Differential Involvement in Delinquency: Toward an Interpretation in Terms of Reputation Management

Abstract

This chapter discusses the concept of self-presentation into that of reputation management and explains how this clarifies the aspects of pattern of differential involvement in delinquency. Clues to sex differences in delinquent involvement are provided by the possibility of sex differences in several of the factors that are otherwise related to delinquency. These include differential parental supervision and consequent segregation of audiences, the differential significance of educational achievement for boys and girls, and possibly differences in relevant knowledge. The strong sex differences that have been found in attitudes to authority are more a reflection of differential inclination to choose a delinquent identity than an explanation of it. The generality of individual differences reflects not so much a common psychological structure as communality of social meaning. Those activities that distinguish the high from the low scorer on self-report measures are those that exemplify and express a delinquent identity. These diverse activities have similarity of social meaning in common. The chapter also discusses that the age pattern reflects the fact that the contingencies in the social environment, although relatively stable, are not entirely so. Between childhood and adolescence, the pattern of social participation changes as the individual moves increasingly beyond the supervision and protection of the family home, from a small school to a bigger school and from parent–child to peer–peer relationships. It changes again with the progress of educational career, with the move beyond school and possibly into work, and with a shift from single-sex to mixed-sex participation and possibly marriage.