Individual and familial characteristics of youths involved in street corner gangs in Singapore

A Latent Class Analysis of Family Characteristics Linked to Youth Offending Outcomes

OBJECTIVES

There were two aims to this study: firstly, to identify family subtypes of Singaporean youth offenders based on eight family variables. Secondly, the associations of these family subtypes with youth offending outcomes were tested.

METHODS

With a sample of 3,744 youth, a latent class analysis was first conducted based on eight family variables. Multivariate analyses and a Cox regression were subsequently performed to analyze the associations of the family classes with age at first arrest, age at first charge, and recidivism.

RESULTS

A three-class solution was found to have the best fit to the data: (1) intact functioning families had little family risk; (2) families with criminality had higher probabilities of family criminality, of drug/alcohol abuse, and of being nonintact; and (3) poorly managed families received the poorest parenting and were more likely to be nonintact. Youth offenders from the latter two classes were arrested and charged at younger ages. Additionally, they reoffended at a quicker rate.

CONCLUSIONS

Family backgrounds matter for youth offending outcomes. Interventions have to be multifaceted and targeted at the family in order to mitigate the risk of young offenders from developing into pathological adult criminals.

Self-esteem, academic self-concept, and aggression at school

The present study explores the relation between academic self-concept, self-esteem, and aggression at school. Longitudinal data from a racially diverse sample of middle-school students were analyzed to explore how academic self-concept influenced the likelihood of aggressing at school and whether high self-concept exerted a different pattern of influence when threatened. Data include self-reported academic self-concept, school-reported academic performance, and parent-reported school discipline. Results suggest that, in general, students with low self-concept in achievement domains are more likely to aggress at school than those with high self-concept. However, there is a small sample of youth who, when they receive contradictory information that threatens their reported self-concept, do aggress. Global self-esteem was not found to be predictive of aggression. These results are discussed in the context of recent debates on whether self-esteem is a predictor of aggression and the use of a more proximal vs. general self-measure in examining the self-esteem and aggression relation.

Collective Violence: Comparisons between Youths and Chimpanzees

Patterns of collective violence found among humans include similarities to those seen among chimpanzees. These include participation predominantly by males, an intense personal and group concern with status, variable subgroup composition, defense of group integrity, inter-group fights that include surprise attacks, and a tendency to avoid mass confrontation. Compared to chimpanzee communities, youth gangs tend to be larger, composed of younger individuals, occupying smaller territories and having a more complex organization. Youth gangs also differ from chimpanzee communities as a result of numerous cultural and environmental influences including complex relations with non-gang society. These relations are governed in important ways by such factors as perceived economic and personal constraints, policing, family structure, and levels of poverty, crime, and racism. Nevertheless, the concepts that sociologists use to account for collective violence in youth gangs are somewhat similar to those applied by anthropologists and biologists to chimpanzees. Thus in both cases collective violence is considered to emerge partly because males are highly motivated to gain personal status, which they do by physical violence. In the case of youth gangs, the reasons for the prevalence of physical violence in status competition compared to non-gang society are clearly context-specific, both culturally and historically. By contrast, among chimpanzees the use of physical violence to settle status competition is universal (in the wild and captivity). The use of physical violence in individual status competition therefore has different sources in youth gangs and chimpanzees. Regardless of its origin, however, its combination with an intense concern for status can explain: (1) why individual males form alliances among each other; and hence (2) how such alliances generate social power, closed groups, and a capacity for defense of territory or pre-emptive attacks on rivals. This comparison suggests that the use of physical violence to resolve individual status competition is an important predictor of collective violence at the gang level. We therefore view the similarities in aggression between humans and chimpanzees that we review here as being adaptive responses to local conditions, predicated on an inherent male concern for social status.