The report examines the links between various aspects of school experience, including commitment to school, attachment to teachers, experiences of truancy and exclusion, involvement in bullying, and misbehaviour at school and other forms of delinquency.

The aims of the research programme were: to investigate the factors leading to offending and desistance from offending; to examine the striking contrast between males and females in offending; and to develop new theories to explain offending behaviour and to contribute to practical policies targeting young people.

Longitudinal data was collected from a single age cohort of 4,328 young people covering the whole city. It was collected via self report questionnaires, semi-structured interviews, school, social work and children’s hearings records, teacher questionnaires, police juvenile liaison officer and Scottish criminal records, a parent survey, and a geographic information system.

Attachment to school is related to young people’s behaviour in school and more widely to delinquent and criminal conduct. The most important dimension is attachment to teachers, but the belief that school success will bring later rewards is also important. Boys from working class or unemployed households are more likely to have been excluded from school than girls and those from non-manual households. The research indicates that attachment to teachers at age thirteen was related to lower levels of misbehaviour and delinquency at age fifteen and suggests that controlling misbehaviour in school is important because such misbehaviour tends to lead to later criminal conduct.

Centre for Law and Society, University of Edinburgh
Phone: +44 131 650 2006
edinburgh.study@ed.ac.uk

01/06/2006

01/06/2006

David Smith

research

Urban Policy > Security & crime prevention > Anti-crime policy

Youth crime