The boys sought for this experiment were already delinquent, and as noted this was a case study, these were unique individuals and as such the findings cannot be generalized to the larger population of the United States, California or even Oakland. Another fact that must be noted is that the author utilized snowball sampling, the author went to community organizations and asked to be connected to ‘at risk’ kids, and when he established communication with some of the young men, he asked them to refer him to other youths in similar situations. The author also makes note of the fact that his own experiences as a child may have had a bias on his
The article The Saints and the Roughneck, written by William J. Chambliss discusses the discrepancy of treatment between two groups of juveniles who participate in approximately equal number of delinquent behaviors. Chambliss performed a two-year observation study of two groups of students, at Hannibal High School, he characterized the two groups as Saints and Roughnecks. The Saints group consisted of eight boys from upper-middle class families, well liked in their community and thought to have bright futures ahead of them. The Roughnecks were a group of six boys from lower-class families, feared by society and seen to be heading to failure in the future.
The Juvenile Justice Delinquency Prevention and Protection Act (JJDPA) was established in 1974 and was the first federal law that dealt comprehensively with juvenile delinquency to improve the juvenile justice system and support state and local efforts at delinquency prevention. This paper will assess the JJDPA and summarize its purpose and implementation and enforcement. Next, there will be a discussion of the historical context of the policy; followed by a focus of the latent consequences. Finally there will be a vignette as to how this Act has affected a person or family as well as personal reflection toward the policy.
The Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974, also can be referred as JJDPA, was originally called the Juvenile Delinquency Prevent and Control Act of 1968. The act of 1968 was to “to assist the courts, correctional systems, community agencies, and primary and secondary public school systems to prevent, treat, and control juvenile delinquency; to support research and training efforts in the prevention, treatment, and control of juvenile delinquency; and for other purposes,” (OJJDP). The interest in delinquency prevention, diversion and deinstrulationazation program starts between the 1960s-1980s. It was the initial way of getting the right help for youth in order to control and change their mindsets to prevent them from transferring
Our society relies on millions of our citizens to become robust citizens both mentally and psychologically. While teenagers are expected to be obedient, they often commit acts which if they were adults would result in a felony. While these mistakes are inevitable, I feel abandoning the concept of delinquency but maintaining a system to address offenders is best. Considering the pros and cons from this point of view, it appears clear that abandoning the concept of delinquency among children rather than relying on traditional methods appears to be the most effective method which requires the most
When contact into the juvenile justice system is exhibited by minority youth at a significantly higher rate than their white, non-Hispanic counterparts, a racial disparity exists within the system. Years of racial segregation, discrimination and the overall mistreatment of minorities in the public, however, have influenced the disparity trend. Although minorities represent 21% of the U.S. population for adolescents in 2011, they represented 71% of all adolescents held in detention while committing 66% to a juvenile facility upon determination of delinquency. Accordingly, the percentage of minorities who made contact with the juvenile system is more than double their percentage in population. Likewise, although data on juvenile delinquency has
Programs for juveniles are supposed to prevent children from entering or reentering the Juvenile System. Current programs that are being used today for prevention can be altered to fit the needs of more juveniles in different situations. One of the extension of these programs needs to be for those juveniles in foster care. A great percent of children in foster care gets involved in criminal activity than the children who stay with their parents (Doyle Jr., 2008). If this does not get resolved, the juveniles in foster may start off with simple crimes but, without help, will evolve to harder criminal activity.
Within the urban communities, negative perceptions are magnified. Adolescents are more prone to be a product of their environment, especially those whose parents are incarcerated. Because of this trend adolescents are being incarcerated at an alarming rate and sentenced to adult facilities. Lambie & Randall (2013) states, the United States have imposed harsher penalties on serious young offenders, and have consequently increased rates of incarcerated youth and made it easier for youth to be treated and incarcerated as adults within the justice
Some longitudinal studies [Johnston 2002], including the National Longitudinal Adolescent Health Survey [Resnick 75] that accompanied preteens during periods normally associated with drug use, found that parental factors were still the most important. These evidence-based interventional programs included family interventions approaches targeting indicated prevention with diagnosed youth. Examples of programs that cover this area include all of the more costly family therapy interventions serving individual dysfunctional families by highly skilled and trained professional family therapists, such as Brief Strategic and Structural Family Therapy [91] and Multidimensional Family Therapy [Liddle, 2009] for treating drug abusing youth, and likewise Multi systemic Therapy and Functional Family Therapy for treating acting out, conduct disordered, or highly delinquent youth. Family-based interventions emphasized the effectiveness they can be difficult and expensive to implement on a large scale [128] particularly if home visits are involved. Most of the family interventions discussed in this essay were
Understanding the risk and protective factors of child delinquency is imperative in order to create and implement treatment and intervention programs. Because children’s behavior develops during the first five years, it is important to know what risk and protective factors could increase the likelihood of a child becoming a child offender (Wasserman et al., 2003). Moreover, overcoming the risk factors would help prevent the child offender from becoming a juvenile, and later, adult offender. As Wasserman et al (2003) stated, “risk factors for child delinquency operate in several domains: the individual child, the child’s family, the child’s peer group, the child’s school, the child’s neighborhood, and the media” (pg.1). As one can see, children are exposed to risk in partially every aspect of their lives.
Researchers have invested decades worth of time and data, attempting to answer the question of what causes crime. The study of criminological theory contains a great number of explanations, focused on discovering why exactly, crime occurs. Whether causations are biological, psychological, or sociological in nature, theory has lead us closer to answering the question of why crime happens. Perhaps causations are best explained using hybrid explanations that include a little bit of everything.
This research paper draws on existing sociological research and classical social theories to examine juvenile delinquency, and to prove that juvenile delinquency in the schools are linked to social structure, within a sample of the entire form three student population. The two major theories this research paper will highlight is the strain theory coined by Robert Merton and social disorganization theory by Clifford Shaw and Henry McKay reason for using the same is that they are old theories, but often relates to modern criminality and delinquency, and also focuses on social structure and social functioning in society. Both social disorganization theory, and strain theory states that high
Family Influences on Deliquency. Retrieved from http://samples.jbpub.com/9780763760564/60564_CH10_Springer.pdf Greenwood, P. (2008). Prevention and Programs for Juvenile Offenders. Gudjonsson, E. &.
Types of juvenile delinquency Juvenile delinquency, or offending, can be separated into three categories: delinquency, crimes committed by minors which are dealt with by the juvenile courts and justice system; criminal behavior, crimes dealt with by the criminal justice system, and status offenses, offenses which are only classified as such because one is a minor, such as truancy, also dealt with by the juvenile courts. According to the developmental research of Moffitt (2006), there are two different types of offenders that emerge in adolescence. One is the repeat offender, referred to as the life-course-persistent offender, who begins offending or showing antisocial/aggressive behavior in adolescence (or even childhood) and continues into adulthood; and the age specific offender, referred to as the adolescence-limited offender, for whom juvenile offending or delinquency begins and ends during their period of adolescence. Because most teenagers tend to show some form of antisocial, aggressive or delinquent behavior during adolescence, it important to account for these behaviors in childhood, in order to determine whether they will be life-course-persistent offenders, or adolescents-limited offenders.
A disadvantage of Bronfenbrenner is that it does not help practitioners put his theory into practice. "Bronfenbrenner is not widely recognized as helping practitioners to put his ideas into practice and this may be why someone who has done so much to change the thinking of both groups is not better known." Pound L, 2009 accessed on 12/02/18 Bronfenbrenner 's theory helps to question why children may behave in a certain manner. "Theory helps us understand why we behave differently." Explorable accessed on 12/02/18 Bronfenbrenner 's Theory of Ecological systems has influenced the start of other theorists work.