Companionship and Associations of crime
Companionship of an association with persons having anti-social tendencies formed in post-adolescence years lead some youths to deviant life. But my study revealed that youth crime is not necessarily a group operation.
In my study, 64 per cent respondents had committed crime all by themselves, 19 per cent had a companion), while 17 per cent averred that they had committed no crime but had been falsely implicated.
Of the 19 per cent respondents who had an accomplice(s) in crime, 10 per cent had a single companion, 3 per cent had two companions, 4 per cent had three companions, and the remaining 2 per cent had four or more companions.
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Further, of the criminals who had some accomplice in crime, 50 per cent had a friend as their accomplice, one-tenth had a kin as accomplice, one-tenth had an acquaintance as accomplice and about five per cent had a colleague as accomplice.
This shows that youth criminals do not acquire any learning experience in criminality from persons of their own age group; nor do they always wish to conform to the ways of their peers.
The young criminals also do not use the anti-social channels provided by their peers for charging their energies or for satisfying their special personality needs; nor do they depend upon their peers for security, recognition, affection and new experiences.
We thus hold that there is an indication that in a large number of cases (about 95%) peer groups are not the cause of youth criminality.