Peer Pressure, Peer Prevention: The Role of Friends in Crime and Conformity

Criminological research has largely neglected the possibility that positive peer influence is a potentially powerful source of social control. Quantitative methods tease out cause, effect, and spuriousness in the relationship between peer delinquency and personal delinquency, but these methods do little or nothing to reveal how and why peers might influence each other toward--or away from--deviance.

Costello and Hope take a first step toward uncovering the mechanisms of peer influence, draw...