Culture as Values or Culture in Action? Street Codes and Student Violent Offending

This study draws upon two competing cultural perspectives-culture-as-values and culture-in-action-in order to examine the relationship between street codes and the propensity to violently victimize others. Specifically, it explores whether individual-level and school-level street codes, net of one another, are related to three types of violence: assault, robbery and sexual battery. In addition, it considers whether these effects vary according to three contextual characteristics: 1) the location of the offending-in-school versus out-of-school; 2) school-level economic disadvantage; and 3) school efficacy. Three-level ordinal logistic regression models are estimated using four waves of survey data from over 3,000 students nested within 103 schools. Results provide evidence that individual-level street codes are related to violent offending in a manner that is, largely speaking, not tied to context. However, there is some evidence that the effects of school-level street codes on offending differ between outside of school and in school settings and are conditioned by levels of school disadvantage and efficacy. Overall, some support is offered for both the culture-as-values and culture-in-action perspectives.