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Strong and viable modern states have limited the use of private force to narrowly-defined situations of self-defense. Yet, evidence from crime surveys shows that a significant proportion of violent and property crimes is not reported to police. Instead of calling the police, people either take no action or employ a variety of mechanisms, including retaliation, to settle disputes. Drawing on data from a survey of 2,921 young people in two German cities, we investigate the propensity of adolescents to resort to self-justice retaliation. The results show widespread propensity to engage in retaliatory actions, particularly among adolescent males of low socio-economic status. Further, attitudes to the police, unsupervised routine activities, and delinquency-related variables were the most influential correlates of propensity to engage in retaliatory actions.

In a French-German study including a large survey of adolescents in four cities, we analyze the interaction patterns during stops. Based on the respondents’ reports of their last experience of a police stop/encounter, we look at the likelihood that they assessed the interaction as respectful or disrespectful, conflictual or even violent, and how either the police officers’ or their own behaviour contributed to this outcome. The comparative design of the survey allows us to examine differences in the institutional patterns of use of force during stops of adolescents by the French and German police (where, when, against which groups). Using multilevel regression analyses, we compare the individual and spatial predictors of disrespectful or violent interactions, in particular with regard to ethnicity and urban segregation in the two countries. While discrimination in the selection of targets is found in France, it is not in Germany. In addition, interactions are much more frequently reported as disrespectful and violent by French compared to German adolescents. These results align with previous research showing that France has a more confrontational policing pattern of work, with more stops, more racial profiling and more tensions during stops. We contend that an institutional theory of policing (ITP) is needed to account for the repeatedly found differences in how much force is used and how it relates to the use of stops and their modalities across the two states. We propose that ITP is made of the ‘pillars of institutional order’ as a theoretical framework for explaining those differences in police practices.

Fear of crime among older people has been a frequent topic in ageing research, criminology and urban studies. The ‘environmental docility hypothesis’ assumes that older people are more vulnerable to adverse neighbourhood conditions than younger age groups. Yet, few studies have tested this influential hypothesis using samples of respondents covering the complete adult lifespan. Looking at fear of crime, we investigated the person–environment interaction of age and neighbourhood disadvantage, using two independent surveys comprising 12,620 respondents aged 25–90 years residing in 435 neighbourhoods in four cities in Germany and Australia. We used multi-level analysis and cross-level interactions to model age-differential effects of neighbourhood disadvantage on fear. Contrary to the hypothesis, we found a weakening of neighbourhood effects on fear with age. The strong effect of neighbourhood disadvantage on fear of crime dropped by around half from the youngest (25 years) to the oldest age (90 years) in both countries. Younger people were almost as fearful as older people in the most disadvantaged neighbourhoods, but older people were considerably more fearful than younger ages in better-off neighbourhoods. We found limited empirical support for the assumption that this diminished association between neighbourhood disadvantage and fear can be explained by the stronger neighbourhood attachment of older people. The limitations of the analysis and potential future directions of research are discussed.

Der Beitrag beschäftigt sich im Wesentlichen mit der Jugendkriminalität in Deutschland, wobei theoretische Erklärungen ebenso präsentiert werden wie empirische Befunde über Ausmaß, Einflussfaktoren und Präventionsmöglichkeiten. Zunächst aber werden methodische Wege der Untersuchung von Jugendkriminalität erläutert – zu unterscheiden sind dabei einerseits amtliche Statistiken und andererseits Dunkelfeldbefragungen.

In neighborhood research, the concept of collective efficacy has been particularly successful in capturing social cohesion and behavioral expectations among residents. Research has spread beyond the U.S. where it originated, and many studies from different countries have shown that collective efficacy is related to structural disadvantage in similar ways and affects outcomes as crime, education or health. However, methodological issues about measurement and modeling persist, and no study has yet investigated the cross-cultural measurement equivalence of this scale. We close this gap using two recent neighborhood surveys from Australia and Germany with large samples of respondents (N = ca. 12.800) and neighborhoods (N = ca. 440) in four cities. We employ multilevel structural equation modeling to test for measurement equivalence of collective efficacy across countries and to model its association with concentrated poverty, ethnic diversity, and residential stability. We find that the measurement of collective efficacy is metrically equivalent in both countries, modeling two latent factors on the respondent level—the two components informal social control and social cohesion/trust—but only one latent factor on the neighborhood level. Considering the relationship between the key correlates of collective efficacy, we find broad similarities but also substantial differences across contexts and compared to U.S. research, particularly concerning the role of ethnic diversity which has a stronger diminishing effect in Germany than in Australia. Possible explanations for these differences are discussed.

This study examines the declining crime trend among Swedish adolescents between 1999 and 2017 using data from eight repeated cross-sectional waves of a nationally representative school survey (N = ca. 49,000). We examined to what extent changes in parental monitoring, school bonds, attitudes toward crime, routine activities, and binge drinking were related to the noticeable decline in youth crime. Multilevel modeling was employed for the analysis of temporal trends. We found strong empirical support for our hypotheses, that is, that changes in social bonds, attitudes toward crime, and routine activities were all associated with the decline in youth crime. Routine activities had the strongest explanatory power, and all predictors combined accounted for most of the variance attributed to the decline in youth crime. This study moves research on the crime drop closer to the analysis of social mechanisms by demonstrating that micro-level associations between theoretically relevant, proximal variables, and delinquency account for macro-level change.

Objectives We examined the effects of victimization on several aspects of well-being in a longitudinal study of a general population sample. Previous research has often been inconclusive, as it was largely based on cross-sectional data and prone to problems of unobserved heterogeneity and selection bias. We examined both between-person differences and within-person changes in well-being in relation to property and violent victimization. We investigated psychological and behavioral dimensions of well-being, controlling for and comparing with the effects of other negative life events. Methods We used data from a two-wave panel survey of 2928 respondents aged 25–89 nested in 140 neighborhoods in two large German cities. We applied random-effects modeling to separate between-person from within-person effects. Results The within-person detrimental effects of victimization were considerably smaller than between-person effects, which reflected preexisting, time-stable factors that distinguish individuals who have experienced victimization from individuals who have not. Detrimental effects concerned fear of crime, generalized trust, and neighborhood satisfaction, but did not extend to emotional well-being or life satisfaction, in contrast to other negative life events. We found empirical support both for adaptation (‘recovery’) effects as well as for anticipation effects. Violent victimization had stronger effects than property victimization, and victimization near the home had stronger effects than victimization elsewhere. Conclusion The findings indicate that violent victimization has palpable detrimental effects on security perceptions, trust and neighborhood satisfaction—but not on emotional well-being and life satisfaction—and that individuals largely recover from the victimization within 18 months.

One of the key observations of delinquency research – that adolescents are more likely to offend during the time spent in the company of peers and without adult supervision – has been supported by recent studies following Situational Action Theory (SAT). According to SAT, exposure to criminogenic settings may influence adolescent behaviour by presenting opportunities and frictions; however, the outcome is seen as conditional on individual crime propensities and the moral context in which opportunities and frictions are encountered. To what extent the behaviour of adolescents in these settings also depends on the delinquent inclinations of their peers is an additional question that has received less attention. In the current study, we use data from a recent German school survey, including network data and a direct measurement of delinquent friends, to test for interactions between unstructured socializing and the crime propensities of respondents, as well as of their friends, and find support for SAT. In this context the measurement of ‘delinquent friends’ becomes important because its association with an adolescent’s own delinquency is likely to be overestimated when respondents report on their friends’ behaviour. The novel contribution of this study is to analyse how the interplay between these factors changes if one moves from an indirect to a direct measurement of friends’ delinquency. We show that the influence of situations and opportunities is unduly diminished when using the indirect measurement.

As the most serious crime, homicide is both relevant and suitable for cross-national comparisons. The global homicide rate of ca. 6 per 100,000 people is an average of hugely diverging national rates ranging from 0.25 in Singapore to ca. 100 in El Salvador. The validity of global homicide statistics suffers from various differences in definitions as well as reporting and registration processes. Both criminal justice and causes of death statistics are used by the World Health Organization to construct rates, yet these are available only for a minority of countries. An overview on homicide in history and non-state societies shows that violence levels were considerably higher compared to those in today’s developed world and have dropped dramatically in Europe and North America during the early modern period. The rates first increased and then declined between ca.1960 and today in most developed nations in a synchronized manner, hinting at common influences. In recent years, homicide trends have shown a polarizing pattern, with increasing rates in Latin America and decreasing rates in most other world regions, especially East Asia and the Pacific, where rates have fallen below the European average concurrent with rising scores on the Human Development Index. Except in Eastern Europe, the frequency of homicide is strongly linked to the use of firearms, which account for 44% of homicide cases worldwide. Longitudinal studies have produced robust evidence for the pivotal role of deprivation and inequality in fostering lethal violence and of social welfare policies in reducing it. Although the transition to democratic political systems seems to increase homicide rates temporarily, the legitimacy of state institutions and the suppression of corruption are connected to lower homicide rates. Because of conceptual and methodological problems, questions concerning the generalizability of effects across space and time remain. Nevertheless, the research findings are sufficiently robust to draw important conclusions for violence prevention: reductions in poverty and income inequality, investments in welfare policies and gender equality, and improvements in the legitimacy of state institutions will help to bring homicide rates down.

Although urban disorder has played a central role in neighborhood research, its impact may have been overstated in studies relying on the subjective perception of survey respondents only. Research on the “perception bias”—defined as the divergence between respondents’ subjective assessments and systematic observations of disorder—has revealed the ambiguous nature of disorder and opened a door to the analysis of the social construction of this environmental cognition. Using survey and observational data from 140 small neighborhoods in two German cities, we advance this research by focusing on the moderating role of residents’ interethnic contacts and attitudes. The results show that the effects of neighborhood minority concentration on the perception bias are conditional on the residents’ interethnic contacts and xenophobic attitudes. These findings highlight the subjectivity of disorder perceptions and caution against a naive understanding of Broken Windows theory.

Next to exclusionary and discriminatory practices in other live domains, tense police–adolescent relations and the treatment of ethnic minority adolescents by the police are discussed as the foremost trigger for urban riots across Europe. Discretionary identity checks and ‘stop and search’ practices are particularly contentious. Situated in a country that has not experienced urban riots by marginalized and ethnic minority young people yet, our study investigates the impact of police behaviour, in particular stop and search practices, on the quality of interactions between police and young people in Germany. The study is based on extensive participant observation of police patrols, in-depth interviews with police officers and a large-scale standardized youth survey. Qualitative and quantitative evidence unequivocally suggest the absence of discriminatory practices by the police based on the ethnic background of adolescents and an overall positive character of police–adolescent relations. However, transparency – explaining the reasons for police actions – and adhering to formal rules cannot be said to be the primary attributes of the proactive control actions we observed. Rather, informal adaption strategies seemed to prevail. These findings shed new light on the question of how police authority is negotiated on the streets and contribute to the search for causes of violent protests against the police.

One of the most robust predictors of fear of crime is age: Older people tend to be more fearful. Yet, many questions beyond the basic cross-sectional relationship remain unexplored. We investigate cohort effects on fear of crime, applying graphical analyses and a version of the hierarchical age-period-cohort (HAPC) analysis to eight waves of the German subset of the European Social Survey. We hypothesize that health improvements and the educational expansion in postwar Germany led to a decreasing cohort trend, and that children exposed to traumatic experiences and adverse living conditions during and after World War II report higher levels of perceived insecurity throughout the life course. We argue that cross-sectional age differences are, in fact, to a large extent cohort effects, mediated by improved self-rated health and increasing education. The analyses also unveil a recent period effect after 2014. These novel findings add considerably to the understanding of the temporal dynamics of fear of crime.

International audience; By analysing French and German police stop and search on the streets based on embedded observations in police patrols and findings of a large school survey, this article comparatively questions their determinants. Control practices diverge in their frequency: the German police officers control less proactively than their French counterparts. The targets of controls also differ: a concentration on visible minorities is much more pervasive among the French police officers. These divergences may be explained by contrasted professional orientations, especially the importance given to the crime control agenda, and state/society relation

Adolescents' attitudes to and relations with police can and have been analysed on many different levels. This chapter answers the two overarching questions: what are the conditions under which adolescent trust in the police emerges in France and Germany; and to what extent do the factors which foster or diminish trust differ between these countries? It attempts to implement a more complex approach of combining the micro-level of adolescents' actual experiences of policing with the meso-level of neighbourhood conditions and the macro-level of cross-national differences. Issues of social and national identity in France and Germany are further complicated by religion, especially for the largest minority group of Muslim faith, specifically Maghrebian in France and Turkish in Germany. Adolescents' daily lives in socially and ethnically segregated cities are shaped by their different neighbourhood contexts. National differences in trust in the police can also be associated with differences in the performance of their task in different policing strategies.

Police-citizen relations are in the public spotlight following outbursts of anger and violence. Such clashes often happen as a response to fatal police shootings, racial or ethnic discrimination, or the mishandling of mass protests. But even in such cases, citizens’ assessment of the police differs considerably across social groups. This raises the question of the sources and impediments of citizens’ trust and support for police. Why are police-citizen relations much better in some countries than in others? Are police-minority relations doomed to be strained? And which police practices and policing policies generate trust and legitimacy?Research on police legitimacy has been centred on US experiences, and relied on procedural justice as the main theoretical approach. This book questions whether this approach is suitable and sufficient to understand public attitudes towards the police across different countries and regions of the world. This volume shows that the impact of macro-level conditions, of societal cleavages, and of state and political institutions on police-citizen relations has too often been neglected in contemporary research.Building on empirical studies from around the world as well as cross-national comparisons, this volume considerably expands current perspectives on the sources of police legitimacy and citizens’ trust in the police. Combining the analysis of micro-level interactions with a perspective on the contextual framework and varying national conditions, the contributions to this book illustrate the strength of a broadened perspective and lead to ask how specific national frameworks shape the experiences of policing.

This introduction presents an overview of key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book broadens and expands current perspectives on the sources of police legitimacy and citizens' trust in the police. During the last 20 years, police legitimacy has emerged as an important academic theme and a political issue, but empirical studies of police-citizen relations have existed in the USA as early as 1930. Procedural justice theory posits that perceptions of fair procedures have a strong causal influence on whether the public ascribe legitimacy to legal authorities. Ben Bradford, Jonathan Jackson and Mike Hough use data from the European Social Survey to assess whether accounting for 'modes of incorporation' reduce the statistical effect of a dichotomous majority versus minority indicator on police legitimacy. A series of hypotheses relating to the role of institutions might be worth testing in future research. Regimes and quality of government may influence the quality of policing.

Dass Einflusse der Lebensumwelten einen positiven oder negativen Beitrag zur Entwicklung von Kindern und Jugendlichen leisten und auch an der Entstehung von Delinquenz beteiligt sein konnen, ist keine uberraschende Erkenntnis, auch wenn sie in den Forschungsansatzen zu Jugenddelinquenz lange Zeit keine angemessene Aufmerksamkeit gefunden hat. Effekte sozialraumlicher Kontexte auf Individuen zu untersuchen ist aufwandig und fugt der ohnehin schwierigen Theoriebildung und empirischen Analyse eine weitere Komplexitatsstufe hinzu.

The aim of this study is to investigate potential differences between homicide-suicide cases in which the perpetrator does or does not write a suicide note. As homicide-suicides are complex types of lethal violence for which the aggressor cannot be held accountable, suicide notes may be a valuable source of information about the background of these cases and the perpetrators’ motives. We use a national sample of N = 288 homicide-suicide cases in Germany applying group comparisons and chi-square tests for relevant variables. Perpetrators killing their own children and perpetrators leaving children behind before killing themselves write significantly more suicide notes than other perpetrators. Even though note writers and no note writers are similar regarding most sociodemographic characteristics, other differences question the generalizability between these 2 groups.

Zeichen physischer und sozialer Unordnung im öffentlichen Raum gelten im „Broken Windows“-Ansatz als eine maßgebliche Ursache für Unsicherheitsgefühle und den dadurch verstärkten Niedergang großstädtischer Wohngebiete. Die empirische Bestätigung für diese These ist jedoch schwach, da viele Studien auf subjektiven Wahrnehmungen basieren, welche mit dem Unsicherheitsempfinden eng korreliert sind. Wir untersuchen anhand unabhängiger und systematischer Beobachtungen, welche individuellen und sozialräumlichen Eigenschaften den subjektiven „Wahrnehmungsfilter“ der Bewohner*innen prägen und wie stark die Wirkung von Unordnung auf das Unsicherheitsgefühl tatsächlich ist. Die Auswertungen basieren auf der Bewohner*innenbefragung des Projekts SENSIKO in Köln und Essen mit ca. 6500 Befragten in 140 Wohngebieten sowie auf systematischen sozialen Beobachtungen und Strukturdaten. Es zeigt sich in Übereinstimmung mit früheren Studien, dass die Wahrnehmung sowohl von Unordnung als auch von Unsicherheit maßgeblich vom Anteil der sichtbaren Minderheiten angetrieben wird. Erstmals wird gezeigt, dass dieser Effekt sehr stark von den individuellen Einstellungen der Bewohner*innen zu Migration abhängig ist. Das Ausmaß systematisch beobachteter Unordnung hat über den Effekt der ethnischen Diversität hinaus nur in Essen, nicht aber in Köln einen furchtsteigernden Effekt. Die Ergebnisse unterstreichen die Herausforderung, die dem Zusammenleben in Großstädten durch eine wachsende Migration erwächst, und weisen zugleich auf die starke Kontextabhängigkeit der Wirkungen sozialräumlicher Problemlagen auf das lokale Unsicherheitsempfinden hin.

In recent literature state action strategies and collective sensibilities condense to complex regimes of dealing with deviance and marginality. Thereby, national practices of handling social difference combine with public sentiments and mentalities to form coherent cultures of social control. In this article we investigate whether homogeneous cultures of control can be observed in a sample of European countries. Cluster analysis identifies three distinct regimes of governing social marginality: (1) an inclusive regime wherein generous welfare provision and little incarceration merge with low levels of fear of crime and public punitiveness, against the backdrop of considerable trust in public institutions; (2) an exclusionary regime of modest welfare benefits and high imprisonment rates, wherein fear of crime, punitive attitudes and low confidence in governmental institutions are widespread; and (3) a hybrid regime in which inclusive and exclusionary elements form a fragile alliance. The inclusive regime can be found mainly in Scandinavia, the exclusionary regime is implemented particularly in Eastern Europe.

This study examines whether having delinquent friends interacts with other peer-related variables in the explanation of adolescent offending. We hypothesise that the relationship between delinquent friends and offending might be conditioned by the effect of (1) how much time they spend with their friends, (2) how much time they spend in unstructured routine activities and (3) their emotional relationship with their friends. To test these three hypotheses we use data from two independent samples of young adolescents in Halmstad, Sweden ( N = 1,003) and in Cologne and Freiburg, Germany ( N = 955). The results found strong support that the effect of delinquent friends on adolescent offending is conditional on the level of time they spend in unstructured routine activities. This indicates that delinquent friends have a stronger effect on offending for adolescents who often spend their free time in unstructured routine activities.

This article assesses the association between national welfare state regimes and public insecurities about crime across Europe. A multilevel analysis of respondents in 23 countries sampled in the 2004/05 European Social Survey finds a strong relationship between insecurities about crime and national levels of social expenditure and decommodification of social welfare policy. Some social protection measures are more strongly associated with national levels of fear of crime than others, especially public non-monetary support for children and families that strengthens the individual's capacity to cope with problems on their own. We conclude with the idea that state-level social protections may buffer the development of widespread fear of crime by increasing self-efficacy and thereby mitigating various social and economic fears. (author's abstract)

This paper investigates how adolescents react to living in urban areas of concentrated poverty, and whether contextual effects on psychological strain and delinquent behaviour exist, using a cross-sectional youth survey in 61 neighbourhoods in two German cities and a rural area (n = ca. 5300). Multi-level analysis is applied to estimate neighbourhood effects controlling for individual socio-demographic composition. Results suggest that neighbourhood effects on delinquency exist which are, however, dependent on the spatial orientation of adolescents' routine activities and peer networks. Adolescents with an immigrant background do not seem to be influenced by neighbourhood conditions in the same way that native adolescents are. In particular, native girls react to neighbourhood disadvantage by resorting to violence. A tentative cross-classified multi-level model suggests that schools and neighbourhood contexts simultaneously affect adolescents' delinquency.

Zusammenfassung Eine der zentralen Annahmen der Forschung zur Jugenddelinquenz ist, dass Jugendliche besonders dann Straftaten begehen, wenn sie sich in Begleitung anderer Jugendlicher und fernab der Aufsicht durch Erwachsene befinden. Belege hierfur finden sich auch in neueren Studien, die auf dem Theoriegerust der »Situational Action Theory« (SAT) aufbauen. Die SAT nimmt an, dass wahrend gemeinsamer Freizeit mit zur Delinquenz neigenden Freunden Tatgelegenheiten und Risiken verstarkt werden – dies jedoch in Abhangigkeit individuell sehr unterschiedlicher devianter Neigungen. Die Delinquenz von Freunden ist in empirischen Untersuchungen besonders schwer zu messen, und in der aktuellen Forschung finden sich hierzu interessante Ansatze. Verlasst man sich, wie traditionell ublich, auf Angaben, die Befragte uber ihre Freunde machen (indirekte Messung), so wird die eigene Delinquenz haufig auf die Delinquenz der Freunde projiziert und damit der Zusammenhang zwischen eigener Delinquenz und der der Freunde uberschatzt. Eine Alternative stellt die direkte Messung der Delinquenz der Freunde dar, die in der Regel ein realistischeres Bild wiedergibt. Dabei sind die Freunde uber Netzwerkdaten mit den Befragten verbunden und geben selbst Auskunft uber ihr Verhalten. In unserer Untersuchung vergleichen wir anhand neuer Daten einer Schulbefragung die direkte und indirekte Messung der Delinquenz der Freunde im Hinblick auf ihre Rolle bei der Erklarung von Delinquenz im Rahmen der SAT. Es zeigt sich, dass die indirekte Messung den Einfluss von Situationen und Gelegenheiten verdeckt. So zahlt in multivariaten Modellen fur die Vorhersage der eigenen Delinquenz lediglich, welche personlichen Neigungen und welche Freunde Jugendliche haben. Bei einer direkten Messung zahlt daruber hinaus auch, ob man mit diesen Freunden einen risikoreichen Freizeitstil teilt.

The article reports trends in crime and criminal justice and reviews publications in key areas of criminology in Germany. Criminal statistics show divergent trends in recent years, with rising drug and violent offences and stable or falling property offences. Statistics on sanction practices show a long-term trend towards informal and community sanctions despite some increase in prison sentences in recent years. German reunification and a subsequent increase in immigration have put some strain on the criminal justice system. On the whole, however, neither penal practice nor popular attitudes as measured by periodic surveys support the notion of a ‘punitive turn’ in Germany. Stability and a certain inertia prevail in German crime policies. Criminology has not grown into an independent academic discipline but is an interdisciplinary research field to which law, psychology, sociology and other disciplines contribute. There is still a noticeable rift in German criminology between ‘mainstream’ and ‘critical’ approaches, contributing to a rather incoherent research landscape. Recent research has particularly focused on youth crime and violence, especially xenophobic violence, on ethnic minorities, and on organized crime. The review concludes with proposals for strengthening criminological research in Germany.

Umfragebasierte Studien uber Verbreitung und Ursachen abweichenden Verhaltens hangen masgeblich von der Ehrlichkeit der Befragten ab. Die Validitat von Selbstberichten abweichenden Verhaltens wird jedoch nur selten untersucht. Wir berichten uber die externe Validierung selbstberichteter Delinquenz mannlicher Jugendlicher auf der Basis zweier unterschiedlicher Stichproben — einer mundlichen Befragung im Haushalt (N=309) und einer schriftlichen Befragung im Klassenzimmer (N=337)-, die 1999 und 2000 in Freiburg durchgefuhrt wurden und fur einen Abgleich der selbstberichteten Polizeikontakte mit den tatsachlichen polizeilichen Registrierungen auf Individual- und Aggregatebene genutzt werden. Der individuelle Datenabgleich der mundlich Befragten ergibt neben einer Mehrheit ehrlicher Polizeiauffalliger eine erhebliche Zahl sowohl ‚falsch negativer‘ als auch ‚falsch positiver‘ Nennungen, die vor allem auf Befragte mit niedrigem Bildungs- und Sozialstatus sowie mit Migrationshintergrund zuruckgehen. Da diese Gruppen zusatzlich eine hohe Nonresponse aufweisen, ist mit der Unterschatzung von Zusammenhangen sozialstruktureller Faktoren mit Jugenddelinquenz zu rechnen. Die Schulbefragung erbringt demgegenuber hohere und realistischere Pravalenzraten, jedoch deuten Vergleiche der beiden Befragungsmodi auf differentielle Effekte sozialer Erwunschtheit bei Schulbefragungen hin, die die Validitat der Antworten von Jugendlichen mit hohem Bildungsstatus in Frage stellen. Ergebnisse von Befragungsstudien zur selbstberichteten Delinquenz sollten daher grundsatzlich vorsichtig interpretiert werden, und weitere Methodenstudien zum Antwortverhalten bei Gruppenbefragungen erscheinen uns geboten.

The extent and nature of contextual effects on juvenile offending are frequent subjects of current research, mainly in the USA. After a short literature review, this paper presents empirical results of a new study which hints at the existence of neighbourhood contextual effects on serious offending by adolescents. The study is based on three types of cross-sectional data on 61 neighbourhoods in two German cities and a rural area: a self-report survey of students aged about 13 to 16, a separate survey of residents in the survey neighbourhoods, and census and administrative data on the same neighbourhoods. Multilevel analysis is applied to identify and explain the neighbourhood-level variance of selfreported serious juvenile offending. Hypotheses from both main traditions of theoretical reasoning about contextual effects on juvenile delinquency - subcultural and disorganization theories - are supported by the empirical findings. The spatial concentration of adolescents with attitudes typical of delinquent subcultures increases the likelihood of serious offending net of relevant individual predictors, whereas the social capital of neighbourhoods (as measured by the independent survey of residents) reduces it. Methodological problems of applying multilevel analysis to delinquency research are discussed.

Zur Untersuchung selbstberichteter Delinquenz von Jugendlichen wurden in den letzten Jahren immer häufiger schriftliche Schulbefragungen durchgeführt, während haushaltsbasierte mündliche Interviews nur noch selten zum Einsatz kamen. Über die Auswirkungen dieses Methodenwechsels ist jedoch wenig bekannt. Wir berichten über die Ergebnisse einer Methodenstudie, bei der beide Erhebungsverfahren anhand von Stichproben aus derselben Grundgesamtheit und mit demselben Erhebungsinstrument verglichen werden. Es zeigen sich zum einen erhebliche Unterschiede in den Prävalenzraten der selbstberichteten Delinquenz, die bei der Schulbefragung deutlich höher lie-gen als bei der mündlichen Befragung im Haushalt. Dies interpretieren wir als Ergebnis einer höheren Ausschöpfungsrate und einer geringeren Selekti-vität des Stichprobenverfahrens. Zum anderen zeigen sich unterschiedliche Zusammenhangsmuster der Delinquenz mit anderen Variablen, die möglicherweise auf Kontexteffekte der Befragungssituation im Klassenverband hindeuten. Weitere Methodenstudien zu diesem Problem sind erforderlich.