ABSTRACT

David J. Bordua has noted that sociological theories of delinquency emphasize class position to the virtual exclusion of other characteristics of populations having high rates of delinquency, such as race, geographical origins, and the like. Sex, race, social class, neighborhood, mother's employment, the broken home, size of family, and so forth, are the stuff of which most empirical studies, textbooks, and theories of delinquency are constructed. This chapter uses social class and race to describe the distribution of delinquency in the population, to suggest some of the weaknesses and limitations of the data, to indicate the extent to which it is necessary to control these variables in subsequent analysis. Social class differences with respect to self-reported delinquency are very small. Social class would be an important factor in education even if there were no differences in academic ability among the social classes.