Abstract
The present study examined relations among neighborhood structural and social characteristics, parenting practices, peer group affiliations, and delinquency among a group of serious adolescent offenders. The sample of 14–18-year-old boys (
N
= 488) was composed primarily of economically disadvantaged, ethnic-minority youth living in urban communities. The results indicate that weak neighborhood social organization is indirectly related to delinquency through its associations with parenting behavior and peer deviance and that a focus on just 1 of these microsystems can lead to oversimplified models of risk for juvenile offending. The authors also find that community social ties may confer both pro- and antisocial influences to youth, and they advocate for a broad conceptualization of neighborhood social processes as these relate to developmental risk for youth living in disadvantaged communities.