During this time children can also easily be influenced by siblings who offend, it is usually someone who is older who the younger one looks up to, which means it is necessary that they are well disciplined. However, harsh and erratic discipline could also have a negative effect, so it’s important that parents sit down and gently talk to their children, making them understand what is right and to set a better example for other siblings. But if parents start to neglect them, they could see these conflicts leaving youths playing truant or being excluded from school, leaving them to taunt the streets and people where they live, and therefore it would be a tougher challenge to get through to them.
‘It could therefore be argued that ineffective parenting is the associated cause to youth crime and therefore associated with family breakdown and dysfunctional families.’ Muncie, J (1999)
In some cases, youths may become more delinquent when a loved one may have mental illness or may die as they might be blaming themselves for what may have happened. Also a high number of youth offenders have a history of being either abused or witnessing some form of abuse at their homes. This is also confirmed by Sutherland’s theory of differential association.
‘Sutherland’s central hypothesis was that crime is not caused by personality or environment, but is the product of learning and it is learnt just as any other behavior is learnt.’ Muncie, J (1999)
What may also cause youth’s to go out and commit delinquency is when being brought up by a criminal parent or parents. Knowing that their parents are committing crimes, they may go out and do the same and consider that there is nothing immoral about that and begin to justifying their acts.
‘Crimes does indeed run in families’ in Muncie, J (1999)
‘If child has a convicted parent by the time they reach 10, then that is the best sole predictor of their becoming criminal and anti-social themselves.’ Farrington (1996)
‘Children who are exposed to poor child rearing behaviour, disharmony or separation on the part of their parents are likely to offend because they do not build up internal controls over socially disapproved behaviour, while children from criminal families and those with delinquent friends tend to build up anti-authority attitudes and the belief that offending is justifiable.’ Farrington (1996)
As mentioned earlier, at a young age when children’s minds are developing they may interpret that committing crime is the right way of living and spend the rest of their living the same way they parents did. However, in cases where the family is concerned about their child’s future and makes an effort in communication with them, helping them with their school work and in general wanting them to do better in life has shown to reduce delinquency.
There is a lot of evidence that also suggests that there is a strong connection involving poverty and crime. A neighbourhood is more probable to undergo crime when there is high level of unemployment and poor housing conditions, where individuals think that they cannot make a sustainable living through lawful earnings. The links connecting poverty and crime are not only in respect of property crimes such as stealing, but there is equally strong links between poverty and anti-social behaviour. I have taken the following extract from a newspaper article written by Margery Fry.
“There is no doubt that the absence of an affectionate, secure home life is a main cause of youth delinquency.” Fry M
Looking at police reports it you can clearly see that young people from social economical family backgrounds regularly commit more violence than those in richer families. Another reason for youth offending would be social segregation in which working class youths are unable to mix in with middle class or upper class youths and are left isolated. As mentioned in a called Delinquent Boys,
'The delinquent subculture is mostly found in the working class.’ K.Cohen (1955)
In other words working class boys are likely to fail and risk shame. Another British author dealing with working class culture mentioned,
‘Working class boys set up their own alternative culture which seems to have an elements tilting into criminality’. Willis, P (1979)
In other words, having to live in persistent poverty, demoralises the importance of school, and the usual routes of aiming higher in life. In most cases they look for short cuts in achieving a rich life. Below is a quote taken from Farrington’s report in 1994 which supports what I have said.
‘Children with low intelligence are more likely to offend because they tend to fail in school’ Farrington (1994).
According to the police reports youth’s from poorer backgrounds are most likely commit burglary and theft offences as they have inadequate funds to fulfil their desires. What may also increase delinquency in youths is when living in poverty which may possibly mean having to experience a lot of poor nutrition, leading to have poor health and possibly a lot more family stress with less social support. As children would have a poor upbringing it would only be natural for them to think negative which would leave them astray. The likelihood of delinquency in youths may also be increased where youths are left unemployed and the lack of job opportunities they have. It would most likely reduce delinquency in youths if they had a job as they would be occupied and leaving them looking forward to a better and brighter future for themselves and those around them. Statistics confirm that theft for mobile phones and ipod’s are exceptionally high between ages 10 to 17 year olds as they are not able to afford they’re own so they will go out and steal someone else’s and if necessary to shoplift to get their hands on the latest’s gadgets which are in fashion. For those between ages of 18 to 25, reports showed increase in thefts of Laptops, PDA’s, and cars.
‘Children from poorer families are likely to offend because they are less able to achieve their goals legally and because they value some goals especially highly e.g. excitement’ Farrington (1994).
The environment also plays its role to define environment, it could be anything linked from people or areas suffering from problems such as unemployment, poor skills, low incomes, poor housing and high crime. The environment plays a vital part on youth offending, the structure of buildings and estates, street lighting, flow of traffic, gardens, play areas and the condition of facilities for young people can all have an impact on delinquency.
‘Crime is always subject to uneven geographical distribution.’ Muncie, J (1999)
Many youths feel that there is a lack of community feeling in poorer areas. They feel the system is unfair to folks in these poorer areas and because of this sensation, certain youth’s feel that they do not have to respect others in their area as they are not like them hence they become delinquents. People don’t like to feel deprived and wish to live in better communities like they see on the TV, newspapers etc and to support what I have said above I have the following extract from cited by Loney.
‘A growing number of youngsters are developing the feeling that society has betrayed them due to the lack of community support. Such feelings can very easily lead them to lives of crime.’ Loney (1981)
Poorer areas are softer targets in many respects, such as higher density of housing and so easier to access others property. In order to stop young juveniles committing delinquency they need to feel proud of the neighbourhood they live in, they should be involved in the way it looks, how it is laid out. A greater effort is needed in relation to the police and the different communities, they need to be able to trust each other and feel save with one another.
From looking at police reports I realised that there is higher recorded crime rates in urban areas than rural areas and within cities there are known ‘hot spots’ and ‘criminal areas’ of crime. The reason behind this is due to social change, a study in 1929 by Shaw showed rates of truancy, delinquency and adult crime were higher as you got closer to the city centre, and areas with the highest juvenile crime also had the highest adult crime. Crime rates have also seen to go up in areas where there has been a transition from businesses to residency as there is a lot of deficiency in these particular areas. For example in council estates police reports suggest that there are high levels of vandalism, arson, bullying, gun and drug taking crimes by youths. The primarily cause behind all this is the fact that they do not respect each other nor do they trust one another and most of they have nothing better to do but to cause trouble. Furthermore, one way to tackle these problems would be to introduce leisure facilities for youths, raising the living standards of poorer families, reducing unemployment and creating job prospects in the environment and finally another important issue which would be to provide community facilities in which different cultural background spend time with getting to know one another. It is imperative for youths to experience that they fit in with their peers whether that is other youths in their age group, schools or neighbourhoods they live in. But there are times when youths find themselves doing something because others are doing it, just so that they can be like the rest of them and fit in which is generally known as peer group pressure, and is usually some form of illegal activity.
In order to understand how the media has affected today’s youths we need to go back at least five decades to understand the history of the media and the way it represented the youths of that time. Youths in the news have generally been referred as dangerous, deficient and vulnerable as there as has been a sense of moral panic by the general public. Over the last 57 years, the media have been representing youths as depraved youths for example in John Muncie’s, Youth & Crime he mentions that in the 1950’s, the media portrayed an image of youths generally dismissive of anything adult. ‘Teddy Boys’ were Britain’s first post-war ‘folk devils’ who were portrayed as violent, depraved and sex crazed individuals. In the 1960’s, the subject matter was student rebellion, drug use, sexual tolerance, football hooliganism, vandalism and truancy which was greater than ever before. In the 1970’s, it was all about black youths, muggings, punks, violence in schools and groups of wild young gangs. Then in the 1980’s it was all about thousands of youths going into the street rioting giving a new dimension to this youth disorder and finally the 1990’s the media brought to our attention of joyriding, ecstasy, girl gangs and persistent offenders which then to be joined by mobile thefts and bail bandits in 2002. As time has gone by the media has been successful in labelling young youths as deviant individuals and many media stories have left the impression that violence runs amok, all youths are hopeless and that black kids are to be held responsible, of course the media don’t waste their time in exaggerating the stories, as merely the truth will not sell to the general community.
‘The media do not simply reflect reality, they define it in a particular way so that it is newsworthy.’ Young (1974)
Some would argue that the main causes for youth crime are the media and youths simply live up to their expectations as they have done a great job in labelling them and no one wants to give them a chance.
The news channels or the tabloids are not entirely to blame which is affecting youths. Many rap stars, footballers, actors also play a vital role in causing youths to go out and commit delinquency. Many of these people are idols for youths and when they break the law, it is only natural for their fans to do something similar, for example recently British popstar Robbie Williams went into rehab for taking drugs and this was on every front page and every news bulletin, similarly Hollywood actress Winona Ryder was convicted for shop lifting and supermodel Naomi Campbell was being charged for assault.
‘Crime as news has blended into crime as entertainment’ Muncie, J (1999)
‘The news media have consistently given high profile to the detrimental effects of popular culture.’ Brown, S (1998)
As for conclusion I have learnt that these are some of the major risk factors that increase the chances of young people committing delinquency, troubled home life which makes the feel insecure, poor achievement at school, truancy, being excluded from school, drug and alcohol misuse, mental illness, not forgetting deprivation such as poor housing and homelessness. Peer group pressure also has a very negative affect upon vulnerable youths and finally the media which also influences the vulnerable insecure youths into committing copy-cat crimes. However many problems are endorsed upon youths even when they are not at any fault, this is because of the image everyone has of young people. It is also accurate to say that the interaction among youth and society is affected by how society reacts to the media on how it represents the youth, whether or not that representation is accurate. Although any child’s actions simply reflect his society together with how the parents are at home. In most cases it is the parent who is responsible for the child’s upbringing and behaviour, sometimes they can be violent with them in a variety of different ways such as verbally or physically or even lack of communication. Children need to be given a solid foundation which simply starts at home, I personally believe that the greatest main cause to juvenile delinquency is a troubled family life. Next in line would be the schools they attend and how serious the teachers take bullying or peer group pressure into account. As having attended school once myself have gone through in life to see what goes on at school breaks and lunchtime and most of the time bullies tend to get away with bullying which leaves youths scared and vulnerable to be picked on again and eventually a day comes by when they’ve had enough and will doing anything to fit in. The third most important issue which I personally feel has caused to increase rates in youth delinquency would the media. The media has a great deal of influence on youths in terms of what they see on the television encourages them to copy events in their lives. In every movie or even cartoons there is a good guy and a bad guy and research confirms that children that watch TV a lot develop a ‘mean world’ syndrome, they tend to believe that there’s more aggression in the world than there actually is. Not only that, but children that watch a lot of TV also are unable to complete their school work, hence they start to truant and get into bad habits such as violent behaviour, drug abuse and other common youth delinquencies. To summarise there are a significant number of factors that lead to youth crime but with good parental skills it is possible to overcome any problems. It may help to reduce youth delinquency if the media started to give a positive feedback upon youths.
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Bibliography
Muncie, John Youth & crime / John Muncie . - 2nd ed . - London : SAGE, 2004
Youth justice : critical readings / edited by John Muncie, Gordon Hughes, Eu . - London : SAGE publications in association with the Open University, 2002
Walklate, Sandra Gender, crime and criminal justice / Sandra Walklate . - Cullompton : Willan, 2001
Brown, Sheila, 1960- Understanding youth and crime : listening to youth? / Sheila Brown. - Buckingham : Open University Press, 1998
http://www.jrf.org.uk/Knowledge/findings/socialpolicy/SP93.asp
