Youth spend much of their time socializing and hanging out with friends, as well as engaging in extracurricular activities, in areas surrounding their schools. Additionally, many studies document a criminogenic effect of schools on the surrounding neighborhood. Yet little is known about how the structural characteristics of those areas shape adolescent involvement in criminal and delinquent behavior. Using recent data drawn from surveys of adolescents in three major U.S. cities, the American Community Survey, and the US Census, we analyze (1) the effects of school neighborhood contexts on adolescent crime and (2) the extent to which individual propensity (i.e., moral beliefs and self-control) moderates the effects of the school neighborhood context. We find that concentrated disadvantage and ethnic heterogeneity of the school area impact delinquent behavior only among youth with certain moral beliefs. Our findings highlight the need to identify the conditions under which social context matters and to focus on different types of neighborhoods beyond residential areas.

青少年大部分时间都花在学校周边地区与朋友社交、闲逛以及参加课外活动。此外，许多研究记录了学校对周边社区的犯罪影响。然而，人们对这些领域的结构特征如何影响青少年参与犯罪和不良行为知之甚少。利用从美国三个主要城市的青少年调查、美国社区调查和美国人口普查中提取的最新数据，我们分析了 (1) 学校社区环境对青少年犯罪的影响，以及 (2) 个人倾向（即、道德信仰和自我控制）调节学校邻里环境的影响。我们发现，学区的集中劣势和种族异质性仅影响具有一定道德信仰的青少年的犯罪行为。我们的研究结果强调需要确定社会背景发挥重要作用的条件，并关注住宅区以外的不同类型的社区。