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Companions in Crime: The Social Aspects of Criminal Conduct, by Mark Warr. Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002. 172 pp. $50.00 cloth. ISBN: 0-521-81083-3. $18.00 paper. ISBN: 0-521-00916-2.
Companions in Crime provides an excellent overview and analysis of the role, nature, and effect of peer influence in criminal and delinquent behavior in a concise and well-written book. The central thesis is unmistakably sociological:
Criminal conduct is predominantly social behavior. Most offenders are embedded in a network of friends who also break the law, and the single strongest predictor of criminal behavior known to criminologists is the number of delinquent friends an individual has. (p. 3)
Warr documents these assertions by reviewing the literature on peers in the life course, the group character of crime and delinquency, peers and delinquent conduct, peer explanations of variations in delinquency by age, gender, and family, and peers and public policy.
Peer influence is strongest in adolescence, but it is also apparent elsewhere in the life course, and when exposure to deviant and conforming peers is held constant, the strong correlation between age and most offenses disappears. The peer influence may be either in a conforming or deviant direction, but Warr's focus is on the latter. Not only in the United States but in societies around the world, the vast majority of offenses are committed in the company of others,...