The frequency of student misconduct and the characteristics of offenders were studied at Lehigh University, Pennsylvania, from June 1, 1978 to June 1, 1981. Three types of misconduct were examined: harm to others, destruction of property, and academic violations. Misconduct was operationally defined and subcategories were developed where greater…

One of 52 theoretical papers on school crime and its relation to poverty, this chapter proposes that many forms of youthful misbehavior (particularly vandalism in high schools) are rooted in the normal dynamics of culture among youth. Typologies are used for understanding the social organization of the peer group world and the issue of high school…

One of 52 theoretical papers on school crime and its relation to poverty, this chapter presents a model of negotiation as a means to resolve school conflict. The assumption is that school conflict is inevitable, but student delinquency is not. Delinquent behavior results from the way that the school deals with conflict. Students resort to…

One of 52 theoretical papers on school crime and its relation to poverty, this chapter, by utilizing ethnographic data, develops an understanding of the interrelationships among administrative styles, deterrence, commitment, and disruption. The effect of change in administrative styles on the character of order and disruption in a desegregated…

One of 52 theoretical papers on school crime and its relation to poverty, this chapter maintains that young persons whose behavior patterns have been consistently outside the range of acceptability in a community face the same problems as do deviant adults. School personnel are often reluctant to cope with the proven behavior problems because the…

One of 52 theoretical papers on school crime and its relation to poverty, this chapter states that the problem of school crime is not a school problem, but a cultural problem manifesting itself in schools. The cultural shifts of the last generation are creating adolescent needs that schools were never organized to deal with, and, therefore,…

One of 52 theoretical papers on school crime and its relation to poverty, this chapter examines the relationship between the major goal of affective educational programs--improved student self-esteem--and school crime. The author believes that by focusing on the whole person, not just the cognitive domain, schools can have an impact on the school…

One of 52 theoretical papers on school crime and its relation to poverty, this chapter explores programs designed to prevent or to reduce student crime and violence in secondary schools that are based on the assumption that pupils are competent to make rational decisions and take rational actions, and programs that assume pupils are not competent.…

One of 52 theoretical papers on school crime and its relation to poverty, this chapter is essentially a study of the relations between delinquency and the school system in Britain and an analysis of the extent to which British experience is relevant to the study of delinquency in the United States and in Canada. There is little serious crime in…

One of 52 theoretical papers on school crime and its relation to poverty, this chapter reports that there is a growing trend in this country to blame youth crime on parental overpermissiveness. Available data fail to support this and show that all types of crime, including school crime, develop within families and school systems emphasizing…

Estimates of the precise costs of school vandalism vary widely, but the seriousness of the problem is beyond dispute. It is possible to get a general idea of the nature and motivation of most vandals and, in doing so, begin to understand the problem and devise solutions for it. There are two basic approaches to vandalism prevention. Currently, as…

One of 52 theoretical papers on school crime and its relation to poverty, this chapter states that social scientists and others have argued that schools contribute to delinquency by their failure to prepare students properly for later life. It follows that the solution is better schools and better education. The author argues that schools make…

One of 52 theoretical papers on school crime and its relation to poverty, this chapter discusses the results of three studies made of subjects in a residential vocational training center for youth. The first study correlated demographic, medical history, and behavioral variables to center adjustment. The second study examined possible…

One of 52 theoretical papers on school crime and its relation to poverty, this chapter deals with the intrinsic motivation that the systemic structure of a school provides for opportunities for both prosocial and antisocial behavior. On the basis of previous research, the authors propose that the state of enjoyment occurs when a person is…

One of 52 theoretical papers on school crime and its relation to poverty, this chapter proposes that school crime and disruption be conceptualized as a function of the congruence or fit between the personal characteristics of individual students and the social environments of the schools they attend. In developing a conceptual model, a selective…