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Social factors of criminal behavior
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For centuries researchers have been trying to figure out if and how age relates to crime; and what happens to turn our youth into killers at early ages. Multiple studies have been done and many theories have evolved. One particular story of interest is the story of Alex and Derek King. Alex and Derek King were two teens whose early life at home was somewhat troubled. They were neglected by their mother whom worked at a strip club as a dancer and waitress. Their father Terry, worked odd jobs to keep food on the table and clothes on their backs but it was never enough money. For a while Alex and Derek would live with different relatives then eventually they were placed in foster homes. After being in foster homes, the boys were both returned …show more content…
Sampson and Laub believed that social control, repetitive activities, and human association, all directly and indirectly affect courses of crime across your whole life course (Seigel, 2011). Our text defines Age-Graded Theory as the casual association between early adult delinquent offending and later adult behavior involves the quality of relationships encountered at different times in human development (Seigel, 2011). During adolescent, social bonds to family, peers, and school are very important because it gives the youth structure. If theses social bonds or ties are broken, then it can lead the youth to crime and other forms of deviant behavior. Because of life changes and the subsequent alterations of developmental trajectories, the Age-Graded Theory of social control offers the possibility for both continuity and change in criminal behavior (D’Unger, et. al., …show more content…
When we are young, we look for that love and attention from our parents or caregivers. Parents are supposed to give us structure and guidance. In Alex and Derek’s case, their mother did not give them the life skills they need to start out on the right foot. Being moved from family member to family member then in and out of foster homes did not help either. Poor parental discipline and monitoring can be the key to the early onset of criminality which can follow youth into adulthood (D’Unger et. al., 1988). Like the theory states, at certain points in their lives things happened that made them commit such an unthinkable crime (Seigel, 2011). There is no doubt in my mind that those issues that Alex and Derek faced as adolescents played into their delinquency. Alex unlike Derek continued a life of criminal activities that led him back to prison. Derek transitioned from adolescent to adult and decided to change his life for the
Laub and Sampson (2003) believe that age-graded informal social controls are crucial in understanding persistence and desistance in offending, although more research is necessary. Laub and Sampson (2003) argue that certain turning points in life influence persistence and desistance in offending through informal social controls highly associated with the age of the individual via intervening mechanisms. The age-graded informal social control theory aims to explain persistence and desistance, thus explaining important aspects of crime over the life course. Persistence and desistance are explained through age-graded informal social controls such as marriage, employment, and military service and their accompanying intervening mechanisms making the relationship between informal social controls and persistence and desistance somewhat more complex.
Church, W. T., Wharton, T., & Taylor, J. K. (2008). An examination of differential association and social control theory: Family systems and delinquency. Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice, 7(1), 3-15.
As Laub and Sampson (2003) analyze crime over the life course, they highlight Terrie Moffitt’s theory and discuss the limitations of her developmental explanation. In Moffitt’s developmental taxonomy, she acknowledges two categories of offenders...
Sampson, R., & Laub, J. (1990). Crime and Deviance over the Life course: the salience of adult social bonds. American Sociological Review, 55(5), 609-627.
High crime rates are an ongoing issue through the United States, however the motivation and the cause of crime has yet to be entirely identified. Ronald Akers would say that criminality is a behavior that is learned based on what an individual sees and observes others doing. When an individual commits a crime, he or she is acting on impulse based on actions that they have seen others engage in. Initially during childhood, individuals learn actions and behavior by watching and listening to others, and out of impulse they mimic the behavior that is observed. Theorist Ronald Akers extended Sutherland’s differential association theory with a modern viewpoint known as the social learning theory. The social learning theory states that individuals commit crime through their association with or exposure to others. According to Akers, people learn how to be offenders based on their observations around them and their association with peers. Theorist Akers states that for one, “people can become involved in crime through imitation—that is by modeling criminal conduct. Second, and most significant, Akers contended that definition and imitation are most instrumental in determining initial forays into crime” (Lilly, Cullen, and Ball 2011:57). Although Akers’ theory has been linked to juvenile delinquency in the past, it has also been tested as a possible cause of crime overall. Individuals learn from observation that criminal behavior is justifiable in certain circumstances. In connection with juvenile delinquency and crime, peers and intimate groups have the most effect on individuals when associated with criminal behavior. One is more likely to mimic the behavior of someone who they have close ties with, whether the behavior is justifiable or...
In a study on juvenile offenders, researchers discovered that over 83% of juveniles showed signs and symptoms of disorders that may antedated their offenses. (Arline, May 2005). Problems with behavior may have been misunderstood for a lack of discipline instead of a disorder, and many juveniles with disorders came from a home with abuse present. In cases of juvenile offenders the courts are not doing enough evaluations on juvenile families, and eon the few that they do have on file their families are stated to be stable (Arline, May 2005). However, many juvenile offenders went through unthinkable circumstances with the members of the community they live in, parents, and agencies who played a role in their life prior to being in adult criminal system (Darden, 2014). A lot of juveniles who are in the criminal system have common elements in their non-profit profiles like regretful choices, mistrusting adults, robbed childhood, and being disappointed (Darden, 2014). For instance, a juvenile offender name Jennifer Pruitt, went through physical abuse, being exposed to drunken behavior, father sexually abusing her, and domestic abuse (Darden, 2014). She ran away fro home and confided in her neighbor as someone she could trust, but her neighbor convinced her to rob another neighbor (Darden, 2014). During the attempt to the rob the neighbor Pruitt ending up witnessing a murder, and was convicted of a felony murder that landed her more than twenty years in prison (Darden,
Across the nation, social scientists and criminologists have researched and hypothesized the main contributing factors that promote juvenile delinquency. The Strain/ Anomie theory introduced by Robert Merton and later revised by several other theorists, attempts to explain why juvenile subculture tend to behave certain ways when confronted with pressures from everyday life. Revised by other theorists, the Strain theory attempts to provide the framework of juvenile delinquency and its sources in order to analyze the effectiveness of this assumption, as well as to implement certain crime prevention policies and programs to curb this problem. This paper is going to analyze how the Strain theory contributes it’s principles of delinquency factors in order to explain and understand juvenile delinquency.
Criminologists have studied the cause of crime for many years and have created multiple theories as to why an individual may become a criminal. In regards to criminologists’ views, “Some who have a psychological orientation view crime as a function of personality, development, social learning, or cognition. Others investigate the biological correlates of antisocial behavior and study the biochemical, genetic, and neurological linkages to crime. Those with sociological orientation look at the social forces producing criminal behavior, including neighborhood conditions, poverty, socialization, and group interaction” (Siegel, 2014, p. 7). While it is impossible to pin point one true cause of criminal behavior in an individual, or individuals,
Therefore the deterrence theory has no real value in keeping a child from breaking the law. Interestingly enough, what is more likely to keep youth from committing crimes is a positive self-esteem. When dealing with non-adults, deterrence of being caught along with certainty and swiftness of punishment is not a major contributing factor. “Recently, there has been renewed interest in the contribution of labeling theory to the study of delinquency. The basic assumption of the theory is that perceived negative societal reactions lead to the development of negative self-conceptions and greater delinquent involvement” (Adams, 2003, p. 171). Therefore, the study and testing by the authors of the attached peer reviewed article only strengthens the debate as to what actions the criminal justice system should take to prevent crimes from being
Families serve as one of the strongest socializing forces in a person's life. They help teach children to control unacceptable behavior, to delay gratification, and to respect the rights of others. Conversely, families can also teach children aggressive, antisocial, and violent behavior. In adults' lives, family responsibilities may provide an important stabilizing force. Given these possibilities, family life may directly contribute to the development of delinquent and criminal tendencies. Parental conflict and child abuse correlate with delinquency. Though not all children who grow up in conflictive or violent homes become delinquent, however, being exposed to conflict and violence appears to increase the risk of delinquency. At this point, researchers have not pin pointed what factors exactly push some at-risk youth into delinquency. A child with criminal parents faces a greater likelihood of becoming a delinquent than children with law-abiding parents. However, the influence appears not to be directly related to criminality but possibly to poor supervision.
Individual, social, family and community conditions, as well as interactions, influence juvenile’s behaviour and how they act in situations regarding crime (The National Academies Press, 2017). Some factors include children who are involved in abusive home lives, social isolation, poor education and low family income. It is widely recognised that the more risk factors, environmental and individual influence a child has, the higher their risk is of delinquent and criminal behaviour (ACS Distance Education, 2015). Research found that children from broken homes are nine times more likely to commit serious offences not only as juveniles but also later in their adult lives (Bloxham, 2017). This shows the need for the criminal justice system to address childhood crime when it occurs rather than when it becomes more serious as juveniles reach adulthood.
A child who is brought up in a broken home lacking nurturing, love and discipline is more likely to commit violent crimes: the lack of maturity and the ability to understand the repercussions of their actions such as a possible death sentence is a concept that is foreign to juveniles. (Streib, 2004)
The environment a child is surrounded in is what develops a child’s perception into the mind of a criminal. The mind of a child is made purely of innocence until one is exposed to destructive developmental patterns. Children that have grown into the shoes of a criminal had been raised into a home with no control and where the environment creates vulnerability. Those who grow up into childhood with an unorganized lifestyle only want to possess the control and power that criminals contain. Children raised in this unstable environment develop a slow pace of skills adolescents learn earlier on (Shi and Nicol par.2). Juvenile sex offenders do not fully develop basic skills which makes it easier to be negatively pressured by society (par. 20). The first crime committed by an adolescent sex offender comes after the individual undergoes neglect, abuse, loss of love and basic care, and an unstable family structure (par. 3). That trauma of not being loved and cared for persuades the person that he/she will always be unloved and no one will care. Individuals that become criminals have had destructive patterns in past developmental stages making the individual violent. A child learns the difference between right or wrong within the lessons that the parents make, and if a child undergoes through experiences such as rape at such a young age by the child’s parents, the child will think the wrongdoing is right. A child’s painful past of traumatic events affects the individual’s future motives in what has undergone through childhood phases. Children who had been abused and neglected have a hard time trusting other people from the traumatic events the children had experienced (Shi and Nicol par. 8). The harsh memories never leave an indiv...
In fact, research suggests that most adolescent crime is committed in groups of peers (Goldweber, Dmitrieva, Cauffman, Piquero, & Steinberg, 2011), which has led to a number of developmental theories to explain how delinquent peers are linked to adolescent offending. Most notably, social learning theories suggest that youth learn and adopt delinquent attitudes and behaviors through their association with other delinquent youth (Akers,
Loeber, R and Farrington, D (2000). Young children who commit crime: Epidemiology, developmental origins, risk factors, early interventions, and policy implications. Development and Psychopathology, , pp 737-762.