Severity of Official Punishment for Delinquency and Change in Interpersonal Relations in Chinese Society

• NCJ Number: 152548
• Journal: Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency Volume: 31 Issue: 4 Dated: (November 1994) Pages: 416-433
• Author(s): L Zhang; S F Messner
• Date Published: 1994
• Length: 18 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: This is a revised version of a paper presented at the 63rd annual meeting of the Eastern Sociological Society, March 25-28, 1993, Boston, MA.

Annotation

This study examines the effects of severity of official punishment for delinquency on the probability of estrangement from four types of significant others -- parents, relatives, friends, and neighbors -- for a sample of youths in Tianjin, China.

Abstract

Drawing on the labeling perspective, the study hypothesized that more severe punishments tend to increase the likelihood that youth experience interpersonal estrangement. The study also hypothesized that the strength of the effects of punishment severity on estrangement will vary across types of interpersonal relations. Given the pre-eminent role of the family in Chinese society, the effect of severity of punishment is expected to be weakest for estrangement from parents and strongest for estrangement from neighbors. The results are generally consistent with expectations, revealing insignificant effects of severity of official punishment for delinquency on estrangement from parents and relatives and significant effects only for estrangement from friends and neighbors. In addition, the observed patterns of estrangement in China differ in certain respects from those previously reported in the United States, which suggests that the consequences of labeling for juvenile delinquency are conditioned by the larger sociocultural context. 2 tables, 15 notes, and 49 references