Juvenile delinquency in Italy and Switzerland: prevalence, characteristics and context of violent offences in both countries

Abstract

Italy and Switzerland participated in 2006 in the Second International Self-Reported Delinquency Survey (ISRD-2) using the same questionnaire. The sample involved more than 9000 pupils (N=5784 in Italy and N=3459 in Switzerland) between 13 and 16 years old. This article compares the involvement in violence against persons and vandalism of youths from both countries and takes into account the socio-economic, family and school contexts, as well as the individual characteristics with the purpose, on the one hand, to identify the variables related to those behaviours and, on the other hand, to check if these relationships are similar in the two countries. Both violence against persons and vandalism are more common in Italy. Multivariate analyses show that in both countries being a male, having a positive attitude towards violence, having a low self-control, living in a disorganized neighbourhood, having a low parental supervision and violence between parents increase the risk of committing violence as well as vandalism. Regarding the differences between both behaviours, the variables being a migrant, being discriminated and having parents addicted to alcohol/drugs increase the risk of committing violent behaviour, but not vandalism. On the contrary, the youth eating daily with their parents and the younger ones commit less vandalism. The relationship between school variables and violent behaviour differs between the two countries; this relationship is stronger in Italy than in Switzerland because of negative attachment to school and school failure. This can be due to such cultural factors as the importance given to the success at school, or to structural factors, such as the Swiss school system.