Adolescents' School Experience and Self-reported Offending: An Empirical Elaboration of an Interactional and Developmental School Social Control Theory

Three theories define the social processes involved in adolescent school experience. Individual offending is defined as a result of strain, insufficient bonding, labeling and tracking. It is not our intention to reconcile or integrate these three theories, rather we select some of their concepts in order to incorporate them into a middle range school social control theory of adolescent offending. This interactional and developmental theory is elaborated through regression analysis procedures using longitudinal data drawn from a normative sample of 825 adolescent boys and girls.