"Code of the Hallway": Examining the Contextual Effects of School Subculture on Physical Violence, Sexual Offending, and Nonviolent Delinquency

This dissertation draws upon the subculture perspective that previously has been used to explain variation in crime across communities. It applies this perspective to schools in order to explore whether schools serve as an important context of cultural variation. That is, this dissertation examines how the subculture of a school- that is, its "code of the hallway"- may influence students' behavior, including delinquency. Further this dissertation assesses whether the school subculture has differential effects on delinquency that occurs in school compared to out of school, whether its influences are specific to physical violence or more general, and whether the influences are gendered. The data used comes from a NIDA funded project and consists of 3,976 students who provided data in at least one of the fours waves. The students were embedded within a total of 115 unique school contexts. The analytic strategy used is hierarchical linear modeling due to having students nested within schools non-randomly. The analysis supports that for some types of offending school-level subculture is significant and that the "code of the hallway" does influence out-of-school behavior for some types of offending. Also, school-level subculture is more important in explaining male offending compared to female offending. Limitations of the data and methods used are discussed, as well as, directions for future research.

Name thesis:degree_name

PhD

Level thesis:degree_level

doctoral

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Education, Criminal Justice, and Human Services: Criminal Justice

Grantor dc:publisher

University of Cincinnati

Year dc:date

2012

Author dc:creator

• Swartz, Kristin

Contributors dc:contributor

• Wilcox, Pamela

• Criminology
• culture
• schools
• contextual effects

Statement dc:rights

• unrestricted
• This thesis or dissertation is protected by copyright: all rights reserved. It may not be copied or redistributed beyond the terms of applicable copyright laws.

Language dc:language

English

Repository record dc:identifier

http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1343154599

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:etd.ohiolink.edu:ucin1343154599