Neighborhood and Delinquency: An Assessment of Contextual Effects*

The sociological perspectives which helped formulate the study of delinquency and continue to underlie more specific conceptual frameworks—Social Disorganization, Subculture, and Labeling—point to the importance of contextual effects in the dynamics explaining delinquent and criminal behavior. Yet, systematic examination of such effects has been all but neglected. This paper delineates and empirically assesses neighborhood characteristics postulated to represent contextual factors affecting individual delinquency and criminality. Data were collected from a stratified random sample of adolescent males drawn from 12 New York City neighborhoods. The initial model, designed to refine hypotheses specifying community contextual effects, exhibits a highly satisfactory fit to the data. The framework underscores the importance of considering distinct community contextual effects as well as individual‐level effects. Two neighborhood‐level factors, the effects of which are quite distinct, are important: the community's level of organizational participation and the extent of disorder and criminal subculture. The indirect and direct effects of these factors are elaborated in relation to three measures of de1inquency—namely, self‐reported, officially recorded, and severe self‐reported delinquency.