Self-Reported Offending in the United States and Malaysia: Does East Meet West?

• Author: Richard D. Hartley,Lee Ellis,Anthony Hoskin
• DOI: 10.1177/0306624X19883753
• Published date: 01 July 2021
• Date: 01 July 2021
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0306624X19883753

International Journal of

Offender Therapy and

Comparative Criminology

2021, Vol. 65(9) 999 –1028

© The Author(s) 2019

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DOI: 10.1177/0306624X19883753

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Article

Self-Reported Offending in the

United States and Malaysia:

Does East Meet West?

Richard D. Hartley1, Lee Ellis2,

and Anthony Hoskin3

Abstract

To date, international comparisons of self-reported crime have been mostly limited

to Western countries. The current study explores offending for large samples of

university students in Malaysia (N = 2,058) and the United States (N = 2,511), and

utilizes measures of social bond theory to test its predictive utility cross-nationally.

The descriptive results reveal that for both males and females, offending rates were

substantially higher in the United States, often 3 to 4 times higher. Rare events logistic

regression results reveal not only some support for our measures of the social

bond constructs in both countries but also that there are significant cross-country

differences in the correlates of offending. Partitioned regression models suggest

these differences vary considerably by type of crime, and that some of the significant

correlates of offending are similar cross-nationally but that unique predictors emerge

by country dependent on the offense in question. Offending in the U.S. sample appears

to be more closely linked to breakdowns in family structure (parental divorce, single

parenthood), whereas for the Malaysian sample, parental income and respondent’s

education level seem to be more closely linked to offending. The current study

provides one of just a few comparative studies between a Western country and an

Asian country based on self-reported data. Such data can provide a useful cross-check

of international comparisons based on official data. Methodologically, implications are

that the self-report survey method continues to be a fruitful avenue for exploration

of cross-national offending.

1The University of Texas at San Antonio, USA

2University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

3Idaho State University, Pocatello, USA

Corresponding Author:

Richard D. Hartley, The University of Texas at San Antonio, 501 W. Cesar E. Chavez Boulevard, San

Antonio, TX 78207-4415, USA.

Email: richard.hartley@utsa.edu

883753IJOXXX10.1177/0306624X19883753International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative CriminologyHartley et al.

research-article2019

1000 International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology 65(9)

Keywords

cross-national research, comparative criminology, self-report surveys, crime etiology,

criminal behavior

Introduction

Although there has been a long-standing interest in comparing the nature of crime and

criminality internationally, as well as scientific attention to explaining differences in

offending cross-nationally (Junger-Tas, 2004; Tonry, 2015), it has only been over the

last quarter century that comparative research on this topic has made substantial prog-

ress (Enzmann et al., 2010; Junger-Tas, 2010). Explanations for cross-national varia-

tion in criminal behavior has usually focused on between country economic differences;

income inequality and socioeconomic development have been the oft used predictors

of national-level offending (Nivette, 2011). Early efforts utilized official crime statis-

tics to make cross-national comparisons with the obvious problems of different levels

of sophistication in record collection, and differences in crime definitions (Junger-Tas,

2004; Van Dijk, 2015). A great deal of the cross-national research, therefore, was con-

ducted at the macro level (i.e., a comparison of national-level crime rates), and one

cannot assume that what is found in ecological research will apply to individual-level

research. Theoretically, aggregate-level research informs theories developed to pro-

vide macro-level explanations but has little to say about microlevel theories that are

important for criminology.

Via self-report surveys, criminologists have been able to overcome some of the

limitations in studying official statistics, and at the same time uncovered many non-

economic factors as influential in crime etiology (Junger-Tas, Marshall, & Ribeaud,

2003). Indeed, the self-report method has been utilized by criminologists since the

1940s and has been deemed a valid and reliable method by which to measure criminal

offending (Barberet et al., 2004; Junger-Tas & Marshall, 2012) and test theories on the

correlates of crime and delinquency (Krohn et al., 2010). More recently, survey meth-

odology has been utilized in comparative studies of crime and delinquency. The

International Self-Report Delinquency (ISRD) Survey in 1990, for example, was the

first of its kind to attempt a large-scale comparative survey across various countries.

Since that inaugural study, only a handful of studies have compared self-reported

offending cross-nationally (Barberet et al., 2004; Enzmann et al., 2010; Gover,

Jennings, Tomsich, Park, & Rennison, 2011; Junger-Tas et al., 2003; Killias & Ribeaud,

1999; Kobayashi, Vazsonyi, Chen, & Sharp, 2010; Vazsonyi & Belliston, 2007). In the

last decade, the data and results of a second ISRD undertaken with a total of 30 coun-

tries from Europe, North America, and South/Central America are being analyzed and

results published (Enzmann et al., 2010; Junger-Tas, 2012; Posick & Rocque, 2015, to

name a few). Besides the ISRD and the ISRD-2, research studies that explicitly focus

on a cross-national design for comparative purposes are very limited (Junger-Tas &

Marshall, 2012), and even fewer cross-national comparisons of self-reported offend-

ing include samples from Asian countries (Gover et al., 2011; Kobayashi et al., 2010).