When you corrupt the minds of a youth, you destroy their future. As many as three-fourths of children and teens living in high-crime urban areas come into contact with violent acts (Bolling, 2014). Exposure to community violence can negatively affect psychological development and create a stressful environment at home and school. This then can lead to corrupt minds of the youth which could leave them dead or in jail. Family or neighborhood support where the children know they have someone to turn to for advice or a safe haven, helps decrease the amount of violence children come into contact with. A recreational center is a safe place that allows children to have fun and stay off the streets. Without this kind of community support network and safe spaces children can go to, families and children can otherwise be easily overwhelmed by the numerous challenges they face every day. The key to lowering the number of child deaths and reducing the amount of violence they see, is to help them while they are at a young age. The idea is to create several nonprofit recreational organizations in neighborhoods that have widespread violence and make them available for underprivileged children. Parents also play a huge part in the development of the children, therefore, classes would be offered to help with parenting skills to assist in their child’s journey to a better life.
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According to Orue et al. (2011), Psychology and Psychiatry journal, the more violence children are exposed to, the more they think that it is normal and will more likely engage in aggression against others. The majority of violence they are exposed to is broken down into three types. Exposure to media violence, community violence, and violence in the home. The ...
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...om violence and abuse, negatively effects the economy and should otherwise be invested into building centers that will push our youth forward to a successful future. Just like in Los Angeles, for every dollar invested in their programs, they saves $2.50 in crime-related costs. A child’s journey through life should be filled with memories of having fun, not memories of experiencing violent acts. “Matt Gonzalez stated that, “I think that when we're talking about youth violence, we're talking about kids who don't have opportunities, so they're engaged in a certain degree of lawlessness, because we as a society have failed them.”(2014). Failing should not be an option for our youth, instead, we as society should provide children with an opportunities to escape violence thereby giving them a chance. Build more recreational centers as a part of the journey to save a life!
Thesis: Children go astray and get involved in crimes and gang behaviors due to parents lacks of knowledge of how to topple and prevent such circumstance to happen – however, with a help from a local government and other crime and gang prevention programs can establish an effective early childhood awareness program(s) that would be capable to lend a hand and give information to helpless mothers whom are indecisive of how to suppress and prevent their kids to be vulnerable to delinquency.
The reason for this program is to use innovative approaches in developing programs, which will teach youth alternatives to violence, substance abuse, anger issues, low self-esteem, and the consequences as a result of making bad choices. During, the program non-violence, team building, leadership development and communication skills is promoted. A neutral and positive setting is provided for young people, so they are able to come together from different gangs throughout the city to work on their issues and programs together. When a youth is referred to the program they have an Intake-Assessment with the family. “Together, a Program Contract/Service Plan will be developed based on the individual needs of the youth/family. If the youth is on probation/parole all requirements of the courts will be incorporated into their contract. Services offered are case management, mediation, innovative focus groups, presentations, collaboration with other youth service organizations, and attendance at court hearings” (Stop ABQ Gangs,
Recently, there has been a rise in criminal activity amongst the youth in Columbus Georgia. The percentage of juvenile criminals increased by almost 9.5% in the year 2012-2013(Chattahoochee Valley Struggles with Black on Black Crime). Many of the crimes committed involved adolescents as young as fifteen, and have become increasingly more violent. In 2012 a sixteen year old woman was shot and killed by her eighteen year old boyfriend, a few months later a nineteen year old boy was shot while walking to his home. (Chattahoochee Valley Struggles with Black on Black Crime). Due to the overwhelmin...
Adolescent criminal acts, which include but are not limited to murder, rape, armed robbery, violent assault, mugging, arson, vandalism and robbery are a large portion of the crimes represented in the media. Alternative options to throwing these kids in juvenile detention centers is a rehabilitative boot camp where they have no control over even their own bodies or programs similar to scared straight where they see possible consequences to their actions. The importance of the success or failure of these programs is important because right now it is the popular solution. If these programs are going nowhere, time should be invested in creating new ideas and methods to treat these children before they become adults in the prison system.
Violence is defined as the intentional use of force to harm a human being. Its outcome is injury (whether physical or psychological, fatal or nonfatal). Violence among teenagers is on the rise, and has been since the early 1980's. In my opinion this is due to the increase of violence in the media, the astounding availability of firearms and the lack of proper guidance in the home. Northeastern University's College of Criminal Justice reports that from 1985 to 1993 murders committed by people over the age of 25 dropped an impressive 20%; meanwhile they increased 65% for people between the ages of 18-24 and an astounding 165% growth for teenagers 14 to 17. According to the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, in 1996, 6548 young people 15-24 years old were victims of homicides. This amounts to an average of 18 youth homicides per day in the US. It also states that homicide is the second leading cause of death for persons 15-24 and is the leading cause of death for African-American and Hispanic youths in this age group. There are a few things that we as Americans can do to stunt this problem, and it starts with the home. By focusing on the home first, we as Americans can drastically reduce the amount of violent crime committed in the US.
Many studies have shown that adolescents residing in low income or high crime neighborhoods are more likely to get involved with deviant behavior or committing criminal acts. (Deutsch, 2012) There are several neighborhood factors that affect the crime rates of the neighborhood such as overcrowding, low economic status, the neighborhood’s reputation and its residential instability. These may create a disorganized community, leading to distrust and cynicism among residents in the community. As a result, there would be a higher rate of opportunities for crimes and delinquency. (Kurlychek, 2011) Thus high rates of crimes and violence are more likely to occur at these areas.
When families sit down to watch television, they expect to watch family type of shows. Family type shows meaning rated PG or PG13, sitcoms and movies that do not include weapons, killing, foul language, and non-socially accepted actions. When children killing, they start to believe that it is accepted. Do children think that killing and hurting others and themselves have little meaning to the real life, children can become traumatized. Most killers or violators of the law blame their behavior on the media, and the way that television portrays violators. Longitudinal studies tracking viewing habits and behavior patterns of a single individual found that 8-year-old boys, who viewed the most violent programs growing up, were the most likely to engage in aggressive and delinquent behavior by age 18 and serious criminal behavior by age 30 (Eron, 1). Most types of violence that occur today links to what people see on television, act out in video games or cyberspace games, or hear in music. Media adds to the violence that exists today and in the past few decades. It will continue in the future if it is not recognized as a possible threat to our society. When kids go to a movie, watch television, play video games or even surf the web, they become part of what they see and hear. Soaking violence in their heads long enough becomes a part of the way they think, acts, and live. The line between pretend and reality gets blurred.
Over the past half century, violence in the United States has increased dramatically. Children who were raised in a tough, low-income neighborhood often fail to escape exposure to violence. They may witness homicides, assaults, and some may even have had a friend who had been killed. According to recent research, these children have higher violence rates than those kids who grew up in a non-violent neighborhood.
The truth about crime prevention is more complicated –less utopian than some liberals would like, but far more promising than conservatives will admit. Prevention can work and that it can be far less costly, in every sense, than continuing to rely on incarceration as out first defense against violent crimes. Instead of simply insisting that prevention is better than incarceration, then, we need to pinpoint more clearly what kinds of prevention work—and why some programs work and others do not, the most encouraging efforts share important characteristics; there are reasons why they work, whether the ‘target’ population is abusive families, vulnerable teens, or serious juvenile offenders who’ve already broken the law. Likewise, there are reasons why other programs fail, no matter how fashionable or popular they may be. Given what we’ve learned about crime prevention in recent years, four priorities seem especially critical: preventing child abuse and neglect, enhancing children’s intellectual and social development, providing support and guidance to vulnerable adolescents and working intensively with juvenile offenders. These aren’t the preventive strategies that can make a difference, but they are the ones that offer the strongest evidence of effectiveness. And they also fit our growing understanding of the roots delinquency and violent crime.
Very few youth of today have respect for teachers, elders, or each other. Everyday more and more instances of violent crime are committed by our nation’s youth and children. Shocking accounts of children bringing guns to school as a means of solving problems with a teacher or a fellow student are becoming increasingly frequent. Children are committing crime, which were one thought only committed by adults such as rape, robbery, and murder.
Social control can either be informal (parents etc.) or formal (police etc.) and without these controls, juveniles become more susceptible to delinquency (Shaw,McKay,1942). In the city of Erie, there are a lot of neighborhoods in which are breaking down, especially the one around the Boys and Girls club. On my last day at the Boys and Girls club, a young girl was jumped just a few blocks down from the center; she was just walking home. The city of Erie itself has pocket communities of poverty which are in close proximity to communities which are more prosperous. From others who I had talked to at the club, those who worked their often had to deal with parents who did not care, were not around, or were negative influences in the child’s life. A few of the older kids at the Boys and Girls club had been involved with gangs, drug abuse and selling, and have been effected in some way by the violence in the low income neighborhoods they lived in. Staff had notified me that sometimes the programs in which the schools or juvenile
In a research analysis of Media and Violence, studies show that “Although the typical effect size for exposure to violent media is relatively small ... this ‘small effect’ translates into significant consequences for society as a whole” (“Media and Violence: An Analysis of Current Research”, 2015). This states violent behaviors can come from the smallest variables, or clips from videos, which is why it is important for parents to control what their kids see, read, and watch, and limit the amount of violence exposure.
Stopping gang violence requires more than just the law enforcement in solving gang problems. Gang involvement among youths remains to be a prevalent problem to parents and society. It is often associated with violence and other criminal activities within the community. Though reasons remain to be varied, youth participation continues to increase through out the years. In seeking then to understand the motivation for youths joining gangs, it is essential to look at good family function, which promotes healthy development, as well as looking at how poor family function, is related to poor outcomes for youths. The questions to also keep in mind when it comes to family function is which aspects of parenting are risk factors to youths joining gangs as well as how can we help future families in decreasing those risks? Preventing youths from joining gangs in the first place is crucial in realizing on how to reduce youth gang activity. Which leads us to the question “can we stop gang violence?” My answer to this question is yes; we can stop gang violence with effective parenting. Although, school-based programs as well as community-based prevention programs may reduce gang violence, effective parenting stops gang involvement early on from childhood to adolescence.
You can’t turn on the television, or read the paper without hearing about violence in our cities and world. In a report from “Stand Up for Kids” in Chicago, they analyze the relationship between low wages, income inequality, and the epidemic of violence in Chicago’s low income neighborhoods. This report found that in 2012 there were nearly 7,700 gun-related crimes reported in the city. The city of Chicago has the third highest overall metropolitan poverty rate in the nation. Nearly one quarter of all Chicago residents live below the federal poverty threshold according to this report. ("Chicago Not Only Leads the Nation in Gun Violence Rates, but Also in Measures of Urban Poverty." Stand Up Chicago, 1 Feb. 2013. Web. 7 Oct. 2014.) Decades of research have demonstrated that there is a statistically significant link between low wages, income inequality and crime. The analysis presented in this report shows that when a city’s economic conditions improve, the violent crime rates go down.( "Chicago Not Only Leads the Nation in Gun Violence Rates, but Also in Measures of Urban Poverty." Stand Up Chicago, 1 Feb. 2013. Web. 7 Oct. 2014.) Parents and children are turning to violent acts to provide for their family needs. Policy makers and the government need to address the issues of persistent poverty and income inequality such as raising the minimum wage to a living wage and create satisfying jobs for the
Furthermore, television violence causes aggressive behavior in children. Many people believe that children who watch violent television programs exhibit more aggressive behavior than that exhibited by children who do not (Kinnear 23). According to the results of many studies and reports, violence on television can lead to aggressive behavior in children (Langone 50). Also, when television was introduced into a community of children for the first time, researchers observed a rise in the level of physical and verbal aggression among these children (Langone 51). The more television violence viewed by a child, the more aggressive the child is (“Children” 1).