Subcultural Values, Crime, and Negative Social Capital for Chinese Offenders

Abstract

Subcultural theories of crime have received decreasing attention over the past few decades because they have not held up well to empirical tests. Overall, a direct causal relationship between subcultural values and criminal behavior has not been found empirically. Given the importance of subcultural theories, this article proposes a theoretical modification to the causal relationship: Subcultural values cause deviant or criminal behavior under the condition that an offender has access to negative social capital. The article further proposes the notion of integrated measure to resolve the classical difficulty in independently measuring a subcultural value. The article provides a preliminary test of the modified theoretical relationship between violent subcultural values and criminal behavior using inmate self-report data from Tianjin, China. The analyses find that violent values increase the hazards of recidivism for Chinese gang members and co-offenders but not for non–gang members and single offenders.