Introduction

Involvement in crime or delinquency spikes during the adolescent years (Gottfredson& Hirschi, 1990), yet relatively few studies have explored the role that sexual orientation plays in involvement in delinquency (Himmelstein & Bruckner, 2011; Conover-Williams, 2014; Koeppel, 2015; Beaver et al., 2016). Prior work that has addressed this research question has had various limitations due to the difficulty of collecting data on sexual orientation, low sample sizes, lack of longitudinal data, and also the increased likelihood of misreporting by adolescent respondents (Savin-Williams & Joyner, 2014). These issues have led to inconsistencies in our understanding of queer youth's offending patterns. In this chapter, queer youth are defined as individuals who self-identified as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or who were uncertain about their sexual orientation during young adulthood.

Only recently have studies begun to assess how sexual orientation relates to involvement in delinquency. Focusing on criminal justice and school sanctions, Himmelstein and Bruckner (2011) found that queer youth who reported same-sex attraction or who self-identified as lesbian, gay, or bisexual were more likely to receive some type of official sanction (for example, school expulsion, juvenile arrest, be stopped by the police). Similarly, Conover-Williams (2014) found that queer youth had a higher prevalence and frequency of delinquent involvement and were more likely to commit property and sex-related crime compared with their straight peers. Other recent studies (Koeppel, 2015; Beaver et al., 2016) find similar patterns in queer youth's involvement in delinquency. Additionally, these studies suggest that gender and sexual orientation interact to create different patterns of delinquent involvement, with queer girls more likely to engage in delinquent behaviors compared with queer boys. In this chapter, I explore whether characteristics related to peer friendship networks during adolescence help explain differences in delinquent involvement on the part of queer youth. I also discuss how we can apply findings from this research to help queer youth become better integrated socially within schools during adolescence.

Queering theoretical peer explanations

Criminological theories have largely ignored the role of queer criminology in their explanations of why individuals become involved with crime, yet socializing with others is key to both being exposed to and learning different types of attitudes and behaviors, including delinquency.