Effects of Socioeconomic Context on Official Reaction to Juvenile Delinquency
作者利用调查数据、警方记录和法院记录，考察了社会经济背景对青少年犯罪官方反应的“两层”影响。结果发现，社区层面的社会经济地位（SES）与警方接触呈负相关，且这种关系独立于自我报告的实际违法行为。另一方面，个人层面的SES与后续法院转介呈负相关，且独立于自我报告违法和警方记录。这一结论对男性和女性均成立，并在控制了违法普遍性、频率、类型、种族、家庭结构、不良同伴和帮派成员身份后依然稳健。作者认为，自我报告与官方记录之间的差异并非单纯源于测量误差或行为领域不同，而是社会控制的结构性模式所致。
This study uses survey data in conjunction with police and court records to examine the two-tiered effects of socioeconomic context on official police reaction to juvenile delinquency. The results suggest that neighborhood SES has an inverse effect on police contacts independent of actual law-violative behavior as measured by self-reported delinquency. On the other hand, individual SES has a negative influence on subsequent court referrals independent of both self-reported delinquency and police records. This general result holds for males as well as females, and persists despite controls for the prevalence, frequency and type of delinquency, race, family structure, delinquent peers, and gang membership. Discrepancies between self-reports of deviance and official records are thus not simply due to errors in measurement or different domains of behavior, but to structurally patterned sources of social control.