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                            Library & Multimedia
 Psychosocial Correlates of Adolescent Drug Dealing in the Inner City: Potential Roles of Opportunity, Conventional Commitments, and Maturity
NCJ Number
              216373
Journal

*Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency* Volume: 43 Issue: 4 Dated: November 2006 Pages: 357-386
Author(s)
          Michelle Little;
                        Laurence Steinberg
Date Published

November 2006
Length
              30 pages
Annotation
              This study tested a model of the simultaneous and interactive influence of social context, psychosocial attitudes, and individual maturity on the prediction of urban adolescents' drug dealing.
Abstract
              Consistent with study hypotheses, findings show that community, family, and peer factors were the strongest correlates of adolescents' frequency of drug dealing. Adolescents who sold the most drugs were more likely to live in neighborhoods with significant physical and social disorder, low parental monitoring, high rates of parental substance use, and high levels of peer deviance. The results suggest that adolescents' alienation from sources of prosocial opportunity (e.g., school) and diminished expectations of conventional success (earning a good income and starting a career) were important incentives for drug dealing. Individual differences in maturity also influenced adolescents' restraint from drug dealing. Apparently, within a given context, adolescents behave differently according to their level of psychosocial maturity. The study sample consisted of 605 serious male juvenile offenders from the Philadelphia sample of an ongoing longitudinal study, Research on Pathways to Desistance. Participants were between the ages of 14 and 17 when they enrolled in the study. Drug-dealing frequency was determined from questions on the Self-Report of Offending. Weekly incomes from licit jobs and drug dealing were determined from open-ended questions. Drug-dealing opportunity was assessed from five variables: neighborhood conditions, perceived opportunity for neighborhood work, parental monitoring, parental substance use and abuse, and peer delinquency. The quality of neighborhood conditions was determined from a 21-item self-report measure. Other variables measured were perceived neighborhood job opportunity, parental monitoring, parental substance use, peer delinquency, drug opportunity cluster, perceived pay-off from crime, legal cynicism, perceived social pay-off from crime, conventional goals and expectations, maturity, future orientation, autonomy, resistance to peer influence, temperance, and school commitment. 6 tables, 4 notes, and 55 references
      
  
          Additional Details
Grant Number(s)
        1999-IJ-CX-0053
                                2000-MU-MU-0007


  
  
        
  Agencies
        NIJ-Sponsored
                                OJJDP-Sponsored


  
  
        
  Publication Type
        Report (Study/Research)
    
  
  
Date Published: November 1, 2006
    
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Related Datasets
        
                      http://dx.doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR32881.v1
                  http://dx.doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR34488
                  http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR32282
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      PatentsRelated Topics
        
                Drug offender profiles
        Drug offenders
        Drug smuggling
        Juvenile delinquency factors
        Juvenile justice



  
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