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault) and property (burglary, larceny-theft, motor-vehicle theft, and arson). Nonindex offenses are those considered to be relatively petty, such as liquor law violations, disorderly conduct, sex offenses (except forcible rape, prostitution, and commercialized vice), and drug-abuse violations.

Readers are warned that various official reports of offenses should be treated with caution since there are inconsistencies in reporting processes. While great efforts are being made by federal agencies to improve reporting mechanisms, it is well to remember that the number of reporting agencies fluctuates regularly, and the number of cases involving persons with unknown characteristics (such as age, sex, and race) also fluctuates (sometimes by as much as 30 percent). In 1987, the U.S. Department of Justice reported that there were 10,747 contributing agencies covering approximately 84 percent of the U.S. population. This number appears to be higher than the number reporting in 1996. Moreover, the news media have occasionally reported that some jurisdictions have been accused of irregular reporting habits in apparent efforts to demonstrate improved efficiency.

Index crimes are reported annually by the FBI; sometimes estimates for the United States as a whole are derived from a sample of reporting agencies. In 1996 the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) indicated that of all arrests in the United States in 1996, approximately 18.9 percent were of youths under eighteen years of age; 18.7 percent of the arrests for violent crimes in 1996 (murder, manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault) were of persons under eighteen years of age. For property crimes, youth under 18 years of age comprised 35 percent of offenders. For index crimes as a whole, the FBI Uniform Crime Report indicates that 30.9 percent were contributed by persons under 18 years of age in 1996. (U.S. Department of Justice 1996).

Perhaps it is surprising to learn that over the last quarter of the twentieth century, contrary to fears, delinquency has declined. According to the Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics for 1997, in 1971 arrests of youths under age 18 comprised 45 percent of all arrests for index crimes reported to the UCR program, 23 percent of violent crime arrests, and 51 percent of property crime arrests. In 1996 persons under age 18 comprised 31 percent of index offense arrests, 18.8 percent of violent crime arrests, and just 35 percent of property crime arrests. Thus juvenile crime, as measured by arrest data, has decreased driving this quarter-century.

During this same period, a number of criminologists have argued that fluctuations in the delinquency crime rates are due to changes in the age structure of the population. The UCR presented data showing a substantial decrease in delinquency arrests between 1979 and 1988, following an increase in such arrests between 1965 and 1977. Kratcoski and Kratcoski (1990) suggest that this dramatic change could be due to "movement of the 'baby boom' segment of the population through the high offense years during the mid-70s followed by a reduction in the under 18 population since 1978" (p. 15). Gibbons and Krohn (1991) also suggest that such trends may be due to shifts within the delinquency-eligible youth group. Further, the latter authors suggest that such trends may reflect increased or decreased concern about youthful misconduct.

There was apparently a substantial increase in juvenile crime between 1988 and 1991, followed by another dip in rates after 1991. Blumstein (1995) suggests that a projected increase in the proportion of the population in the high-crime-rate age group will probably lead to higher crime rates by early in the twenty-first century. Still, the FBI UCR for 1996 suggests that there has been a strong decline in juvenile delinquency in recent years.

Juvenile Crimes of Violence. In contrast to this apparent improvement, an examination of murder and non-negligent manslaughter shows a different picture. While the national murder rate in 1996 (7.4 per 100,000 inhabitants) was down 11 percent since 1987, the proportion of murder and non-negligent manslaughter offenders who were under age 18 increased from 9.7 percent in 1987 to a whopping 15.2 percent in 1996, an increase of about 50 percent. Editors of the Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics for 1997, and other analysts such as Conklin (1998), Gall and Lucas (1996), and Blumstein (1995) have commented on the increasingly serious nature of crimes by juveniles.

Conklin (1998), reviewing data presented by Fox (1995) and by Blumstein (1995), says that between 1985 and 1993 "the homicide arrest rate for people twenty-five and over declined by 20 percent, while the rate for eighteen-to-twenty-four year olds increased by 65 percent and the rate for fourteen-to-seventeen year olds rose by 165 percent" (p. 124). An increasing number of researchers fear that there will be a continued surge in violent crimes by the under-eighteen population.

This increase in youth violence in the United States has apparently been mirrored in a number of industrialized nations. In a study of juvenile violence in Great Britain, Oliver (1997) states that the number of violent juveniles increased by 34 percent between 1987 and 1993, an increase he attributes to the growth of inequality and family stress in Britain. In France, Bui-Trong (1996) has written about the recent escalation of juvenile violence, noting especially the increased severity of scale. This author, noting a decline in family morals, predicts that this problem can be expected to worsen. During the 1980s even Japan experienced an increased rate of juvenile delinquency, which some observers attributed to the stress of competition for academic success (Conklin 1998).

School violence has been most dramatic, of course, in the United States and is a focus of great national attention. Presenting data gathered by the National School Safety Center, the Boston Globe reported in 1999 that since the 1992–1993 school year there had been 248 deaths from violent acts in schools. ("U.S. Police Chiefs" 1999). Although many school shootings and other violent acts have not resulted in deaths, they have resulted in injuries and heightened fears. The 248 school deaths between 1992 and 1999 included cases of multiple deaths in seventeen states. Many of these incidents involved the use of assault weapons. This increase in school violence has elicited a spate of explanations, including weakened parental supervisions, ostracism by schoolmates, bullying and its effects (Farrington 1993), the easy availability of guns, and the poor examples set by our leaders. The search for the causes of violence among the young will, no doubt, have to be accompanied by an examination of violence in the adult population as well. Certainly the official data on violence show that the population over age eighteen is also engaged in a substantial amount of violent behavior.

Cohort Study. One of the first longitudinal studies of delinquency was conducted by Wolfgang and colleagues (1972) in Philadelphia. They traced the police contacts of all boys born in 1945 who lived in the city between their tenth and eighteenth birthdays. One of their aims with this cohort of 9,945 was to trace the volume and frequency of delinquent careers up to age eighteen. They found that 35 percent of these boys (3,475) were involved with the police at least once between their tenth and eighteenth birthdays. Of these 3,475 boys with police contacts, 54 percent were repeaters. The total number of delinquent events (offenses) for the 3,475 delinquent boys amounted to 10,214 through age seventeen. It is clear that the number of offenses far outnumbers the number of offenders in the cohort. One must note, then, that longitudinal (i.e., over an extended period) studies of delinquents yield data with important differences from those obtained when cross-sectional (i.e., single point in time) studies of persons arrested are conducted. Examples of other longitudinal studies include the Provo Study, the Cambridge-Somerville Study, the Vocational High Study, and, in Britain, the National Survey of Health and Development.

Self-Reports: Offender Reports and Victim Reports. Official reports of crime and juvenile delinquency have been criticized for years because they are widely believed to underreport the volume of offenses. Moreover, many scholars, especially those with a conflict perspective, believed that official reports underreported middle-class crime and delinquency. In an effort to detect "hidden" delinquency, sociologists developed a technique designed to produce a more accurate picture. The technique used by Short and Nye (1958) in a number of studies of hidden delinquency consisted of having juveniles in a school or other population complete questionnaires on the extent to which they engaged in law-violating behavior. They found that delinquency was widespread throughout the juvenile population. Subsequently, Williams and Gold (1972) and Empey and Erickson (1966) embarked on studies employing self-reports. These writers found that 88 percent and 92 percent of their study groups, respectively, had engaged in violations. Hindelang and colleagues (1981) present a similar volume of lawviolating behavior in their Seattle study. Criticisms of the self-report method followed many of these studies, centering on issues of respondent misrepresentation, respondent recall, and inappropriateness of study groups. A major criticism (by Nettler, 1984, for example) was that self-reports elicited admission of only minor or petty infractions for the most part. Because of its obvious utility, the self-report technique has been greatly improved in recent years, becoming an important, if not the dominant, method of measurement in studies focusing on the extent and cause of delinquency.

A number of students of delinquency agree that many of the improvements in self-report studies have been contributed by Elliott and Ageton (1980): (Bartol and Bartol 1989; Gibbons and Krohn 1991; Regoli and Hewitt 1991). Elliott and colleagues have created a panel design that employs periodic interviews instead of questionnaires. The study, called the National Youth Survey (NYS), utilized a 5-year panel design with a national probability sample of 1,726 adolescents aged eleven to seventeen and covered more than a hundred cities and towns in the United States. In contrast with earlier self-report studies, Elliott asked his respondents about a full range of activities designed to get at serious as well as minor infractions. In addition, his respondents were asked whether they were caught when engaging in delinquent and criminal activities.

Another attempt to ascertain the volume of delinquency in the United States is represented by the National Crime Survey (NCS). This survey, an effort to determine the extent of victimization in the population of the United States, was begun in 1973 after an initial study sponsored by the President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice in 1967. Interviews are conducted semiannually by the Bureau of the Census with a large national sample of 60,000 households (Bartol and Bartol 1989). The survey was intended to supplement the Uniform Crime Report data and measures the extent to which persons and households are victims of rape, robbery, assault, burglary, motor-vehicle theft, and larceny. Binder and colleagues (1988) note that one of the major findings of the 1967 study of victims by the President's Commission was the revelation that "actual crime was several times that indicated in the UCR" (p. 34). In the current victim interviews, if the respondent has been victimized, he or she will be asked questions about both self-characteristics and characteristics of the offender. Binder and colleagues warn about the difficulties of age discrimination by a victim under stress and suggest that this method cannot be relied on too heavily in measuring delinquency.

Nevertheless, Laub (1983) has found NCS data useful in addressing the issue of the extent and change in delinquency volume. In an analysis of NCS data obtained between 1973 and 1980, he found no increase in juvenile crime over those years. He further noted that data from the National Center for Juvenile Justice supported this conclusion. It would seem, then, that the NCS data, UCR data, and juvenile court data have been fairly consistent regarding the volume of delinquency. While self-report data indicate that violations are consistently widespread in American society, it is important to note that these reports involve primarily minor violations. Indeed, to the extent that almost everyone engages in minor violations, it may make sense to focus mainly on serious violations. Nettler (1984), noting that self-report studies find a large number of minor infractions, suggests that such violators are best described as lying on a continuum rather than as being "delinquent" or "nondelinquent." The cohort studies of Wolfgang and colleagues (1972) show that only a small proportion of the study groups were involved in serious violations.

FACTORS RELATED TO DELINQUENCY

Age and Gender. In the United States, Britain, and other European countries where delinquency is recognized and studied, there is general agreement that it peaks in adolescence (ages fifteen to eighteen) rather than in childhood. (This is not to say, however, that delinquency is not on the increase among younger children. A study by the FBI in 1990 found that the arrest rate for rape among males aged twelve years and under had more than tripled since 1970 (Parmley 1991). The UCR shows that 18.9 percent of all arrests in 1996 involved persons under eighteen years of age. This age group accounted for 31 percent of arrests for index crimes, however. Male arrests peaked at age eighteen in 1996 and female arrests at age sixteen. Earlier studies and analyses by Empey and Erickson (1966), Wolfgang (1983), and Braithwaite (1981) are consistent with this picture, with age sixteen being the peak year for juvenile misconduct.

It has consistently been found that males outnumber females in UCR arrest data. Thus in both 1988 and 1989, among those under eighteen, males were arrested four times more frequently than females. For those under eighteen in both 1988 and 1989, males outnumbered females 8-to-1 in arrests for violent offenses. In 1990, Short pointed out that the gender ratio had declined substantially. Between 1980 and 1989 violent crime increased by 4.5 percent for males under eighteen and by 16.5 for comparable females. Considering all arrests for males and females under eighteen, males showed a decline of 8.5 percent between 1980 and 1989, while females showed an increase of 1.1 percent for the same period.

Indeed, as reported in the Uniform Crime Reports, female delinquency, compared to male delinquency, has been rising steadily since the 1960s. In 1960, there was a 6-to-1 ratio of male to female juvenile arrests. The ratio has declined steadily since then and in 1987 was 3.4-to-1. In 1996 the FBI data revealed a male-female ratio of just 3-to-1.

Moreover, the ratio for violent offenses has dropped from 8-to-1 in 1989 to 5.5-to-1 in 1996, according to FBI data reported in the Sourcebook for 1997. Finally, it must be mentioned that FBI data reveal a decline of 15.3 percent in the murder and manslaughter charges for males under age 18 between 1995 and 1996 but reveal no change for females in that age group. It should also be noted, however, that for those aged thirteen to nineteen, 92 percent of murder offenders in the UCR in 1996 were males and only 8 percent were females. Also sobering is the fact that 29 percent of all murder victims in the under-eighteen age group were females in 1996.

Perhaps Hagan's power-control theory is relevant here. Hagan and colleagues (1987) suggest that child-rearing styles in the home (the power structure) are determined in part by the nature of the parents' occupations. The two main types of child-rearing styles are patriarchal and egalitarian. The two types of occupations are command (managerial) and obey (subject to others' authority). In the egalitarian family where both parents work in authority positions, the mother's authority means she has a substantial amount of power in the home, and this leads to daughters having increased freedom relative to sons. This situation is reversed in patriarchal families, which are controlled by fathers and sons. In the egalitarian family, the adolescent daughter has an increased willingness to take risks. Hagan assumes that willingness to take risks is a fundamental requirement for delinquency. He also predicts that female delinquency will be high in mother-only homes. The absence of a father leaves a void in male power, allowing the adolescent girl more freedom, greater risk taking, and an increased tendency to deviate. The theory needs to be tested more fully.

With respect to self-reports, the reports of the NYS suggest that gender was not strongly related to involvement in delinquent acts. Although males admitted to more infractions than did females, the differences were much less pronounced than those seen in the UCR. Again, it should be emphasized that efforts are being made to enhance the ability of self-report studies to elicit information on more serious infractions.

Race and Class. UCRs for 1985 and 1989 present data on arrests by race in the United States. Among persons arrested and under eighteen years of age, the number of blacks increased from 23 percent in 1985 to 28 percent in 1989, but declined slightly to 27 percent in 1996; the number of whites decreased from 75 percent in 1985 to 70 percent in 1989 and remained at 70 percent in 1996. The remainder of the arrests were categorized by race as Native Americans, Asians, Pacific Islanders, and Alaskan Natives. The proportion of violent index crimes committed by blacks under age eighteen increased from 52 percent in 1985 to 53 percent in 1989 but declined to 47 percent in 1996. The comparable proportions for whites were 46 percent, 45 percent, and 50 percent. Also of interest are the figures for murder and non-negligent homicide. Here, blacks under eighteen accounted for 51 percent, 61 percent, and 57.5 percent of these crimes in 1985, 1989, and 1996, respectively; whites accounted for 48 percent, 37 percent, and 39 percent during the same three years. This slight decline in the proportion of murder and non-negligent manslaughter accounted for by blacks under eighteen is accompanied by the fact that the number of such crimes increased by 25 percent for blacks and by 18 percent for whites under eighteen during the period between 1988 and 1996. This is a decided improvement over the period between 1985 and 1989, when there was a doubling of the number of such crimes for blacks and a 30 percent increase for whites under age eighteen. Aggravated assaults also increased substantially during this period for both whites and blacks under eighteen, increasing for blacks by 25 percent and for whites by 50 percent during the eight-year period ending in 1996. Forcible rapes by blacks under age eighteen showed an improving picture, declining by 12 percent between 1988 and 1996. On the other hand, forcible rapes by whites under age eighteen increased by 15 percent during this time frame. Overall, despite short-term improvements in the murder rate for those over age 18, there is no denying the fact that serious and violent crime increased among those under age 18 between 1988 and 1996. This violence has been growing among white youth as well as black youth.

William J. Wilson (1996) and other sociologists have long suggested that social class and inequality are important concepts in the attempt to understand the increase in violence among blacks. The move of businesses to suburban locations with consequent loss of job opportunities, educational inequities, and the growth of female-headed households have combined to limit the coping resources in inner cities where most black youth reside. Wilson suggests that the resulting stresses hit lower-class blacks particularly hard and contribute to the high rates of violent crime in these areas. In addition, Bernard (1990) suggests that anger is reinforced by the social isolation that comes from being confined to communities that have high rates of crime. Policies by local departments of justice with respect to police routines, bail practices, and sentencing as these apply to blacks have also come in for considerable comment (Teele 1970b). In 1999 news media reported that the U.S. Department of Justice was investigating allegations of racial profiling—targeting minorities for an unjustified amount of police attention—by police in New Jersey, Michigan, and Florida ("US Police Chiefs" 1999).

While there are those who say that the nation has not paid enough attention to the causes of black teenage violence, an increasing number of analysts say that we have paid a lot of, perhaps too much, attention to black violence in urban areas while ignoring the rising tides of violence by white youths in suburban and rural areas. While income inequality has seemed appropriate to an explanation of urban violence, it may appear less relevant in the analysis of violent behavior in our affluent suburban areas. This situation brings to mind Toby's (1967) classic work on delinquency in affluent society as well as Durkheim's (1951) discussion of rising expectations in his theory of anomie.

In Toby's case, he was trying to account for the rise in theft crimes in a variety of countries. Although he took special note of adolescent crime in industrial countries such as Japan, Sweden, and Great Britain, he also included developing countries such as Nigeria and India in his analysis. Toby suggests that the resentment of poverty is likely to be greater among the relatively poor in an affluent society than among the poor in a poor society. He suggests, however, that envy is at work not only in the more affluent societies, such as Japan, but also in countries with rising standards of living, such as India and Nigeria. Moreover, he suggests that not only adults but also the young are subject to rising expectations. It may be that relative deprivation can account for at least some of the rise in youth violence in the United States. Toby's work also suggests that the presence of such envy could be heightened where the inhibiting effect of schools or families or jobs is missing in either affluent or developing societies. Here Toby's thesis greatly resembles control theory. The increase in single-parent families among blacks, persisting educational inequalities for blacks, and chronic employment problems for black youth may tend to lessen social controls and could be factors in the greater increase in violence among them.

Toby's discussion of "resentment" seems somehow applicable to the school violence discussed earlier, but with a different twist. There seems present in these cases something besides income inequality—especially since in many of these instances the youth are from apparently affluent families, as in the Littleton, Colorado, case. While assault weapons were certainly available and parents seemed loathe to invade their sons' privacy, there was at school, perhaps, a certain intolerable inequality that alienated the assaulters and pulled them into circles of violent schemes, feelings, and, eventually, behavior. Most of the youths—usually white—felt rejected by their peers, their teachers, their parents, or their girlfriends. In Colorado they resented the athletes and those who were generally in the "in crowd." There apparently were feelings of jealousy toward those who did not invite them to join their group. While such feelings, involving relative deprivation, seem to be far removed from considerations of wealth, they fit the phenomenon of inequality. This form of inequality is probably anathema to children who are deprived of neither their basic needs nor considerable luxuries.

Social class has been by far the most controversial of all the factors studied in connection with juvenile delinquency. The argument seems to revolve around both method and theory. Some argue about the impact of social class, others debate the measurement of social class, and a few argue about both. Several writers have attempted to review the research on class and delinquency or crime. Tittle and colleagues (1978), noting that nearly every sociological theory of crime or delinquency had class as a key factor, reviewed thirty-five such studies. Their findings suggested that the class and crime–delinquency connection might be a "myth" because the relationship could not be confirmed empirically.

Subsequently, Braithwaite (1981) criticized Tittle's study not only as incomplete but also as having come to the wrong conclusions. He reviewed fifty-three studies that used official data and forty-seven studies that used self-reports in the study of delinquency. Braithwaite forcefully argues that the class–crime relationship is no myth. Of the studies using official records, Braithwaite found that the vast majority (forty-four) showed lower-class juveniles to have substantially higher offense rates than middle-class juveniles. Of the forty-seven self-report studies, he concluded that eighteen found lower-class juveniles reported higher levels of delinquent behavior, seven reported qualified support for the relationship, and twenty-two found no relationship. Braithwaite is critical of self-report studies when (1) they do not closely examine the lowest group on the social-class continuum (the lumpen proletariat) and (2) they do not include serious offenses and chronicity in their data gathering. While the argument may continue, Braithwaite and others seem to be less critical of self-report studies when they correct these apparent shortcomings.

Apparently the work of Elliott and Ageton (1980) has done much to defuse this issue. They found, for example, that the relationship between class and self-reported delinquency is totally a consequence of the difference between the lowest class group and the rest of the sample, with no difference between the working and middle classes. Writers such as Messner and Krohn (1990), Hagan and Palloni (1990), and Colvin and Pauly (1983) have apparently profited from these debates; their work shows an inclination to refine the "objective" measure of class, using insights from conflict theory as they formulate explanations of delinquency. Indeed, it is safe to say that social class is alive and well, but it is more broadly conceptualized now; many of the new theories include patterns of child rearing, job experiences, and family structure that are incorporated into the framework of a more radical neo-Marxist perspective. The effort by sociologists in the United States and in other countries to better understand juvenile delinquency appears to have entered a new and more urgent phase.

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James E. Teele