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adolescent has is one of the strongest and most consistently reported correlates of
delinquent behavior (cf. Warr 2002). Consequently, it appears to be unsupervised time
spent in the company of peers that is critical for explaining delinquency.
Two investigations strongly reinforce this position. Agnew and Petersen (1989)
divided adolescent leisure time into ten logical categories and found that time spent in
organized (i.e., adult-supervised) activities (e.g., scouts, band, church activities, school
newspaper), passive entertainment (e.g., listening to the radio or records, watching
television), and noncompetitive sports (e.g., bike riding, swimming, jogging) were
negatively associated with delinquency, whereas time spent in “unsupervised peer-
oriented social activities” (e.g., dating, parties, visiting friends, pleasure driving, “sitting
around,” “doing nothing”) was positively associated with delinquency. Why? Because
activities of the latter sort, they argued, “increase the likelihood of association with
delinquent others and increase the opportunities for delinquency” (1989:336). Similarly,
Osgood et al. (1996:640, 651), drawing on the routine activities perspective, found
“consistent evidence that socializing with peers away from home and authority figures is
closely related to deviant behavior,” because, they maintained, “spending more time with
peers exposes an individual to more situational inducements to deviance.”
The conceptual marriage of peer influence and adult supervision set forth in these
studies appears to be fully justified. Nevertheless, what hinders this conceptualization,
and most historically, is the limited role ascribed to supervision, particularly in the events
leading up to the delinquent act. Because delinquency is not solitary but social behavior,
unsupervised time is required not merely to commit the delinquent act itself – the
conventional preoccupation of criminologists – but to establish or renew contacts with
Convention