Healthy Home Environment Is a Leading Factor in Preventing Juvenile Delinquency - Assignment Example

Is there Evidence that a Healthy Home Environment is a Leading Factor in Preventing Juvenile Delinquency? Crime committed by adolescents and children is called juvenile delinquencies under the statutory age. A juvenile delinquent is one who has many problems but is a minor. Need for dealing with juvenile delinquency is becoming more urgent each day. The number of young moving to court has increased tremendously and there for our young people need help if they have a bright future. The trend is becoming cuter and there for the need to help them keep out of trouble. The need for increased knowledge and understanding can prepare us to deal with the problem better than it has never been done before. This issue includes both male and female children under the age of 18. Juvenile delinquencies are one of the most serious problems that governments to destroy. It is anti-social behavior. These actions include loitering, loafing, pick-pocketing, stealing and killing to care for their sibling and also sexual offenses. Parental negligence is one of the major causes of juvenile delinquencies. There are other factors that contribute to the negative behaviors of the adolescent and children (Siegel, 61). Family is one factor with the highest effects on the upbringing of an individual. Almost all research workers have accepted that families of delinquents have to deal with several discords that shape the paths and decisions that the children take. In cases where the parents are working, their children tend to be left to make their decisions that are not always the best but instead land them in conflict with the law. In Albert Bandura’s Social Learning Theory, He illustrates the effects of uninformed decision-making. This approach emphasizes the importance of observation and behavior modeling, attitudes and emotional reactions of others. He explains that learning can be harmful and laborious if one relies solely on the effects of their actions to inform them on what to do (Gilbert, 18). Observation is the way through which most human behaviors they learn, this is determined through modeling. After observation, one forms an idea of how new behaviors they perform and later codes the information that then serves as a guide for action (Siegel, 21). This theory explains human behavior in terms of continuous reciprocal interaction between cognitive behavioral which is an environmental influence. What encompasses observational learning include attention, retention, motor reproduction and motivation. All these factors depend on the external environment. In children’s life adults are like models that they observe and emulate. Parents are, therefore, the most influential models in this play that children pay attention to and encode their behaviors (Gilbert 9). In the absence of these standards, they are faced with difficulty in choice making as a result of the gap created by their upbringing. Parents also need to either re-enforce or punish the child according to response they give to imitating behavior. Therefore, if parents take more time with their children and be part of all the decisions they make, there would be little to eliminate. Parental guidance is, therefore, an important aspect when dealing with juveniles delinquencies (Siegel 37). Teenagers tend to associate themselves with particular groups that they form themselves. These groups have their dynamics and members come together because of their need for identity. Others join these groups to substitute their need for family love and earn a sense of belonging. These groups are always tightly knit and thus correctly solve the purpose it should. Most of children’s social live derive their characteristics from these informal setups. The group rules are always the greatest determiners of the members’ lifestyle and choices (Burfeind 88). These groups are the most major source of peer pressure that may lead its members to fall on the wrong side of the law. Peer pressure is also a cause for juvenile delinquencies, and they, therefore, need to be carefully watched. It is in these groups that teenagers indulge in unlawful practices like smoking, drinking and even stealing justifying the say, “show me your friend and I will tell you who you are.” Strain theory by American sociologist Robert K. Merton supports this fact. In his theory, he states that social structures may pressure one to commit a crime. The strains may be structural, that is at the societal level, and it filters down affecting how an individual perceives their needs. Strains may also be personal which also need to be satisfied. These strains are what insinuate structures such as groups that pressure teenagers to criminal activity (Shoemaker 52). There later arises a conflict between culturally defined goals and the informal institutions’ stated rules for members to achieve their goals. Merton proposed topography of deviance based on what motivates an individual or his adherence to cultural goals and believe on how to attain their goals. According to Merton, conformity involves acceptance of cultural goals and means of achieving them while innovation entails the acceptance of cultural goals but the rejection of legitimate means of attaining those goals. Ritualism on another hand involves a rejection of cultural goals but acceptance of the means of achieving the goals (Gilbert 38). On rebellion, he explains that it is a case where an individual rejects both the cultural goals and the traditional means of achieving them but instead actively replaces both structures with entirely different goals and means. They are very important concepts that can help in understanding much about the conducts of the juveniles. These explain what happens in a group set up, where members turn deviance in the pursuit of widely accepted social values and norms. For instance, youths defy the rule against theft but take the cultural value of making money and being independent. Critics’ claim Merton’s theory leaves loopholes and may be said not to consider all crimes as explicable. Merton propagates for a well-integrated society where people use accepted and appropriate means to achieve their goals established by the society thus not put its goals and means in the balance. He blames the imbalances between cultural goals and structurally available means for deviant individual behavior (Burfeind 36). The upbringing of a child is also the responsibility of the society and not the biological parents alone. It has always been considered a collective responsibility. The immediate environment of a child contributes to a child’s response to situations and how they adopt in relation to their personality and behavior. Studies show that children who live in the slums tend to be more delinquent the reason being that the adults around them don’t live responsible lives and are equally and acting contrary to the stipulated laws. It this characteristics and actions that the children tend to emulate in their life (Gilbert 45). Traditional patterns guiding relationship and transition between family, school and work are at the test in these setups. Here social relations that ensure a smooth process of socialization that are responsible for the continuous process of socialization are collapsing fast, and lifestyle trajectories are becoming more varied and less predictable (Burfeind 17). The youth at times succumb to pressure and end up starting on drugs after rebelling against their parents. The influence of the drugs destroys the moral fiber of the addicts; therefore leading to their behavioral change to the negative thus they commit capital crimes that eventually land them in jail. The parents who are always trying to help their children, and prevent them from getting into trouble with the society and authority as well always face rejection (Shoemaker 158). The pressure of being like their peers is always pushing the children away from everyone except for those they want to match. The children don’t want to be left out and unaccepted in their groups. These group members may be indulging in illegal activities that they consider fashionable. They always want to fit in and be like their peers (Gilbert 30). Education is intended to help improve the lives of individuals. Schools and educational institutions are, therefore, an important aspect of an individual’s life and future. They also have the responsibility of training, and upbringing of the children enrolled in them. Parents entrust their children’s life to the school with the hope of them coming out more responsible and useful than they were before (Burfeind 53). They spend more time at these institutions and, therefore, the instructors’ effort is what shapes the entire life of children. It is the instructors who can notice the little changes in their learner’s behavior. They should be in a position to determine the most appropriate action that can help the particular child get back on track and not drop out. Schools also contribute in many cases of juvenile delinquencies; such students who get involved always take their studies for granted and only see it as a burden, they later get satisfaction in indulging in delinquent activities. The school curriculum should, therefore, be modified to accommodate students of varied academic potentials (Shoemaker 162). The poverty that is never the choice of children to born in also contributes to learners’ involvement in unlawful acts. Some young adults are at times left to care for themselves and their siblings due to their parents’ lack of reliable economic income. Such children run to criminal activities to solve these responsibilities that they are not ready for in their young age (Siegel 87). Though these should not be a justified reason for their inappropriate actions, their reason is always to fend for their families, who are always not able to afford even a single meal in some cases. The dynamics theory on its part tries to explain how the delinquent children pick up these criminal ideas in their upbringing to an extent that they practice them. It views the growing up of an individual as a continuous process (Burfeind 141). The theory explains that there are inputs and output in one’s life which come from the environment and those that live around. They affect the behavior of the individual in the long run. Families that have problems and abusive spouses without a direct and specified channels through which their children’s problems can be also solved cause behavioral defects (Gilbert 83). It is mostly children who don’t get the environment to share their problems, wishes and fears that end up looking for comfort in places that land them in the wrong side of the law. Parents should always provide their children with the time and environment to share their problems because it is the only way to keep track of what they are thinking. They should also be taught to trust the adults and be able to tell them all they want in life; these will make the work of keeping them save much easier (Shoemaker 69). After a juvenile has committed an offense and eventually paid the price for their mistakes in the stipulated way, the society does not let go but instead labels the offenders in relation to the wrong they had done (Burfeind 91). These labeling makes the offenders more deviant rather than a reformer. The deviant theory on its part questions what label tagged on individuals, to whom and who should be in a position to label others. Influential people in the society have the power to label individuals in relation to their wrong and unlawful actions. For instance a lawyer labeling a drug addict, this action would cause these individual to lose their self-image and even face rejection by the other members of the society including friends and family (Gilbert 112). These would even make them lose trust that they had built. This situation is not easy to change not even in the provision of shreds of evidence that show the contrary. The tagged individuals adapt to these effects thus affecting how they behave (Siegel 57). Though some people may argue that these are always as a result of prophesies coming to happen, these individuals always lose their lifetime dreams and vision just because of what someone thought they had done. Parents and caregivers should not associate children with what they would not want to be part of their lives. In cases where they had committed these offenses at one point, they should always learn to let go and allow the juvenile make a new start in their social life (Gilbert 44). Works Cited Burfeind, James W, and Dawn J. Bartusch. Juvenile Delinquency: An Integrated Approach. Sudbury, Mass: Jones and Bartlett Publishers, 2011. Print. Gilbert, Daniel T, Susan T. Fiske, and Gardner Lindzey. The Handbook of Social Psychology. Boston: Mass, 1998. Print. Siegel, Larry J, and Brandon Welsh. Juvenile Delinquency: The Core. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Cengage Learning, 2011. Print. Shoemaker, Donald J. Juvenile Delinquency. Lanham, Md: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2000. Print Read More