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This article reports on the first results of the Second International Self-Report Delinquency Study (ISRD-2), a large international collaborative study of delinquency and victimization of 12—15-year-old students. The analysis is based on a subsample of the data set: 43,968 respondents from 63 cities and 31 countries. The prevalence rates of the major categories of delinquency, both for individual countries as well as for 6 country clusters, are presented as well as data for victimization experiences (theft and robbery/extortion). Using different measures, significant differences in level and type of offending are found between country clusters, with the Western European and Anglo-Saxon countries generally (but not always) scoring highest, followed by Northern Europe, Latin American and Mediterranean countries, with post-socialist countries at the bottom. The results for victimization experiences do not follow this pattern. The second part of the article compares ISRD-2 offending and victimization rates with two other main sources of internationally available crime-related statistics: International Crime Victim Survey (ICVS) data and European Sourcebook (i.e. police-based) data. The analyses show a moderate level of support for a convergence of different measures. The article concludes with implications and suggestions for further research.

A B S T R A C TThis article considers differences in patterns of youth delinquency and problem behaviour between boys and girls. It uses cross-sectional surveys of self-reported youth offending in 11 European countries, and a similar survey covering various ethnic groups in Rotterdam, both carried out in 1992. These surveys show that there remains a substantial gap in the level of delinquency between girls and boys across all countries and ethnic groups. The findings confirm that weak social controls by family and school are an important correlate of delinquency for males and females in all country clusters and across all ethnic groups. On the whole, the correlates of delinquency are found to be similar in males and females, which suggests that there is no need for a different theory to explain delinquency in boys and girls. Social control explains part of the gap in delinquency between boys and girls, simply because social controls of girls tend to be stronger and tighter. Culturally determined differences in the strength of family-based social controls can also explain some of the variation in delinquency between ethnic groups.

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