Are Bullying and Crime Distinct Phenomena? How Criminology Can Inform Research on Bullying
Abstract
Bullying is a prevalent threat facing today’s youth, and is associated with a number of negative lifelong consequences. Therefore, bullying has attracted a great deal of scholarly attention. Surprisingly however, this body of research tends to treat bullying as a unique phenomenon, despite the criminological literature having highlighted many of the same factors and characteristics predictive of bullying involvement. This suggests that bullying is neither new nor distinct, but simply another manifestation of an underlying propensity towards deviant behavior, and that the vast body of knowledge on crime and deviance should be equally applicable to bullying.
Using data from a nationally representative school-based sample of American adolescents (N = 10,123), three separate analyses were undertaken to highlight the shared etiological roots of bullying and deviance/crime more generally, and the utility of criminological theory to the study of bullying perpetration. First, a latent class analysis of deviant behaviors (property crime, violent crime, other crime, substance abuse, and bullying) revealed four distinct classes of offenders, and bullies did not emerge as a separate class. This supports the argument that bullying is simply another manifestation of criminality. Second, a self-control model was estimated for each of these same deviant behaviors. Generally, the results indicate that lower levels of self-control are associated with an increased likelihood of participation in each outcome, supporting the argument that self-control theory can serve as an explanation of bullying. Third, models based on general strain theory were estimated for each outcome. In general, the results suggest that higher levels of strain lead to increased anger, which in turn leads to increased likelihood of involvement in each outcome, supporting the argument that general strain theory is applicable to the understanding of bullying involvement.
Altogether, these results suggest that bullying is neither new nor distinct, but rather, just another manifestation of a tendency towards deviant behavior, and shares common etiological roots as other forms of misbehavior. This research contributes to both the criminological and bullying literatures by demonstrating the similarities between bullying and other forms of crime/deviance, and by demonstrating the strengths of criminological theories in understanding bullying.
Description
Keywords
Sociology, Criminology and Penology
Citation
Essemont, C. (2016). Are Bullying and Crime Distinct Phenomena? How Criminology Can Inform Research on Bullying (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/24992