Examine the social construction of youth crime and consider the myth of youth crime.

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Cri201                                                                                Helen Telfer

Examine the social construction of youth crime and consider the myth of youth crime.

I have chosen to base my essay on youth crime. It is an area that I have enjoyed learning about and have found the subject very interesting. I am going to examine what is meant by social construction and consider the myth of youth crime.

I’m going to start by making clear what is meant by social construction. Muncie explains ‘the term has nothings to do with ‘ the cultures which children construct for and between themselves’. During our period of ‘childhood’- both the institution and the construction of – was composed by adults; usually those of the professional middle class. This is not meant to sound conspirational. No attempt is being made to suggest that children’s condition is entirely devoid of a biological dimension, or to deny the effects physical being, though the nature of the consanguinity between the social psychological and the biological is extraordinarily problematic.

Muncie, is arguing that social construction is nothing to with the cultural background in which we as children are brought up in. I argue that this can’t be right, we are who we are and get that from our backgrounds, family, peers etc while growing up. ‘ Historians agree that ideas like parenthood and childhood are socially constructed and thus can be put together in diverse set of ways’ (Anderson 2002)

It is also known that whatever its historical ‘mutability, there is always a relationship between conceptual thought, social action, and the process of category construction, and therefore definitions of childhood must to some extent be dependant upon the society from which the emerge. (Muncie 2002)

In England and Wales the legal age definitions for youth criminals are aged 10 to 17. It exists uncertainty when childhood is left behind and adulthood is achieved. As said before they are biological and psychological factors but there may and will in most young persons life be experienced at different ages.

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Delinquency, the name commonly given to youth criminals is defined as ‘antisocial or violent behaviour in young people often involving criminal acts’ (Doob 1996)

The construction of youth crime emerged through many factors…

  • Decline of child mortality, I’m not sure how this is a factor. Maybe the reasoning being that children who are usually brought up on run down council estates who only have a life expectancy of say three years old, are living longer and growing up into a bad environment where youth crime is the norm and therefore following in siblings foot steps and committing crime.
  • The ...

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