Parenting and Time Adolescents Spend in Criminogenic Settings: A Between- and Within-person Analysis

Abstract

Although there has been increasing interest in explaining adolescents' crime involvement by the time adolescents spend in criminogenic settings, little is known about its determinants. We examine the extent to which (change in) parenting is related to (change in) time spent in criminogenic settings. Time spent in criminogenic settings is measured in a comprehensive way by including social and environmental characteristics of micro settings (200 by 200 m). Longitudinal multilevel analysis on two waves of panel data on a Dutch sample of 603 adolescents (age 12-19) showed that more parental monitoring, more parental limit setting and a higher quality of the parent adolescent relationship were related to less time spent in criminogenic settings (between-person). Decreases in parental limit setting and in the quality of the parent-adolescent relationship were related to increases in the amount of time spent in criminogenic settings over time (within-person). These findings emphasize the important role parents continue to play during adolescence.