DELINQUENT PEER INFLUENCE ON OFFENDING VERSATILITY: CAN PEERS PROMOTE SPECIALIZED DELINQUENCY?

• Published date: 01 May 2015
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9125.12069
• Author: KYLE J. THOMAS
• Date: 01 May 2015

DELINQUENT PEER INFLUENCE ON OFFENDING

VERSATILITY: CAN PEERS PROMOTE SPECIALIZED

DELINQUENCY?∗

KYLE J. THOMAS

Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Missouri—St.

Louis

KEYWORDS: peer influence, specialization, delinquency

The consistent and robust relationship between peers and frequency of offending is

often cited as evidence that friends play an important role in adolescent behavioral ten-

dencies. But Warr (2002) has argued that the empirical support for peer perspectives

remains equivocal in part because research has not demonstrated that individuals and

their peers display similarities in the qualitative form of their delinquent behavior (i.e.,

the tendency to specialize in delinquent acts). By using data from the Gang Resistance

Education and Training (G.R.E.A.T.) evaluation (N =1,390) and the National Lon-

gitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health (AddHealth) (N =1,848), this study seeks to fill

this void in the literature by examining whether having friends who display specializa-

tion in specific delinquent acts relative to other offense types predicts an individual’s

own tendency to display specializing in those same crime types. Consistent with peer in-

fluence perspectives, the results of multilevel latent-trait models (Osgood and Schreck,

2007) suggest that individuals who associate with friends who demonstrate specializa-

tion in violence, theft, and substance use are more likely to display greater levels of

specialization in those offense types themselves.

Associating with delinquent peers consistently emerges as one of the strongest cor-

relates of delinquency (Haynie, 2002; Matsueda and Anderson, 1998; McGloin and

Shermer, 2009; Thornberry et al., 1994; see also Pratt et al., 2010; Warr, 2002). Although

∗Additional supporting information can be found in the listing for this article in the Wiley Online

Library at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/crim.2015.53.issue-2/issuetoc.

I would like to thank Holly Nguyen, Sally Simpson, Chris Sullivan, and the anonymous review-

ers for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this article. The editor, D. Wayne Osgood,

provided additional comments that greatly strengthened this study. Special thanks are due to Jean

McGloin for her help and guidance through each stage of this project. This research uses data from

AddHealth, a program project directed by Kathleen Mullan Harris and designed by J. Richard

Udry, Peter S. Bearman, and Kathleen Mullan Harris at the University of North Carolina at Chapel

Hill, and it was funded by grant P01-HD31921 from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Insti-

tute of Child Health and Human Development with cooperative funding from 23 other federal

agencies and foundations. Special acknowledgment is due to Ronald R. Rindfuss and Barbara En-

twisle for assistance in the original design. Information on how to obtain the Add Health data files

is available on the AddHealth website (http://www.cpc.unc.edu/addhealth). No direct support was

received from grant P01-HD31921 for this analysis. Direct correspondence to Kyle J. Thomas, De-

partment of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Missouri—St. Louis, 331 Lucas Hall,

St. Louis, MO 63121 (e-mail: thomaskj@umsl.edu).

C2015 American Society of Criminology doi: 10.1111/1745-9125.12069

CRIMINOLOGY Volume 53 Number 2 280–308 2015 280

CAN PEERS PROMOTE SPECIALIZED DELINQUENCY? 281

this robust finding is often cited as evidence in favor of peer influence (Akers, 1998;

Sutherland, 1947), our knowledge on the influence that friends have on delinquent be-

havior is limited by the fact that most studies have summed a wide range of delinquent

acts together to determine whether the number or proportion of delinquent peers is corre-

lated with one’s quantitative frequency of general offending (Agnew, 1991; Haynie, 2002;

McGloin, 2009). As Warr (2002: 134–5) cautioned, however, “criminal conduct covers

such a vast range of behavior that it is difficult to believe that a correlation between any

forms of criminal behavior among peers can be construed as evidence of peer influence”

because “the precise behavior of subjects and peers [could] differ enormously, and there

may in fact be no exact overlap in their behavior at all” (emphases in original). Warr’s

point is that if peer influence perspectives are empirically valid, then friends should influ-

ence not only the amount of delinquency but also the qualitative form that one’s delin-

quency takes.

To be sure, friends are believed to influence adolescent behavior by exposing individ-

uals to behaviors, attitudes, and reinforcement contingencies that are favorable to delin-

quent conduct (Akers, 1998; Sutherland, 1947). Because these socialization factors are

theorized to be crime-specific—that is, having friends who use marijuana should increase

the probability of marijuana use but not violence (Warr, 2002; see also Matsueda, 1988,

1997)—peer associations should influence the diversity of delinquent acts that an individ-

ual engages in (Sutherland and Cressey, 1978; Warr, 2002). If an individual associates with

friends who engage only in theft (and no other delinquent behaviors), then that individ-

ual’s own behavioral repertoire should also primarily be limited to theft—that is, she dis-

plays specialization in theft. If, however, an individual associates with friends who engage

in a wide range of delinquent acts, then the individual’s offending repertoire should also

include a wide range of offenses—she would be versatile in offending. Extant research

on adolescent delinquency has suggested that considerable variability exists in offending

diversity; some adolescents are versatile in their offending behavior (Nieuwbeerta et al.,

2011), whereas many other adolescents tend to display high levels of specialization in a

single offense type (Osgood and Schreck, 2007; Thomas, 2013). What remains unexplored

is whether this variation in delinquency specialization, and the specific offense type that

individuals display a tendency to specialize in, can be explained by the qualitative offend-

ing behavior of friends.

Examining whether peers influence specialization in delinquency has implications for

both theory and policy. First, scholars interested in the peer effect have debated whether

its influence on delinquency is general (i.e., a general tendency to be “delinquent”)

or crime specific (Jackson, Tittle, and Burke, 1986; Matsueda, 1982; Tittle, Burke, and

Jackson, 1986), with some scholars even suggesting that a behavioral overlap in the

qualitative form of delinquency is necessary for the validity of peer influence perspec-

tives (Warr, 2002). Thus, assessing whether peer behavior is related to specialization

might encourage theorists to further specify (or alter) perspectives of peer influence.

Second, research has indicated that individuals who display versatile offending also tend

to have longer and more prolific criminal careers (Blokland, Nagin, and Nieuwbeerta,

2005; Nieuwbeerta et al., 2011). Understanding what risk factors (e.g., peers) facilitate

or mitigate more diverse offending can provide insight on how individuals get embedded

in criminal lifestyles that impede normative (and prosocial) transitions into adulthood

(Moffitt, 1993; Sampson and Laub, 1993). Finally, learning about how peers affect