Misbehavior at School and Delinquency Elsewhere

• Published date: 01 December 2007
• Author: Frank M. Weerman,Peter H. van der Laan,Paul Harland
• DOI: 10.1177/0734016807311905
• Date: 01 December 2007
• Subject Matter: Articles

358

Misbehavior at School and

Delinquency Elsewhere

A Complex Relationship

Frank M. Weerman

Paul Harland

Peter H. van der Laan

Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and

Law Enforcement, Leiden, The Netherlands

This article addresses the relationship between problem behaviors inside school (misbehavior)

and outside school (delinquency). Self-report data about 12 types of misbehavior and 9 types of

delinquency were collected among 1,978 secondary school students in The Netherlands of which

1,385 were followed up one year later. The relationship between misbehavior and delinquency

was not studied before in such detail. The findings show that there is a general relationship

between misbehavior inside school and delinquency elsewhere; however, this relationship

appears to be less strong than suggested by earlier studies. Also the predictive value of misbe-

havior for later delinquency is limited because one half of the respondents who misbehave at

school are not involved in delinquency one year later. However, serious forms of misbehavior do

seem to increase the risk of later delinquency considerably. These findings nuance conclusions

of earlier studies on the misbehavior-delinquency relationship.

Keywords: delinquency; generality of deviance; misbehavior; prediction

Misbehavior at school and delinquent behavior are phenomena that have received a lot

of research attention. The first subject is studied by researchers who are primarily

interested in “school safety” or “school crime” (see, e.g., Dinkes, Forrest Cataldi, Kena,

Baum, & Snyder, 2006; Lawrence, 2007) or researchers who have specialized in “bullying”

(e.g., Olweus, 1993; P. K. Smith et al., 1999). It is often studied using victimization surveys;

however, self-report studies have been conducted in several countries (see Debarbieux &

Blaya, 2001). The second subject, delinquent behavior of juveniles, has been studied exten-

sively by criminologists and other social scientists (i.e., Agnew, 2001; Tonry & Doob, 2004;

Wikström & Butterworth, 2006). Here, the use of self-report questionnaires is a common

form of data collection because many victims do not know whether offenders are minors or

not. Self-reports are used not only to study the causes and correlates of crime but also to

make cross-national comparisons (see Barberet et al., 2004; Junger-Tas, Haen Marshall,

Ribeaud, & Killias, 2003).

Despite this abundance in research on school misbehavior and delinquency separately,

studies in which both types of problem behavior are combined are scarce. We could find

only four studies in which the relationship between rule breaking at school and offending

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Weerman et al. / Misbehavior & Delinquency 359

outside school is analyzed (Andershed, Kerr, & Stattin, 2001; Junger-Tas & Van Kesteren,

1999; Nansel, Overpeck, Haynie, Ruan, & Scheidt, 2003; Rigby & Cox, 1996). These studies

combined a limited number of offenses inside and outside school; specifically bullying

behaviors and violent offenses were studied. All four studies were cross-sectional and

focused on general correlations between both types of problem behavior.

In our study, the Dutch NSCR School Project (Weerman & Smeenk, 2005; Weerman,

Smeenk, & Harland, 2007), almost 2,000 secondary school students were surveyed in 2002

and a part of the sample (1,385 students) was surveyed for a second time in 2003. Because of our

interest in problem behavior within and outside the school context, we included an extensive

self report questionnaire on rule violations in and outside school. Ten different school misbe-

haviors were included as well as 13 delinquent acts outside school. The resulting combination

of data offers a unique opportunity to analyze the relationship between offending in and outside

school. It also enables us to correlate different types of misbehavior and delinquency in more

detail and offers the opportunity to conduct longitudinal analyses on the relationship between

school offending at one point in time and delinquency a year later.

With our data, we seek to answer the following questions:

•What is the prevalence of different types of misbehavior at school and delinquency else-

where among our sample of students?

•Is there a general relationship between misbehavior and delinquency, that is, do students

report involvement or absence of problem behavior inside school as well as outside?

•Are similar categories of problem behavior inside and outside school more strongly

related to each other as different categories of misbehavior and delinquency?

•How often is misbehavior at school generally followed by delinquency a year later?

•How often are various categories of misbehavior followed by similar and different categories

of delinquency a year later?

Linking misbehavior and delinquency offer scientifically valuable information about the

co-occurrence of different types of problem behavior and about the potential predictive

value of the adolescent’s behavior at school for (later) involvement in delinquency elsewhere.

Enhanced insights in these issues have implications for the validity of theoretical perspectives

on deviant behavior (in this article we look at the school climate perspective, generality of

deviance, and the trajectories approach). However, they may also have important policy

implications. Knowledge about which kind of students are at risk for developing delinquent

behavior can help tailoring preventive interventions. On the other hand, insights in types of

misbehavior that are only weakly related to delinquency may help to prevent overreaction

and unnecessary labeling or stigmatization.

Three Perspectives

Three theoretical perspectives or approaches may be useful in understanding the misbehavior—

delinquency relation: the school climate perspective, the generality of deviance perspective,

and the trajectories approach. From each of these perspectives we deduced expectations

about the relation between problem behavior at school and delinquency elsewhere.

The school climate perspective represents a line of thinking and research that departs

from the idea that there is something unique in the school organization and culture that