E.C.Rhodes’s journal article touches on the basis of how juveniles are quickly labeled as delinquents by our officers of the law, even if it’s due to a minor offense. The journal mentions how there are multiple solutions to solving our increasing rate of youth becoming juvenile delinquent statistics; and victims of an environment they have no choice but to grow up in. Solving this issue by starting with the ways in which police officers deal with young offenders. As the different amount of juvenile crimes that happened in towns were compared to those same crimes happening in counties. Juvenile crimes were then referred to as an “urban phenomenon”, due to the statistics showing that crimes both juvenile and adult based, increase as urbanization of an area increases. Going in depth on how the proportion of juveniles in a population, will begin to make the amount of recurring crime in that area rise.
After surveys were concluded new conclusions concerning juvenile delinquents emerged; “(A) juvenile crimes appear to be a part of a major problem, including adult crimes, which involves social and economic considerations (B) in order to gauge properly the differences between the incidence of juvenile crimes in different parts of the country we need more exact information regarding the age-constitution of local populations (C ) In considering changes with time, we must take account of changing environment if we are to deduce anything from the facts of recorded crimes regarding changes in the naughtiness of the juvenile population” p.394
With age being a factor of the different occurring crimes, it was not the only factor. As sex also played a adequate role in juvenile delequency. “Everyone who is concerned with juvenile delinquency was aware of the sex difference. One of the most important factors was a juvenile delinquents generally were dealt with in “gangs.” These “gangs” were nothing but groups of boys playing about together, and boy’s play differed in it’s nature from that of girls, boys again had greater tendency to wander away from home, and they wandered in groups. They were furthermore inclined to take risks. Very few girls of school age came before the courts at all…. The most serious form of delinquency and girls were those of, sexual delinquency and immortality. Girls guilty of that form of delinquency were dealt with as being in need of care and protection, and they did not figure as offenders at all.” P.397
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As this source contains statistics where, juvenile crimes per 1,000 people were calculated, as well as using the unemployment rate in the area it was easy to find a correlation between the two. The relationship between juvenile and adult crimes were also compared. The more research that Rhodes did, the more he found that adult and juvenile crime were both linked to urbanization in their living areas. As the journal offers ways in which the amount of both crime types could be lowered.
Deciphering the obvious differences in how gender plays a role in the “type” of delinquency juveniles become, and how the courts deal with boy delinquents compared to dealing with girl delinquents. Making this a very useful source, helping to enlighten my readers about the way in which pre-judging an individual forces them to manifest themselves into these labels.
“This article focuses on the need for communities to develop integrated service systems for troubled children and youth. Depending on the service organization with which they are affiliated, these young people carry various labels: at-risk, delinquent, behaviorally disordered, emotionally handicapped, socially maladjusted, seriously emotionally disturbed, sociopathic, conduct disordered, out-of-control, and antisocial. While these labels are highly variant, a common theme exists: all exhibit behaviors that run contrary to societal values and rules.” p.387 Discussing how school systems have various different programs that allows them to keep the youth that have some form of impard learning ability mainstream and included within the school subjects.
However, for those school systems that do not offer these types of programs for troubled youth, it often forces these troubled students to be put into special education programs; which special education programs often fail at teaching their students a specific curriculum. Focusing more on teaching these student life and people skills. Although, this is not an issue for those students who possess a learning disability or impairment but for those troubled youth who have been placed in these classroom, it provides no room to grow. “Recognizing that most of us were trouble some are not receiving adequate services in our under identified, especially for special education services, it is interesting to note where students who are categorized as having emotional and behavioral disorders are currently being served: 14.1% are served in regular classrooms; 30% are receiving educational services and resource rooms; 35.8% are receiving services in separate classrooms” p.390
Knitzer, Steinberg, and Fleisch (1990) Discussing a new service systems that should be implemented into our school systems; specifically for our troubled youth. This program contains four “Functional Curriculum Domains”. The first domain is about Social/Sexual, teaching skills in areas such as “Assertiveness, Communication, Self-Esteem, Sexuality: Growth, Pregnancy and Birth Control, and Venereal Diseases/Deviant Sexual Behavior”, The second domain is focusing on highlighting the importance of “Independent Living Skills”, such as: “Clothing and Care Selection, Personal Hygiene, Community Mobility, Community Resource, Eating, Food Preparation, Meal Planning/Shopping/Storing, Health and Safety, Home Maintenance etc.” The third domain would specialize in “Leisure Skills” which would be Home and community based. Lasty, the fourth domain would teach “Vocational Skills” which would be associated with work and community skills.
Uncovering the sad truth about the way troubled children are being implemented into our school systems goes to show that we don’t care about our troubled youths receiving their education nor do we want to “help” our troubled youth, we just don’t want them interfering with other students’ education so we put them in classrooms with students that have special needs where we don’t have to deal with them. Completely disregarding what this could do to our children’s self esteem. Causing troubled youth to act out even more in school, because they have now been brainwashed into believing they actually have some sort of learning impairment or even worse keeping them in these classroom so long to a point where they give up on trying in school all together. “Coupled with the reluctance of designating certain you have been in need of special education is an underlying, unusual and express, hope that the youth who is consorting with gangs and who is exhibiting antisocial behavior will leave school. In fact, the most often used method of discipline is suspension or expulsion from school.” p.389
As this article will help me explain to my audience how our troubled youth are often given up on by school systems, limiting their opportunities to succeed. Due to most jobs requiring their employees to have some sort of education, with school systems failing our youth at a young age, their setting them up to fail for the rest of their lives. “ Of the experiences of trouble youth entering the community from education settings (Edgar & Levine, 1987) indicates that most of these individuals are ill-equipped to enter the job market and must be afforded a solid service network to succeed as adults…. Troubled you too often behave in ways that most employers will not tolerate: they cannot follow rules; they “mark mouth off” to fellow employees or supervisors; and displays such behaviors as theft, assault, sex abuse, alcohol or drug abuse, and other problems that generalize to living placements in the community and social setting (Fredericks & Nishioka-Evans, 1987)” p.391
Lastly, this article will be a good source to use because it informs us of the struggles these troubled youth will face if they are continuously swept under the rug, but it also informs us in ways we should serve these youth in ways that would be if it then and help them to be prepared for the real world and break this vicious cycle.
Liu uses this article to discuss how the impact of labels given to you by your peers and parents was bigger than they were aware of. “Peer attitudes toward delinquency and peer involvement in delinquency are hypothesized to modify the relationship between parental labeling, both actual and perceived, and youth delinquency involvement. The models were tested using data from the initial three waves of the National Youth Survey. As hypothesized, both actual and perceived parental labeling increase subsequent youth delinquency. Parental labeling has a stronger effect on youth delinquency when peer attitudes toward delinquency are more positive and when youths reported more friends engaging in delinquency. The conditional effects were observed for both actual parents’ labeling and youth perception of parental labeling. Peer attitudes toward delinquency and peer participation in delinquency had independent interactive influences on the relationship between parental labeling and subsequent youth delinquency.” p.500
Going on to mention how informal labels become more impactful when compared to formal labels. Labeling a child “Bad” or a “Delinquent” at a young again, is making them more likely to become bad or a delinquent due to already being labeled one. “Perceptions of informal labeling is likely to predict delinquency directly. The underlying mechanism for such influence may include one youth self evaluation or self labeling, to increase frustration with conventional communities, and/or three decreased traditional values and institutions.” P.501 Labeling has such a strong impact when it comes from parents due to the parents changing their behavior towards the person who was labeled. Using studies such as Matsueda 1992); Triplett and Jarjoura 1994)
Which proved that when parents recognize the labels given to their children they have a shift in behavior themselves such as: loving and accepting their children less, ignore them which then causes these children to become involved in delinquent behaviors. With the persona that they’re already looked at as bad so they might as well live up to that label. Carrying that label given to you by your parents with you everywhere you go, will cause that person to do one of two things when finding making friends: “Deviant peers in their support for delinquency may exacerbate the adverse experience of informal labeling by significant others in this me and thus may enhance youth’s motives to depart from the conventional ties and social institutions (Kaplan 1884; Paternoster and Iovanni 1989) or these youth may be more exposed to negative sentiments against the conventional group in their concurrent value system (Akers 1985).
Although this article doesn’t discuss every aspect of labeling, such as the most common choice made when it comes to pre-labeled youth picking friends it does hit on the very common aspect of labeling. This has become a very looked over issue, as people we subconsciously label our youth every chance we get. We label new born baby’s things like “divas” and “mean” not considering this theory at all no the power of the tongue. After a while these labels began to sick with these children transpiring into a sad reality. This article will highlight this issue so that we as a community are able to take advantage of these findings and sop the labeling before it becomes a reality.
“This journal explores the plausibility of the conflicting theoretical assumptions underlying the main criminological perspectives on juvenile delinquents, their peer relations and social skills: the social ability model, represented by Sutherland’s theory of differential associations, and the social disability model, represented by Hirschi’s control theory. It does so by applying the principles associated with Granovetter’s theory of strong and weak ties, drawing out its theoretical implications for the criminological theories and deriving a number of hypotheses. The article uses ‘strategic research materials’ in the form of a data set strongly biased towards the social disability model and containing information on co-offending relations among a population (N = 580) of juveniles in a Swedish town during a three-year period. Results from cross-sectional empirical analyses using, among other things, the Quadratic Assignment Procedure, clearly support the social ability model. The robustness of the initial analyses is checked through longitudinal analyses applying actor-oriented statistical models for network evolution. The article’s implications for criminological, as well as multidisciplinary, research are discussed.” (Smångs,Mattias), p.609
Addressing how youth that surrounds themselves with juvenile delinquents are more likely to become one themselves. Proving the phenomenon that “birds of a feather flock together.” also known as “the social disability model” and the “social ability model” (Hansell and Wiatrowski 1981) Theories embracing the social ability model, for example, differential association theory (Sutherland 1992), sub-culture theory (Cohen 1955) and social learning theory (Akers 1998) posit that delinquent behavior, like all forms of behavior, is learned through social interaction with others.” P.610
Yet, this journal is geared towards critiquing the assumptions associated with the social skills and social relations of delinquents. By using an analytical approach to address these assumptions allows researchers to use the proper breakdown to explore the micro-process at work as it relates to juvenile delinquents. With three hypotheses tested throughout this journal ”(1) In networks of delinquents, local bridges are disproportionately weak ties. (2) The stronger the tie between two delinquents, the more contacts they have in common. (3) In networks of delinquents, the proportion of all persons tied to either one or both of two given actors and to whom they will both be tied by a strong or weak tie is least when their tie is absent, intermediate when it is weak, and most when it is strong.” P.614
When it comes to using this source for my paper it will allow me to explore the different effects a child’s peers have on them and their behavior as well as exploring how when that child is removed from that peer group ways in which their social skills and behavior change.
This was a study done by the Department of Political Science at Qurtaba University Peshawar. The basic goal of the study is to Findings of the study revealed that the delinquents belong to age group of 16-18 years were more probable to commit crimes as compare to those with adolescents ages. Those who live in joint family system were found less likely to involve in juvenile crimes as compare to those living in nuclear family. Most of the people who responded involve in labor and they were not made happy (by meeting a need or reaching a goal) from their income, low money-based and poor educational background was the basic reason for the immature/youth-related behavior. (group of same-age people) had a social influence on the child behavior because majority of the people in the study who responded, spend most of the time with their friends which result in negative personality creation. In the research study two explanations Merton’s Stain Explanation (of why something works or happens the way it does) and Sutherland Differential Association Explanation (of why something works or happens the way it does) were found the most suited to explain the patterns of why young people commit crimes. Agnew (1992) examined Merton explanation of why something works or happens the way it does and stated that “there are acceptable paths to success in community of all good people in the world.” p.38
Strain’s explanation of why something works or happens the way it does says that crime is “caused by the difficulty those in poorness have in socially valued goals.” p.39 Making these youth more likely to use criminal means to get these goals. The Differential Association Explanation also deals with young people in group big picture, and looks at how peers influence and existence of gangs could lead them into crime. The explanation is very much in agreement with research findings because the study found that (group of same-age people) has social influence on child behavior, most of the people in this study who responded agreed that they spend most of the time with their friends and also blamed them for their negative personality. Mentioning how originally children between the ages of 7-14 were thought to be incapable of committing a criminal act, in having factual evidence about how this thought was quickly changed. The group discussion also discusses the different types of crimes such as serious and petty crimes, and which category certain crimes fall under.
The graphical information in this documented group discussion will allow very sequential information to guide the essay about juveniles being tried and punished as adults. Half of the information in this discussion is opinionated however the other half is factually based on the sources provided.
