The Empowerment of Community Activities for Preventing Delinquency

A Neighborhood-Level Analysis of Process and Effect

Abstract

Structural equation modeling was used to empirically examine a theoretical model of the process and effect of empowerment of community activities for preventing juvenile delinquency. A questionnaire survey was administered to 10,110 junior high school students, 9,180 parents and 1,421 volunteer activists selected from 92 public school districts throughout the country. The students were asked about their informal relationships with adult residents in the community and recent experiences of delinquency. The parents were asked to report their participation in community activities to prevent juvenile delinquency. The volunteer activists were asked to report their sense of control over their neighborhoods and evaluation of their activities to prevent juvenile delinquency. Since school districts were the units of analysis, the responses to the questionnaire were aggregated to produce neighborhood-level variables, which were analyzed using structural equation modeling. The main results are as follows : 1) More democratic and efficient management is likely to encourage involvement by volunteer activists mainly through increasing their sense of control over their neighborhoods. 2) High levels of participation by volunteer activists is likely to reduce delinquent activities among junior high school students primarily through the increase of informal social control of youth activities by community residents.