The Influence of Structural Characteristics and Street Codes on Violent Female Offenders: A Decade After Anderson’s Initial Observations

A large number of studies have examined predictors of female crime quantities yet considerably less attention has been directed toward exploring patterns in the nature or quality of female violence within and across communities. Although research consistently demonstrates that females engage in less criminal behavior than males, research on the variability across contexts is somewhat sparse. The authors conduct analyses to determine if Anderson’s initial observations of female violence in neighborhoods inundated with the code of the streets persist a decade after his initial ethnographic account. Specifically, we examine incident-level data from the National Incident Based Reporting System with contextual-level data on the cities in which the incidents occurred. We use hierarchical linear and nonlinear modeling techniques to explore variations in predictors of offender gun use and extent of victim injury in violent female encounters. Supporting Anderson’s initial accounts for street females and prior research we find the probability of gun usage and level of victim injury is not significantly influenced by differences in community context, and specifically not exacerbated by the types of conditions that make the code of the street locally salient.

Exploring the Measurement Quality of an Attitudinal Scale of Street Code-Related Violence: Similarities and Differences Across Groups and Contexts

Elijah Anderson’s ‘‘code of the streets’’ has received considerable attention as a promising approach to understanding youths violence. One area which has received scant attention, however, is the measurement quality of the street code concept. Using data collected from more than 3,300 middle school youths residing in seven geographically and demographically diverse U.S. cities between 2007 and 2009, the authors seek to answer the following questions: (a) What are the psychometric properties of the attitudes toward street code-related violence scale (in terms of dimensionality and internal consistency) across demographic subgroups (i.e., race/ethnicity, sex, and age groups) and social contexts (i.e., cities)? and (b) To what extent does the level of acceptance of the attitudes associated with street code-related violence vary across demographic subgroups and social contexts? Results illustrate that the scale performs similarly across groups and contexts, but the actual level of acceptance of street code-related violence varies considerably.