10. Spatial Contagion of Male Juvenile Drug Offending Across Socioeconomically Homogeneous Neighborhoods

This research investigates the influence of spatial contagion and neighborhood socioeconomic character on drug offense juvenile delinquency and recidivism among urban male youth. For this purpose we use a data set of all juvenile delinquents sentenced to court-ordered programs in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania from 1996 to 2003. U.S. Bureau of the Census data are used to capture various dimensions of socioeconomic character, including concentrated disadvantage, ethnicity, and residential mobility. A regionalization algorithm is used to generate neighborhood boundaries that maximize within-unit socioeconomic homogeneity while preserving large counts of juveniles so that reliable rates of drug offense delinquency may be calculated. Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression and spatial econometric modeling are employed to model the effects of neighborhood socioeconomic character and, where appropriate, spatial contagion, on delinquency, drug offense delinquency, and repeat drug offense delinquency outcomes. Results indicate that concentrated disadvantage enhances not only delinquency generally but also drug delinquency and repeat drug delinquency. In addition, modeled drug delinquency indicates spatial contagion among neighborhoods, while controlling for the influence of concentrated disadvantage, providing evidence for cross-neighborhood peer contagion.