School Climate and Violence

• Author: Stephanie M. DiPietro,Finn-Aage Esbensen,Lee Ann Slocum
• DOI: 10.1177/1541204014547589
• Published date: 01 October 2015
• Date: 01 October 2015
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article
Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice
2015, Vol. 13(4) 299-322
School Climate and Violence:
ª The Author(s) 2014
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Does Immigrant Status Matter?
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DOI: 10.1177/1541204014547589
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Stephanie M. DiPietro1, Lee Ann Slocum1,
and Finn-Aage Esbensen1
Abstract
A growing literature shows that school context is an important predictor of student behavior, above
and beyond individual and family characteristics. Limited attention, however, has been given to
potential contingencies in this relationship. The aim of this research is to extend previous school-
based studies by examining whether and to what extent school context is differentially predictive
of violent delinquency for immigrant and nonimmigrant youth. Using two waves of data from two
multicity program evaluations, Teens, Crime, and the Community/Community Works (T.C.C./
C.W.) and the Gang Resistance Education and Training (G.R.E.A.T.) program, we assess the impact
of four measures of school climate on violent delinquency. Results highlight important contingencies
in the relationship between immigrant status and violence.
Keywords
school climate, immigrant youth, violence, multilevel models
Introduction
The demographic landscape of the United States has undergone dramatic changes in the wake of the
‘‘new’’ immigration. In the last 20 years alone, the immigrant population has doubled from just under
20 million in 1990 to nearly 40 million (roughly 13% of the total population) in 2010 (U.S. Census
Bureau, 2010). This tremendous growth is perhaps most evident in the number of children in immi-
grant families. Today, nearly 3 million children living in the United States are foreign-born and as
many as one in four children has at least one immigrant parent (O’Hare, 2011). Contrasting the wave
of European migration at the turn of the 20th century, today’s immigrants come predominately from
Latin America, the Caribbean, and Southeast Asia (Fortuny & Chaudry, 2011). This demographic shift
has prompted a renewed interest among scholars and policy makers alike in the risk and protective
factors associated with crime among immigrants. The preponderance of research suggests that,
1 Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Missouri–St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, USA
Corresponding Author:
Stephanie M. DiPietro, Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Missouri–St. Louis, 1 University Blvd.,
St. Louis, MO 63121, USA.
Email: dipietros@umsl.edu

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Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice 13(4)
contrary to the politically fueled rhetoric admonishing immigrants as a ‘‘dangerous class,’’ they exhibit
lower rates of crime and violence than native-born Americans (Hagan, Levi, & Dinovitzer, 2008;
Rumbaut & Ewing, 2007; Sampson, 2008). This finding, which echoes research conducted at the turn
of the 20th century (see, e.g., U.S. Immigration Commission, 1911; Wickersham Commission, 1931),
is particularly robust in studies of adolescent violence (Morenoff & Astor, 2006; Sampson, Morenoff, &
Raudenbush, 2005). Importantly, although the negative association between immigrant status and
offending has been well established in the literature, less is known about potential contingencies in this
relationship. Thus, recent scholarship has moved beyond the question of whether a relationship between
immigrant status and criminal behavior exists to the more germane questions of why and in what par-
ticular social and geographic contexts it exists.
A nascent body of work suggests that immigrant youth face unique experiences and obstacles that
may condition their pathways into criminal offending. For example, research has shown that immi-
grant youth are differentially susceptible to criminogenic risk and protective factors, such as deviant
peer influence (DiPietro & McGloin, 2012) and involvement in extracurricular activities (Jiang &
Peterson, 2012), and that the relationship between immigrant status and offending varies across
neighborhood contexts (Desmond & Kubrin, 2009; Morenoff & Astor, 2006). Collectively, this
work highlights important caveats in the immigrant–crime nexus and suggests that the long-
standing conclusion that immigrant youth are less crime prone than their native-born counterparts
may be nuanced in important ways.
Although school contexts have garnered relatively little attention in the immigration and crime
literature, the importance of schools as a locus of delinquency (and alternatively, delinquency pre-
vention) has a long-standing history in criminology, with many early theories positing that schools
play an integral role in shaping youth’s disposition for antisocial behavior both in and outside of
school (see, e.g., Cohen, 1955; Hirschi, 1969). Aided by the development of sophisticated statistical
modeling techniques, including multilevel modeling, contemporary scholarship has been able to par-
cel out the influence of individual and contextual factors on youth behavior. Collectively, this work
suggests that characteristics of the school environment, including communal school organization,
school social climate, school size, and disorder, influence delinquency and victimization above and
beyond individual risk and protective factors (Bryk & Driscoll, 1988; D. C. Gottfredson & DiPietro,
2011; G. D. Gottfredson, Gottfredson, Payne, & Gottfredson, 2005; Payne, Gottfredson, & Gottfred-
son, 2003; Stewart, 2003; Welsh, Greene, & Jenkins, 1999).
More recently, studies of school effects have considered whether the influence of school contexts
on behavior is conditioned by individual traits. That is, while school social climate may insulate
youth from delinquency and victimization (or, alternatively, heighten their risk), these relationships
have been hypothesized to vary by gender (Payne, 2009) and race–ethnicity (Vazsonyi & Flannery,
1997; Vazsonyi & Pickering, 2003). With few exceptions, however (see, e.g., Peguero, 2008, 2011;
Peguero & Jiang, 2014), few studies have considered how dimensions of school context may operate
differently across immigrant and nonimmigrant groups. Although immigrant youth now make up the
fastest growing segment of the U.S. child population, the question of whether they experience school
climates similarly to native-born youth or whether their immigrant status conditions the risk and pro-
tective effects of school has been given limited attention.
Given recent changes in the demographic profile of the nation’s elementary and secondary stu-
dent population, a fuller understanding of the ways in which the influence of school context on beha-
vior might vary by nativity status is increasingly important. Thus, this research extends previous
work by examining whether and to what extent school context shapes patterns of violent delin-
quency for immigrant and nonimmigrant youth. To this end, we utilize two waves of data collected
from two multicity program evaluations, Teens, Crime, and the Community/Community Works
(T.C.C./C.W.) and the Gang Resistance Education and Training (G.R.E.A.T.) program, to assess the
impact of four aspects of school climate on violent delinquency.

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DiPietro et al.
301
Schools and Delinquency
The importance of school in shaping the delinquent trajectories of youth has long been recognized by
some of the most prominent criminological theorists. In his classic work, Delinquent Boys: The Cul-
ture of the Gang, Cohen (1955) argued that the school is a staging area where both lower class and
privileged boys are held to the same ‘‘middle-class measuring rod.’’ In this environment, delin-
quency is a natural reaction to the perceived unfairness of an organization that measures all students
by the same criteria despite a stratified system that makes such standards impossible to achieve for
some (Cohen, 1955). Alternately, social control theorists (Hirschi, 1969) contend that school may
function to inhibit deviant behavior insofar as it provides incentives and opportunities for youth
to form attachments to prosocial others and commitments to conventional activities.
Recent studies of school effects affirm theoretical expectations that both school social climate
(e.g., culture and communal organization) and the structural characteristics (e.g., size and stu-
dent–teacher ratio) of the school matter for predicting youth misbehavior. For instance, research
shows that schools that are more communally organized—as evinced by the degree of supportive
relationships among teachers, staff, and students, shared goals and norms, and a general sense of
collaboration and commitment—have lower rates of delinquency and misbehavior, as well as higher
levels of academic achievement (Battistich & Hom, 1997; Bryk & Driscoll, 1988; Kirk, 2009;
Payne, 2008; Payne et al., 2003).
School culture has also been found to influence delinquency and other maladaptive outcomes.
Although it has been measured in myriad ways, school culture generally refers to the unwritten atti-
tudes, values, and beliefs governing behavioral norms (Stewart, 2003; Welsh et al., 1999). Theore-
tically, schools that have a more prosocial cultural orientation should inhibit delinquency; however,
empirical studies of school culture offer mixed findings. For example, Felson, Liska, South, and
McNulty (1994) found in their analyses of data from the Youth in Transition Study that boys
reported greater levels of delinquency and violence in schools with a higher proportion of students
who adhered to a culture of violence. Surprisingly though, the authors also found that an...