Violent Crimes Among Palestinian Adolescents: The Direct and Interactive Role of Individual, Parental, and Socio-Contextual Factors

Background and purpose: This study adopted a social-ecological perspective aiming to explore risk and protective factors for conducting violent crimes in the public space among Palestinian adolescents. The study investigates individual factors (religiosity and perceived ethnic discrimination), parental factors (parent-adolescent relationship), and socio-contextual factors (peer delinquency; exposure to community violence in the neighborhood) and its prediction to violent crimes using a mediation-moderation analysis.

Method: A total of 3178 adolescents (aged 13–18) completed anonymous, structured, self-report questionnaire, which included selected items from several instruments that measured variables relating to the constructs examined in the study. The overall sample was designed to represent Palestinian students in grades 7 to 11 in the official school system supervised by the Israeli Ministry of Education. Participants were from schools in the northern and central regions of Israel, where the majority of the Palestinian population resides. A stratified probability sample was used, and the stratum was based on the locality SES index developed by the Central Bureau of Statistics. This index is a measure often used to describe the SES of localities in Israel, and is based on various social and economic indicators such as education level, income, employment, housing characteristics, and receipt of social benefits. Up to 20% of the Arab localities were randomly sampled from each SES cluster containing Arab localities. In the first stage, 21 schools were randomly selected from a list provided by the Israeli Ministry of Education. Two classes were selected randomly from each grade level at each school, and all students in the selected classes were asked to participate. The total sample comprised 3178 students, of whom 59.6% were girls.

Findings: The findings have shown that perceived ethnic discrimination; parent-adolescent conflict and exposure to neighborhood violence are correlated significantly and positively with adolescent's perpetration of violent crimes in the public. These correlations are mediated by the adolescents’ affiliation with delinquent peers. Furthermore, these associations are stronger among adolescents who have low levels of religiosity and spirituality than among those who have high levels of religiosity and spirituality. In other words, religiosity serves as a moderator factor among adolescents who are exposed to different individual and socio-contextual risk factors.

Conclusion and implication: The findings of this study revealed that factors at the individual, family, and contextual levels interact in the relationship with perpetration of violent crimes among adolescents, and highlight the importance of examining this problem from an ecological perspective. Adolescents may face critical changes during this developmental period, however, the findings highlight the importance of religiosity as a factor that mitigates risk factors during this period of life. Therefore, and in light of this finding, it is vital to develop carefully designed interventions that account for the adolescents' cultural context, including how central religiosity may be for them as a source of emotional support and internal resource of coping. In light of the findings, we recommend that professionals who work with adolescents develop spiritual-based interventions that incorporate religious dimensions (such faith and belief, optimism, and giving meaning to life).