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2Source Elrod, P., & R. Scott Ryder (2021). Juvenile justice.docx

The document explores the interplay between individual and social factors in juvenile delinquency, emphasizing that delinquent behavior cannot be understood in isolation from the broader social context, including family dynamics, economic conditions, and community influences. It highlights various individual risk factors, such as biological and psychological traits, as well as adverse childhood experiences that contribute to delinquency. Additionally, the document discusses the significance of family structure and relationships, advocating for a nuanced understanding of how these elements shape youth behavior and delinquency involvement.

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2 Source: Elrod, P., & R. Scott Ryder (2021). Juvenile justice: A social, historical and legal perspective (5th ed.). Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning. Introduction Delinquency and the practice of juvenile justice occur not in a vacuum but in a social context. This does not mean that individual factors such as biological makeup and psychological functioning do not play a role in delinquency or the operation of juvenile justice. Nor does it imply that individuals do not make choices, often conscious choices, to engage in delinquent behaviors. However, it recognizes that individuals and the choices they make cannot be adequately understood without considering the social contexts in which they live and act. Social context also helps shape our views of juvenile crime and the operation of juvenile justice through the portrayal of delinquency and juvenile justice in the media. In fact, much of what most people (including many policy makers) know about juvenile crime and juvenile justice comes from the news media. However, the social context of juvenile delinquency and juvenile justice comprises more than the media. In the United States, juvenile delinquency and juvenile justice are influenced by a variety of factors found in the political economy of the United States and in communities, families, schools, peer groups, and other important socializing institutions. How political and economic arrangements and socializing institutions such as families, schools, communities, and peers influence delinquency is a primary focus of theory and research in the field of criminology. Indeed, courses in criminology, juvenile delinquency, and criminological theory focus attention on how factors such as economic inequality, school failure, residence in high-crime neighborhoods, child-discipline
practices, child abuse, association with criminally involved peers, and many other factors are related to delinquency. Explanations of illegal behavior that refer to such factors compose a significant body of criminological theory. Moreover, theories are important, as Stephen Pfohl has noted, because they “provide us with an image of what something is and how we might best act toward it.”1 The development of good theories of delinquency, then, could be used to develop policies that reduce or prevent it. They can also be used to develop effective responses to youths involved in the juvenile justice process. The following reading is intended to help you can a better understanding of the relationship between social context and delinquency and how various risk factors within this social context influence youths’ behavior. Individual Factors and Delinquency Many individual factors have been found to be related to delinquent behavior. These factors are often referred to as risk factors because their presence increases the likelihood of delinquency or involvement in the juvenile justice process. These risk factors consist of biological, genetic, or psychological characteristics of individuals that are strong predictors of delinquency, although such characteristics may be heavily influenced by the social or physical environment in which youths live. As noted earlier, youths undergo substantial biological and neurological development as they transition from childhood to adolescence and to young adulthood. As a result, errors in judgement and poor decision making are common as youths develop. Moreover, genetic and physiological factors that result in cognitive and neurological deficits and mental and behavioral disorders are linked to delinquent behaviors. Common challenges exhibited by these youths include learning disabilities, attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD), traumatic brain injury, low IQ, impulsiveness, low self-control, and sensation seeking—all of which increase the probability
of delinquent behavior.3 In addition to genetic or physiological factors, a variety of other individual risk factors have been found to be closely related to youths’ involvement in illegal behavior. For example, youths who have attitudes that support delinquent behaviors, gun ownership, and drug use and youths who display antisocial and aggressive behaviors at an early age (referred to as early onset) are at greater risk of delinquency than youths who do not exhibit such attitudes and behaviors. Similarly, children who are exposed to violence or are the victims of physical or sexual abuse are at greater risk of delinquent behavior.4 Although each risk factor previously cited can contribute to delinquency, some youths experience multiple risk factors. For example, a youth who has a cognitive deficit may also be the victim of child abuse and display aggressive behavior at an early age. The cumulative effects of multiple risk factors would place the child at heightened risk of delinquent behavior and juvenile justice process involvement. Moreover, as the previous example indicates, youths with one or more individual level risk factors are often exposed to environmental risk factors. Child victimization is the result of inappropriate family socialization practices that have significant impacts on children. As last week, many youths are exposed to a range of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). Indeed, 45% of children in the United States have experienced at least one ACE, and one in 10 children has experienced three or more. The most common ACEs are economic deprivation and parental divorce or separation, but they include a range of other experiences such as living in a home in which a parent or guardian served time in prison or jail, someone was mentally ill or suicidal, a person in the home had a drug or alcohol problem, and where the youth witnessed crime or was a victim of violence.5 Exposure to an ACE does not mean that a child will be permanently harmed, but exposure
to multiple adverse experiences or exposure to experiences that result in severe trauma increase the chances that the individual will experience a variety of negative life outcomes if no efforts are made to help the child work through the trauma. For example, exposure to ACEs has been linked to alcoholism, drug use, depression, suicide, poor physical health, low educational attainment, unemployment, and poverty.6 Moreover, serious trauma can influence a child’s physical and mental development and produce changes in the brain that produce psychological and behavioral symptoms that impair youths’ relationships with others and increase the likelihood that they will have contact with school and juvenile justice authorities. Psychological symptoms include hypervigilance (i.e., feeling an acute sense of threat), hyperreactivity (i.e., difficulty calming down once hyperreactivity is triggered), an unstable sense of self, anxiety, depression, and brief periods of paranoia. Behavioral symptoms include poor school performance, self- harming behaviors such as cutting, difficulty relating to others, intense and inappropriate outbursts of anger, substance use, and weapon carrying, and they may also come across as tough, uncaring, hostile, and threatening.7 Note that there has been a good deal of research that has documented a strong association between low self-control and delinquent behavior.8 According to Michael Gottfredson and Travis Hirschi, youth who exhibit low self-control are “vulnerable to the temptations of the moment.”9 Thus, when these youths ae involved in the juvenile justice process, juvenile justice workers must recognize these symptoms and consider their causes so that they can make appropriate decisions related to the treatment of these youths. Individual factors play an important role in delinquent behavior. Moreover, the effective treatment of youths’ behavior requires that individual risk factors be addressed. But note that even though some individual risk factors are the products of genetics or biological or psychological abnormalities that can influence youth’s behaviors regardless of their social environment,
many individual factors are also influenced by the family, community, and larger political and economic context in which children and adolescents live. In addition, many youths who engage in delinquent behavior are not exposed to the individual risk factors covered in this section. Indeed, delinquent behavior, which covers a wide range of behaviors, is not uncommon and cannot be easily explained by individual risk factors alone. As a result, a more complete understanding of delinquency needs to consider the wider social context in which youths live. The Family and Delinquency There appears to be widespread agreement among both social scientists and the general public that the family plays a key role in child development and socialization. The family can be a place where members love each other, care for one another, and provide a mutually beneficial environment for healthy human growth. However, the family can also be characterized by conflict, a lack of mutual support and nurturance, and violence. Like other major socializing institutions, families are profoundly influenced by the political and economic context within which they operate. As D. Stanley Eitzen, Maxine Baca Zinn, and Kelly Eitzen Smith note, a family’s placement in the class system is the most important factor in determining family outcomes.10 For example, a family’s placement in the political and economic structure shapes the family’s access to and interconnection with other institutions such as work establishments, schools, churches, and voluntary associations. These institutions can function as resources for the family and facilitate access to other resources.11 Thus, children from wealthy families will have a definite advantage in life, whereas children from poor families will face a variety of obstacles in their efforts to achieve the American dream. The family not only determines the economic conditions in which children live but also plays a primary role in shaping a child’s values, personality, and behavior. It is no surprise that a
variety of criminological theories suggest that the family plays a significant role in the production or prevention of delinquent behavior, and numerous studies have examined various aspects of the family that appear to be associated with delinquency. As Walter Gove and Robert Crutchfield note, “The evidence that the family plays a critical role in juvenile delinquency is one of the strongest and most frequently replicated findings among studies of deviance.”12 Essentially, this research has focused on two broad areas—family structure and family relations—that are felt to have a strong influence on juvenile delinquency and later criminality. Indeed, one important conclusion that can be drawn from this research to date is that the individual’s experiences during infancy and early childhood influence behavior over the life course.13 Family Structure and Delinquency Family structure refers to the ways in which families are constituted. For instance, are both natural parents present, is a stepparent present, is the family headed by a single parent, and how large is the family? One element appears clear: The structure of the American family has changed dramatically over time. The Effect of the Single-Parent Home on Delinquency Children today are more likely to live in single-parent households than in the past. For example, in 1960 8% of all children lived with one parent, typically their mother; by 2018, the percentage of children living in single-parent homes was approximately 23%.14 The increase in the number of children who live in single-parent homes has two main causes. First, many marriages—perhaps as many as 50%—end in divorce or permanent separation,15 and many of these marriages involve children. Second, more children live in single-parent homes because they live with mothers who have never married. For
example, 21% of the children born in 1984 were born to unmarried women, but that percentage increased to 42% by 2014.16 Of course, the high rate of marital dissolution and the growing number of out-of-wedlock births have not occurred in a social and economic vacuum. Rather, they are influenced by a complex set of social and economic factors. Although most Americans indicate that they value marriage, considerable evidence suggests that the importance given to marriage and two-parent families has eroded in recent years. The result has been a relaxation of social constraints on divorce, out-of-wedlock childbearing, and single parenthood.17 At the same time, the economic prospects of many young men, particularly those who are minorities, have worsened. Growing up in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods has negative impacts on young men’s future economic prospects.18 Furthermore, one important factor that contributes to this disadvantage is the higher rates of incarceration experienced by poor men,19 particularly men of color. For example, Black men are almost six times more likely to be incarcerated than Whites and Latino men are three times more likely.20 Moreover, once incarcerated, men have reduced job and legitimate earnings opportunities. This influences marital dissolution and makes these men less attractive as marriage partners who can support a family.21 The relationship between single-parent families and juvenile delinquency has been the focus of considerable debate in the fields of criminology and juvenile justice. Indeed, some research has discovered statistically significant relationships between delinquency and single-parent homes or nontraditional families.22 However, research also suggests that the effects of coming from a single-parent or nontraditional home may not be the same for all youths. For instance, some research has indicated that coming from a single-parent home is associated not with serious delinquency but with status offenses such as
running away from home and truancy.23 Also, some research has found that White youths, young females,24 and youths from high-income families25 are more likely to be affected in more adverse ways by parental absence. Yet other studies have reported that minority youths and children in low socioeconomic communities who lived in single-parent families were at greater risk of delinquency.26 Clearly, research has produced conflicting results regarding the characteristics of single-parent families that are related to delinquency.27 Although there does appear to be a relationship between living in a single-parent home and involvement in delinquent behavior, the research indicates that the relationship is not as strong as some people believe. Furthermore, much of the early research uncovering such a relationship was based on official data. A potential problem with using official data is that authorities may treat youths from single-parent homes differently from youths who live in intact homes.28 For example, police may be more inclined to formally process youths from single-parent homes than youths from two-parent homes. The existence of such a bias is suggested by the fact that studies relying on self-report data have often failed to find a strong relationship between single-parent homes and delinquency.29 Research that has not discovered a relationship between single- parent homes and delinquency suggests that what is most important is not whether youths come from a single-parent or two-parent family, but the quality of the relationship that exists between those parents who are present and their children.30 For example, a study using a national sample of youths that looked at various family structural and family process variables and their relationship to delinquency found that youths’ attachment to their mother was the most powerful predictor of delinquency.31 The Effect of Family Size on Delinquency Family size is another aspect of family structure that may influence delinquency. In his classic study of delinquency,
Travis Hirschi found that, even when controlling for academic performance, parental supervision, and attachment between youths and their parents, family size was related to delinquency.32 This finding is supported by research conducted in England, although the relationship discovered was much weaker for middle-class families than for lower-class families,33 which suggests that it may be economic resources rather than family size that is most important. Perhaps parents of larger families who have substantial economic resources may be better able to meet their children’s needs in ways that reduce the probability of delinquency. Some researchers have questioned the relationship between family size and delinquency, arguing that a more important variable is having a delinquent sibling. Their line of reasoning is that having a brother or sister who is involved in illegal behavior is related to delinquency and that youths are more likely to have a delinquent sibling in larger families.34 Family Relations and Delinquency The term family relations refers to the quantity and quality of interactions and relationships among family members. Like family structure, however, family relations are also influenced by the larger social context in which families reside as well as the economic condition of the family itself. As previously noted, families have changed in a variety of ways in recent years in response to political and economic developments. The Influence of Women’s Employment on Family Relations and Delinquency In 1960, less than 7% of married women with children participated in the paid labor force.36 In 2017, almost 69% of married women with children were employed.37 Indeed, one of the most important changes in the American family has been the growing number of women, including mothers, who are entering the workforce. The effects of mothers’ employment on children
are not entirely clear, however. By working outside the home, mothers are able to improve the economic well-being of their families. In fact, in poor families and many middle-income families, the mother must work if the children are to receive adequate care.38 A working mother can make a significant contribution to the economic well-being of the family—but it also means that the mother has less time to spend interacting with her children. This is a problem that single working mothers share with parents in dual-earner families when both husband and wife work outside the home. In response, many families have come to rely increasingly on childcare or leave children to care for themselves for at least part of the day.39 The percentage of children who care for themselves for part of the day, often referred to as latchkey children, has declined in recent years from around 25% of all K–12 school children in 2004 to some 20% in 2014. Nevertheless, that means 11.3 million children have no supervision for some period of time.40 Although many people feel that a decline in the amount of parent–child interaction can obstruct child development, the extent of the effect is far from apparent. Some research indicates that there is virtually no developmental difference among toddlers who attend day-care programs and children taken care of at home, although there may be some negative health outcomes for infants.41 Moreover, quality childcare programs can facilitate children’s cognitive, emotional, and social development, and this is particularly true for disadvantaged children.42 Nevertheless, more recent research on the effects of childcare indicate that although there are some positive effects for some children in high-quality programs, children who spend more time in day care displayed more behavioral problems compared with those who spent fewer hours.43 Even self-care does not always result in poor outcomes. Many children who are left unsupervised become more independent and learn to become more responsible for themselves over time. In contrast, other children who care for themselves experience
loneliness and isolation and may be significantly disadvantaged by a lack of adult supervision. Furthermore, they may be at greater risk of accidents, injuries, and involvement in risky and problem behaviors.44 The importance of good adult supervision has been noted in a study by Thomas Vander Ven and his colleagues, who found that mothers’ employment had little effect on children’s delinquent behavior when they were adequately supervised.45 Thus, having good adult supervision for children appears to be a key factor in limiting delinquency. Researchers also have examined the ways in which parents’ roles and experiences in the workplace influence their relationship with their children. Criminologists Mark Colvin and John Pauly argue that parents tend to reproduce at home the authority relations they experience in the workplace. The problem is that the differences in power characteristic of a capitalist economy result in workplace experiences that are authoritarian and coercive. In turn, these experiences engender coercive and authoritarian relationships in many homes—relationships that are not conducive to the establishment of intimate bonds between family members and increase the likelihood of delinquency.46 The relationship between the economic system and the family is also the focus of John Hagan’s power control theory. According to Hagan, “Work relations structure family relations, particularly relations between fathers and mothers and in turn relations between parents and their children, especially mothers and their daughters.”47 Data collected by Hagan and his colleagues in Canada tend to support this hypothesis. From Hagan’s perspective, the power that parents have in the workplace is typically reproduced in the family. Hagan argues that when both parents are in positions of power in the workplace, the parents share power and the family structure is egalitarian. In such families, male and female children are socialized in similar ways, which results in comparable levels of delinquency among male and female children. However, in traditional patriarchal families, in which the mother remains at
home, as well as in single-parent families, daughters are more likely to become the objects of control by mothers, who socialize their daughters to avoid risk. One outcome is that males tend to engage in more delinquency than females in such families.48 Family Socialization and Delinquency An important process through which family relations are developed is socialization. Socialization refers to the ways that a child is taught cultural roles and normal adult responsibilities, and it involves a variety of interactions such as touching, holding, hugging, kissing, and talking to the child; listening to the child; feeding and clothing the child; and taking care of the child’s need for safety, security, and love. All of these interactions convey important messages to children. One important aspect of socialization—one that is associated with delinquent behavior—is the process by which social control is developed and implemented in the family. One form of social control consists of the bonds that children develop with the family and family members. Indeed, research indicates that youths who lack closeness to parents or caregivers, or who feel there is little family cohesiveness, are more likely to engage in delinquency.49 In addition, some researchers have uncovered a relationship between family conflict, hostility, a lack of warmth and affection among family members, and delinquency.50 Others have found a relationship between parental criminality, as well as parental imprisonment, and delinquent behavior.51 Family crises and changes also have an effect on family relations and appear to be related to delinquency. Some evidence suggests that disruptions in family life, such as moving to a new residence, separation or divorce of parents, and family conflict, can produce pressures that push youths toward acting-out behaviors.52 Overall, these studies suggest that when the quality of parent–child relations is poor or when there are significant disruptions in family life, delinquency
is more likely. They also suggest the converse: Positive parent– child relations act to control delinquent behavior. Of course, parents exert other forms of social control, including the imposition of discipline. Considerable evidence suggests that inconsistent discipline, as well as overly harsh or lax discipline, is related to delinquent behavior.53 Unfortunately, some parents’ responses to their children’s objectionable behavior are not simply lax or overly harsh; they are neglectful or abusive. Child abuse consists of acts of commission—things done to children. Types of child abuse include physical, sexual, psychological, and emotional abuse. Neglect consists of acts of omission; in other words, a parent or guardian fails to meet the needs of his or her child (e.g., the need for food, shelter, medical care, clothing, education, or affection). Neglect can be physical, emotional, or psychological. However, although child abuse and neglect consist of different forms of behavior, they often occur simultaneously—that is, children who are abused are often neglected as well, and children who are neglected are often abused. The sad fact is that many children are subjected to abuse and neglect by their parents. Moreover, abuse and neglect have been found to be related to a variety of health, cognitive, educational, and social difficulties, including brain injuries, mental disorders, poor school performance, fear, anger, and antisocial behavior. 54 In one of the most comprehensive studies done on the relationship among child abuse, neglect, and criminality, Cathy Spatz Widom and Michael Maxfield found that youths who were abused or neglected were 59% more likely to be arrested as a juvenile and 28% more likely to be arrested as an adult than youths with no abuse or neglect history. Moreover, youths who had been abused or neglected were 30% more likely to be arrested for a violent crime.55 These findings support the idea of a cycle of violence (a cycle in which those who experience violence as children are more likely to engage
in violence as adults). Aside from child abuse and neglect, another indicator of the quality of family life is conflict between parents. Such conflict sometimes takes the form of domestic violence, which usually, although not always, involves males abusing their female companions. Like child abuse, the actual extent of domestic violence is not known because much of this behavior is not reported to the police. Nevertheless, domestic violence is a significant problem. Like child abuse, domestic violence rarely occurs as an isolated incident, possibly because each act of violence tends to reduce the inhibition against violence.56 Also, like child abuse, domestic violence has negative effects on children. Research indicates that children who observe domestic violence tend to be more withdrawn and anxious; they are more likely to perform well below their peers in school, organized sports, and social activities; and they are more likely to exhibit aggressive and delinquent behaviors.57 In addition, research suggests that domestic violence and child abuse are related.58 For example, research on the co-occurrence of domestic violence and child maltreatment indicates there is a 30% to 60% overlap between violence directed at women and violence directed at children in the same families,59 and that dual exposure to domestic violence and maltreatment is related to a variety of negative outcomes, including depression, delinquency, and aggression.60 An undeniable connection exists between violence in families and children’s violence. Parents who physically abuse their children teach them that it is okay to physically confront other people when angry and that physical violence is an acceptable form of interaction between people. Men who abuse their wives or girlfriends teach their male children that it is acceptable to hit women. By their behavior, they also teach female children that it is acceptable for women to be hit by men and that women should expect and accept physical abuse by men. In a similar manner, children who have been sexually abused, especially those victimized by a close family member or a person who has
authority over them, often become perpetrators themselves. The inappropriate forms of social and sexual contact inherent in sexual abuse teach the child victim all of the wrong lessons about appropriate sexuality and, just as important, break down natural or societal taboos regarding sexual behavior. Schools and Delinquency School is another social institution that has a profound influence on the lives of young people. Today, a much larger percentage of the youth population attends school than in the past. For example, in 1940, only 79% of youths between ages 14 and 17 attended school, but this figure had increased to 96% by 2009, largely as a result of compulsory school laws.63 Moreover, the amount of time that youths spend in school has been increasing. For example, in 1940, only 38% of persons in the United States between ages 25 and 29 had completed high school. By 2017, the percentage of persons between 25 and 29 who had completed high school had risen to 92%.64 School is an important institution because it gives young people the academic skills that are critical for effective participation in today’s society. Yet school is important for other reasons as well. It has become the primary socializing institution “through which . . . community and adult influences enter into the lives of adolescents.”65 It is in school that youths learn values, attitudes, and skills, such as punctuality and deference to authority, that are necessary for participation in economic and social life. For many families, a substantial amount of the interaction between parents and children revolves around school-related issues.66 Indeed, school is generally acknowledged to affect “the lives of youth in ways which transcend the more obvious influences of academic knowledge acquisition.”67 Among other things, school is where youths develop a better sense of who they are and how they stand in relationship to others, both peers and adults. Aside from its role as a major socializing institution, school is
important because it is a primary determinant of both economic and social status. For many people, it is the primary avenue to economic and social success because it confers the credentials necessary for entry into well-paying jobs. Consequently, higher educational attainment is associated with higher earnings, and this is true regardless of gender or race and ethnicity.68 Although economic and other benefits are tied to educational attainment, many youths live in conditions that place them at risk of school failure. Poverty, particularly living in an area characterized by concentrated poverty, a lack of health care, and little exposure to literacy-building activities in the home, place children at risk of school failure.71 As a result, many working- class and poor youths find schooling stressful and unrewarding. Faced with school expectations such as academic success that are difficult to live up to, many youths engage in disruptive behaviors, perform poorly in their courses, and drop out.72 Moreover, considerable evidence shows that failure in school and other school-related factors are related to delinquent behavior. The remainder of this section examines some of the school-related factors found to be associated with delinquency. School Failure and Delinquency Many studies have been done demonstrating a relationship between school failure and delinquency. For example, after reviewing several studies, John Phillips and Delos Kelly found a strong relationship between school failure and delinquency. They also discovered that, opposite to the view held by some, school failure precedes delinquency and not the reverse.73 Similar findings were reported after a review of the research by Eugene Maguin and Rolf Loeber, who found that children who were not doing well academically were almost twice as likely to engage in delinquency as youths earning good grades.74 Considerable research has been done on many other factors
found to be related to school failure and delinquency. For example, research on students’ feelings of belonging, attachment, and commitment to school reveal that these factors are related to school violence, vandalism, and delinquency. Studies also have found that students who do not like their teachers or school are more likely to report involvement in delinquency than those who claim strong attachments to their teachers or school.75 Similarly, in the 1978 Safe Schools Study Report produced by the National Institute of Education and delivered to the U.S. Congress, student alienation was found to be an important factor linked to school violence and property loss.76 Multiple studies have found that students who are less committed to school, less attached to their teachers and schools, and feel alienated are the ones most likely to engage in disruptive or delinquent behaviors in and out of school.78 However, a lack of attachment and commitment to school should not be seen simply as a product of individual failure, but as a product of the position students occupy in relation to others in school and as a product of the differences in opportunity available to students in the educational environment. Social class is one factor that determines the position that students occupy and the opportunities they may have. Social Class, School Performance, and Delinquency The importance of social class to the school failure–delinquency relationship was first made explicit by Albert Cohen in his 1955 book Delinquent Boys.79 According to Cohen, school is the one place youths of all social classes come together and compete for status. However, working-class youths are at a disadvantage in this competition because they lack the necessary skills to be successful—and success is defined in middle-class terms. One tempting response available to working-class youths is to form a delinquent subculture (with its own status system) that adheres to nonconventional values and encourages delinquent behavior.
Although working-class youths may have difficulty adhering to the middle-class expectations of the school, they have less difficulty conforming to the expectations of delinquent peers. Good evidence suggests that lower-class youths experience lower levels of academic success compared to their more affluent peers.80 Moreover, other evidence suggests that various school practices also act as barriers to achievement for many students.81 Indeed, various practices make it difficult for some students to succeed academically or socially in the school environment. Moreover, many of these practices have been found to encourage delinquent behavior. Tracking, School Performance, and Delinquency Tracking, the sorting of students according to ability or achievement, is one practice that fosters inequality among students and has been found to be associated with delinquent behavior. Common in American schools, tracking typically begins early in students’ educational careers. Once assigned to a particular track, students tend to stay in that track. Although tracking is common, a variety of negative consequences are associated with this practice, including delinquency. Research has found that students in college preparatory tracks get much higher grades than those in noncollege tracks.82 Also, placement in a noncollege track has been found to be related to a lack of participation in school activities, lowered self-esteem, school misbehavior, dropping out, and delinquency.83 Irrelevant Curricula, School Performance, and Delinquency Today, school curricula are designed primarily for students who are planning to attend college, whereas noncollege and technical programs are frequently of inferior quality. As a result, many students have difficulty understanding how much of what they are taught will help them in the future roles they will occupy. This appears to be particularly true of low-income, noncollege-
track students, who often feel that school is a waste of time. Research indicates that when students feel that school is not relevant to their future job prospects, rebelliousness, school violence, property loss, and delinquency tend to increase.84 School Dropouts and Delinquency For many students, dropping out is seen as a solution to the problems they face in school, but it has substantial negative consequences for individuals, their families, and the communities in which they live. For example, research in 2007 found that the average dropout costs the economy an estimated $262,000 over an individual’s lifetime because of lower tax contributions and increased reliance on welfare, Medicaid, and Medicare and because of higher rates of criminal activity.85 The skills that people need to function effectively in society have increased because of continuing technological sophistication. Consequently, dropouts are often woefully unprepared to compete for and maintain positions requiring even basic skills. As a result, they face diminished job prospects and often experience difficulty meeting subsistence income needs. In addition to the economic consequences of dropping out of school, leaving school before graduation has psychological and social consequences. Research indicates that dropouts usually regret their decision to drop out,86 and dropping out appears to be associated with further dissatisfaction with themselves and their environment.87 In addition, dropouts typically have lower occupational aspirations than those who graduate, and they also have lower educational aspirations for their children.88 Important differences are apparent between youths who remain in school and those who drop out. Compared with students who stay in school, those who drop out tend to be from low socioeconomic status groups, to be members of minority groups, and to come from homes with fewer study aids and fewer opportunities for nonschool-related learning. Dropouts also are
more likely to come from single-parent homes, have mothers who work, and receive less parental supervision. In addition, compared with those who stay in school, future dropouts are more likely to receive poor grades and low scores on achievement tests in school, are less likely to be involved in extracurricular activities and school in general, and are more likely to have school discipline problems.89 As noted previously, dropping out of school clearly makes it more difficult for the individual to obtain a well-paying job in an economy that requires increasing technological sophistication on the part of workers. It is not surprising that many people assume a direct relationship between dropping out and involvement in delinquency. However, research on the relationship between dropping out and delinquency has produced conflicting results. For example, research conducted by Delbert Elliott and Harwin Voss found that youths who drop out of school engage in more delinquency than those youths who remain in school. Yet their research also found that the level of delinquency among youths who drop out was greatest right before they dropped out rather than after. Also, the reasons youths gave for dropping out were directly tied to their negative schooling experience. Specifically, dropouts tended to find school alienating, they were not successful academically, and they associated with peers who were involved in delinquency.90 The finding that delinquency tends to decrease after youths drop out suggests that negative school experiences encourage youth to engage in delinquency and leave school. After the conditions leading to these negative experiences are eliminated, however, the motivation to engage in delinquency tends to decrease. In contrast, other studies have uncovered evidence that when youths drop out of school, their involvement in criminal activities tends to immediately increase. For instance, research conducted by Terrence Thornberry and his colleagues found that dropouts were more likely to engage in crime soon after leaving
school than students who stayed in school. Furthermore, they found consistently higher arrest rates for dropouts until the two groups reached their mid-20s.91 Thornberry and his colleagues argue that delinquency immediately increases for school dropouts because leaving school severs ties with an important conventional socializing institution— namely, school. Similar results have been noted in a more recent study by Marvin Krohn and his associates, who analyzed data from the Rochester Youth Development Study. Their analysis revealed that school dropouts tended to engage in more delinquency and reported more drug use than youths who remained in school.92 The literature on school dropouts has clear policy implications. Some researchers have suggested that compulsory education laws be relaxed, based on findings that dropping out leads to a decrease in delinquent behavior.94 However, others are strongly opposed to such a policy. They argue that the research is not clear on the relationship between dropping out and delinquency. Their position is based on the research that indicates dropping out of school is associated with a variety of negative outcomes, such as poor labor market outcomes and increased involvement in criminal behavior.95 Consequently, they maintain that the focus of policy should be on reducing the dropout rate by improving the ability and willingness of schools to meet the educational needs of all students. The Community and Delinquency As Robert Bursik and Harold Grasmick note in their book Neighborhoods and Crime: The Dimensions of Effective Community Control, concern about the influence of the neighborhood on delinquency and crime is hardly new.96 Indeed, since the development of cities in the United States, considerable emphasis has been placed on the negative influences found in some areas of the urban environment— influences believed to be related to delinquency, adult crime, and a host of other social problems such as poverty and
drunkenness.97 However, particular attention began to be devoted to some of the more negative aspects of the urban environment around the turn of the century, and it was then that sociologists such as Clifford Shaw and Henry McKay started their pioneering work designed to understand the influence of the community on delinquency. As part of their efforts, Shaw and McKay mapped areas of Chicago where official delinquents lived. The maps indicated that the highest rates of delinquency were located in deteriorating inner-city areas characterized by decreasing population, a high percentage of foreign-born persons and African American households, low levels of home ownership, low rental values, close proximity to industrial and commercial establishments, and an absence of agencies designed to promote community well-being.98 Also, they discovered that, despite changes in the ethnic composition of these high-delinquency areas over time, the delinquency rates remained relatively constant. This convinced Shaw and McKay that the high delinquency rates in certain areas could not be attributed to residents’ individual pathologies but resulted from a set of conditions that added up to, in their terminology, social disorganization. They believed that these transitional neighborhoods typically suffered a breakdown in social control characterized by a lack of community cohesiveness, common values, and institutions that prevented delinquency. They also thought that gangs and delinquent groups in these neighborhoods formed delinquent traditions that were passed from one generation to the next (i.e., through “cultural transmission”). According to Shaw and McKay, cultural transmission accounted for high rates of delinquency in these areas despite changes in their ethnic composition over time.99 Many research efforts have documented the importance of community influences on delinquency. Ora Simcha-Fagan and Joseph Schwartz examined the effects of both community and individual factors on delinquency in a study of 12 New York
City neighborhoods and found that communities characterized by low organizational participation by residents and the existence of a criminal subculture are likely to experience high levels of delinquency.100 Robert Bursik examined delinquency rates and a variety of other variables for 74 communities in Chicago from 1930 to 1970. In many of the communities studied, the results were similar to those found by Shaw and McKay: Delinquency rates remained high even though the racial and ethnic composition of the communities changed. Some communities did not exhibit this pattern, however. In one community, an increase in delinquency rates appeared to be influenced by rapid changes in adjacent neighborhoods.101 This finding suggests the importance of examining the ways in which communities are linked together as well as possible causal factors outside the community. Still other research has found that neighborhoods go through cycles of change.102 Although some changes such as neighborhood deterioration have been found to be related to increases in delinquency, other changes such as neighborhood revitalization may be associated with decreases in youths’ illegal behaviors.103 Research on the relationship between community characteristics and delinquency has found that communities play an important role in the encouragement of delinquent behavior. Communities that are economically deprived appear to be particularly susceptible to high levels of criminality. Indeed, economic deprivation appears to interact with a variety of other community and family characteristics that produce increased levels of delinquency, and this appears to be true regardless of the racial makeup of community members.104 Poor, physically deteriorating communities where drugs are readily available to youths, residents avoid involvement in community organizations, and criminal subcultures exist are likely to experience high rates of delinquent behavior.105 In such communities, there appears to be a lack of close personal ties between residents and a variety of criminal role models that
result in a lessening of restraints on illegal behavior. Most research on collective efficacy—the existence of bonds between community members that allows them to take action either individually or with others to address neighborhood problems—has found that communities with high levels of collective efficacy are associated with lower levels of delinquency.106 In such communities the development of relationships between adults and between adults and children places adults in a position to closely monitor youths and empowers adults to address instances of misbehavior on the part of youths. Thus, it is the influence of informal controls within communities, or their absence, that seems to play an important role in influencing levels of delinquency. Moreover, this appears to be true regardless of neighborhood characteristics such as concentrated economic disadvantage, population density or immigrant concentration.107 Peer Associations and Delinquency Concern about delinquency as a group phenomenon is hardly new. In fact, concern about youth groups that threatened citizens was a major impetus for the establishment of the first juvenile courts in the United States, which occurred at the turn of the 20th century. Furthermore, early efforts to study delinquency using a sociological approach typically focused on the group nature of delinquent behavior. The early research of Shaw and McKay in Chicago, as well as some of the more popular theoretical work on delinquency through the mid-1960s, focused on gangs and other types of delinquent subcultures. Considerable evidence shows that youths’ peers exert a strong influence on their behavior, and such influence seems apparent when groups engage in delinquent behaviors. Around 40% of youths who engage in illegal behavior commit most of their offenses with other youth, and this is particularly true for younger adolescents. Furthermore, youths who engage in delinquency with other youths, which is
called co-offending, are more likely to be recidivists than youths who are primarily solo offenders.111 There is also evidence that the larger a youth’s accomplice network (the pool of potential co-offenders a youth associates with), the more likely a youth is to engage in delinquency112 and that the more likely a youths is to commit particular types of offenses. For example, when youths engage in violent behaviors with co-offenders, they are more likely to engage in violent behaviors in the future.113 Indeed, the peer group is a primary site where youths learn the knowledge, attitudes, and skills that encourage different forms of delinquent behavior. This is borne out in research on co- offending that indicates that youths who participate in similar types of co-offending networks engage in less varied forms of delinquency compared to youths whose co-offending networks engage in a wider range of illegal behaviors.114 Other research on the relationship between peers and delinquency indicates that many, though not all, youths pass through a progression from no delinquency to more serious delinquency that involves the following steps: (1) Youths interact with mildly delinquent peers before the onset of delinquency; (2) minor delinquency results from this association; (3) involvement in minor delinquency leads to interactions with more delinquent peers; and (4) this interaction leads to involvement in more serious forms of delinquency.115 However, peer influence may also be present when an individual commits a lone act of deviance. Conversely, simply because two or more youths in the same location are engaging in delinquent acts does not always mean that their illegal behavior is a product of group dynamics.116 The gang is one type of peer group that has received attention in both the research literature and the popular press. However, there is little agreement among researchers on the proper definition of the term gang. Sometimes, the term is used to describe any congregation of youths who have joined together
to commit a delinquent act. At other times, it is used to refer to more structured ongoing groups that hold or defend a particular territory. Indeed, some communities have highly structured groups that fit the popular conception of a gang. Nevertheless, it is worth noting that research on gangs has discovered that gangs vary in many ways, including their involvement in delinquent behavior.117 Other researchers have noted that some groups actually have minimal organization and cohesion. Lewis Yablonsky has argued that a more accurate description of many youth groups involved in crime would be “near group.” Such groups are characterized by (1) diffuse role definitions, (2) limited cohesion, (3) impermanence, (4) minimal consensus on norms, (5) shifting membership, (6) disturbed leadership, and (7) a limited definition of membership expectations.118 Yablonsky draws our attention to the fact that not all youth groups that engage in delinquent activities are highly organized and cohesive. This is not to say that organized gangs are not a significant problem in many communities around the country. However, although gang membership appears to be common in some areas, only a minority of youths belong to gangs at any point in time, even in neighborhoods where gangs exist.119 Nevertheless, gang membership is linked to drug dealing, vandalism, violent crime, and a variety of other illegal activities, although different gangs may favor different types of criminal activities. Moreover, research indicates that gang involvement leads to an increased risk of continued violence and arrest over and above the risk experienced by youths who associate with delinquent peers but who are not involved in gangs.120 Evidence also shows that many gangs today are more oriented toward violence than in the past. Early studies of gangs found that violent activity was not common in these groups. Furthermore, when gangs did engage in violence, they rarely used firearms.121 Today, gang activity is more likely to be violent and lethal because of the availability and possession of
sophisticated weapons by many gang members and the types of violent behaviors they exhibit (e.g., drive-by shootings).122 Illegal gang activity is a significant problem in many large cities and even in some smaller cities and rural counties. However, the actual level of gang involvement is unclear. The National Gang Center collected data on gang problems between 1996 and 2012 from a representative sample of police departments and found that the prevalence of gang problems has varied over time. For example, reports of gang problems by police agencies declined from the mid-1990s to the early 2000s, then increased between 2001 and 2005, and then leveled off between 2006 and 2012. Nevertheless, the prevalence of reported gang problems in 2012 was still substantially lower than in 1996.123 However, other research indicates that gang involvement may be more common than some estimates indicate. For example, David Pyrooz and Gary Sweeten analyzed data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, a nationally representative sample of youths born between 1980 and 1984 who were surveyed on multiple occasions between 1997 and 2011 and included survey items on gang membership. By combining results of the survey data with information from the 2010 U.S. census, the researchers were able to produce estimates of the frequency prevalence, and turnover in gang membership among youth ages five through 17 years of age. Their research revealed more than 1 million juvenile gang members in 2010. Similar to other studies, they found that gang members were disproportionately male, Black, and Hispanic and lived in single-parent, economically disadvantaged households. They also found that, on average, 2% of youths five to 17 years old were involved in gangs, and that the peak age for juvenile involvement was 14 years of age. Among 14 year olds approximately 5% of youth were involved in gangs. In addition, the researchers found that 401,000 youth join gangs
each year and 378,000 leave gangs each year for a turnover rate of 36%.124 A variety of factors are associated with youth involvement in gangs. Gang formation appears to be facilitated by a social context characterized by broader changes in the economy, poverty, inequality, social disorganization, easy access to drugs, and an absence of well-paying jobs.125 Many youths who join gangs are marginalized in their communities. Such youths face a variety of stressful conditions: They have few legitimate opportunities for earning money, and they have few strong bonds to conventional institutions such as school and family. In many instances, gang members come from destitute and troubled families where parents exhibit poor parenting practices. Moreover, many gang members have family members who are involved in gangs, and they have few positive educational or vocational role models.126 Research also indicates that learning disabilities, poor academic performance, having friends who engage in problem behaviors, early use of drugs, and involvement in violence at a young age are strong predictors of gang involvement.127 For many marginalized youths, gangs hold out the promise of economic and social opportunities.128 Gangs also provide youths with a sense of belonging and status129 as well as protection from other gangs and a means for dealing with a socioeconomic environment that fosters aggression and violence.130 Youth involvement in gangs appears to be linked to increases in delinquent behavior. For example, several studies have found that, before joining gangs, members’ involvement in delinquency was similar to that of nongang youths. When these youths joined a gang, their involvement in delinquency increased, particularly their involvement in violent delinquency and drug sales. However, after youths left gangs, their involvement in delinquency decreased with the exception of drug sales.131 Organized gangs are one type of peer group that promotes
delinquency, but researchers have noted that other peer groups also encourage delinquent behavior. As previously noted, Yablonsky argues that many youth groups involved in delinquency lack the type of organization and cohesion often associated with gangs. In studying delinquency in Flint, Michigan, in the 1960s, Martin Gold found that a considerable amount of delinquent behavior occurred spontaneously in rather loosely structured youth groups.134 Gold concluded that delinquency of this type resembles a “pickup game” in which opportunities for delinquent behavior present themselves to ordinary peer groups and lead to delinquent behavior. The research of Herman and Julia Schwendinger has done the most to highlight the complexity of peer groups and how various peer groups contribute to delinquency.135 Their book Adolescent Subcultures and Delinquency focuses on the complexity of youth culture and the variety of peer groups that exist. The Schwendingers’ observational studies of youth culture in Southern California communities reveal that youth culture is far more complex than many assume, a finding supported by other researchers.136 Rather than being monolithic or strictly based on social class, youth culture comprises a variety of subcultures and peer networks that cut across class lines. The various peer formations have their own designations (e.g., “intellectuals,” “greasers,” “homeboys,” “socialites,” and “athletes”) and their own distinctive dress and linguistic patterns. They also are accorded differing degrees of status and prestige by their members as well as by other youths and adults. Although the Schwendingers identified a variety of adolescent subcultures, they noted that there were three persistent types: streetcorner, socialite, and intellectual groups. Moreover, they found that delinquency tended to vary between these types. For example, delinquency is less common among intellectuals, who focus on academic or technical interests (e.g., computers, mathematics, electronics, and physics), have little interest in adolescent fashion, and often spend considerable time doing
homework or participating in adult-sponsored activities. In contrast, streetcorner groups are more likely to consist of youths who are economically and politically disadvantaged and who engage in delinquency, including serious delinquency. Falling between intellectual and streetcorner groups regarding involvement in serious delinquency, socialite groups typically consist of youths from economically and politically advantaged families. Although members of these groups typically engage in less serious delinquency than members of streetcorner groups, they nevertheless engage in a considerable amount of garden-variety delinquency such as driving violations, vandalism, drinking, petty theft, truancy, gambling, and sexual promiscuity. The Schwendingers’ studies not only help us understand the complexity of youth culture but also indicate the necessity of carefully examining the ways in which youth subcultures encourage or inhibit delinquency among their members. Socializing institutions such as families, schools, communities, and peer groups—institutions where youths learn norms and expectations and develop the knowledge, attitudes, and skills needed for social life—have a significant influence on youths’ behaviors, including delinquency. However, these socializing institutions do not function in isolation but are influenced by wider social forces. For example, families are influenced by economic conditions and political decisions that are made at the local, state, and federal level. Consequently, to better understand delinquency it is important to understand the influence of these wider social forces, what sociologists refer to as social structure, and their relationship to socializing institutions and youths’ behavior. In the following section, we’ll examine the influence of broad social structural factors on social institutions such as families, communities, schools, peer groups, work, and on individuals and delinquency.
The Political and Economic Context of Juvenile Delinquency and Juvenile Justice In this section we explore the relationship between the political economy (i.e., the basic economic and political organization of society) and delinquency. The political economy of any society has a profound effect on members because it determines the ways in which economic and political resources are developed, managed, and distributed. The development, management, and distribution of these resources are important because they directly affect the ability of basic socializing institutions such as families and schools to meet people’s needs. For example, the distribution of job opportunities and the pay earned by workers influence the amount of economic resources possessed by families and the quality of life experienced by family members. As the National Commission on Children noted back in 1993, “Economic security is fundamental to children’s well-being. Children need material support to have a better chance to grow up healthy, succeed in school, and become capable and caring adults.”137 That is still true today. However, decisions regarding the development, management, and distribution of economic resources do not occur in a social vacuum but are products of a political process in which different groups with conflicting concerns and varying degrees of power try to protect and further their interests. The Political Context The forms of political organization found in most modern societies can be separated into two main categories: (1) relatively democratic forms and (2) authoritarian forms. The United States is far from a pure democracy in which every citizen has an equal voice in decision making; many political decisions are designed to protect the interests of the few rather than maximize the common good. Indeed, governmental decision making is regularly influenced by
powerful special interests that seek to maximize benefits for themselves at the expense of others. These special interest groups consist of individuals, families, corporations, unions, the military, and various other organizations, and they use a variety of means to obtain tax breaks, favors, subsidies, and favorable rulings from congressional committees, regulatory agencies, and executive agencies.138 Although the government can and does act in ways that benefit the majority of Americans, it is not always neutral.139 When government entities decide to regulate certain activities and not others, when they enforce certain laws and not others, when they select which resources to develop and how to manage and distribute those resources, their decisions and actions invariably favor some groups and interests over others. Whether to provide or withdraw governmental support for abortion, whether to increase or reduce regulations concerning gun ownership, whether to reduce or eliminate support for summer jobs programs for youths, or whether to make it more difficult for low-income youths to receive loans for higher education while providing a range of tax breaks and subsidies to large corporations are hardly neutral decisions. In determining what should be done, government is generally biased toward policies that benefit the wealthy, especially the big business community and corporations.140 The ability to influence political decision making is a form of power, or the “capacity of some persons to produce intended and foreseen effects on others”141 and to influence how others think and act. However, power is not equally distributed across individuals and groups in our society. Instead, it is concentrated among those who possess substantial economic resources— resources that can be used to directly and indirectly influence government decision making. The expenditure of those resources to influence government decision making is seen as a reasonable cost because the decisions reached partially determine the development, management, and distribution of
resources within society and typically benefit those who possess substantial economic resources. From the standpoint of juvenile delinquency and juvenile justice, the question we must ask is, To what extent do current political arrangements contribute to the well-being of children and to the healthy functioning of other socializing institutions such as families and communities that have an important effect on children’s lives? We also must another important question: To what extent do current political arrangements encourage delinquency directly or indirectly? Decisions to invest our resources in ways that encourage the healthy development of communities, schools, families, and children are political decisions. This does not mean that families, communities, schools, and other organizations do not share responsibility for the welfare of children and for the problem of delinquency. Community decision making and school decision making are inherently political activities. However, we must keep in mind that government decision making has important ramifications for the quality of life experienced by many Americans and for the level of delinquency that exists in our society. The following section examines one important outcome of decision making in the United States—namely, economic inequality—as well as the relationship of economic inequality and delinquency. The Economic Context There are two primary forms of economic organization in the modern world: capitalism and socialism. Although pure capitalism and pure socialism do not exist, the economic organization of many countries, including the United States, carries some blend of these forms of economic organization. In the United States, the predominant form of economic organization is capitalism, although socialist forms of organization are also found (e.g., public libraries, national parks and other public lands, public schools, and worker-owned enterprises). Capitalist economic organization is often
associated with three basic principles: private ownership of personal property, personal profit, and competition. In addition, according to those who favor pure capitalism, government interference in economic life should be kept to a minimum. The basic view of capitalism’s supporters is that “the profit motive, private ownership, and competition will achieve the greatest good for the greatest number in the form of individual self- fulfillment and the general material progress of society.”142 Although private ownership of personal property, personal profit, and competition are features of capitalism, they do not distinguish capitalism from other forms of economic organization. For example, slave economies can also possess these characteristics. What distinguishes capitalist economies, according to economist Richard Wolff, is that capitalists (owners) control the surplus value (the value of products above what it takes to produce them) rather than the workers who are involved in production. Moreover, it is capitalists who make decisions about how the surplus value is allocated.143 Unlike capitalism, an economic system, socialism is both a political and economic system. Although there are different versions, socialism is based on democratic decision making, equality of opportunity for all, collective decision making designed to further the interests of the entire community, worker ownership or worker power that equals that of owners, and economic and social planning. Note, however, that countries such as the former Soviet Union and modern China were never socialist countries. They were examples of state capitalist societies were elites controlled and continue to control economic and political life. Today, countries that are more socialist would include the Nordic counties (i.e., Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland), although capitalism also plays a central role in their economic and political lives. Clearly, many people in the United States are able to achieve considerable prosperity. Yet it is also true that many others have relatively few material resources and struggle to meet
basic needs. Although the number of persons living below the official poverty line has declined since the end of the 1950s, the number of people living in poverty is roughly the same. For example, in 1959, 39,490 million persons (22.4% of the population) were living in poverty. In 2017, 39,698 million persons or 12.3% were below the official poverty line.144 However, other estimates of the number of poor persons— estimates not based on the official poverty line—suggest that the number of people who lack an adequate income to meet their basic needs is much higher than official data indicate.145 For example, the Urban Institute surveyed respondents during late 2017 and early 2018 and found that almost 40% of nonelderly adults reported that they or their families faced difficulty meeting at least one material need during 2017, whether food, health care, housing, or utilities. Although these difficulties were experienced most often by people who were poor and the unemployed, they also affected middle-class persons and people who were working. For example, 35% of families with at least one working adult reported difficulty meeting a least one basic need.146 Although poverty influences many Americans, poverty is not equally distributed across the population. For example, most poor people are White; however, African Americans, American Indians and Alaska Natives, and Hispanics all experience poverty rates that are at least twice that of Whites.147 Moreover, and particularly important for our focus, poverty disproportionately affects children. As the Children’s Defense Fund notes, “It is a national moral disgrace that children remain the poorest age group in the United States of America—one of the richest countries in the world.”148 For example, in 2017, almost one in five children, some 12.8 million in total, were officially poor. Moreover, more than 45% of those children lived in extreme poverty in which family income was less than one-half the official poverty level. In addition, 70% of poor children were children of color.149 The gap between the wealthiest Americans and the majority of
Americans has changed over time. In the 1920s, the wealthiest 1% of Americans owned more than 50% of the nation’s wealth. However, that percentage began to decline in the 1930s because of the Great Depression and New Deal policies that were developed in response to the depression. However, since the 1970s, efforts to roll back New Deal policies have led to widening of the gap once again.151 As a result, the richest 1% has seen its share of the country’s wealth increase to more than 40% while the net worth (i.e., assets minus debts) of average Americans has declined since 2000. Particularly disadvantaged in efforts to accumulate wealth has been people of color.152 Prejudice and racist policies throughout our history have made it difficult for many minorities to accumulate wealth. Redlining—a practice that began in the 1930s in which property maps of neighborhoods were color-coded and redlined communities were determined to be least desirable based on racial and ethnic criteria—made loans in those areas more expensive. As a result, many people have been unable to purchase homes, a major way Americans build wealth. Also, redlining made properties in those communities less valuable, which prevented owners from accumulating wealth. Moreover, redlining and discrimination in mortgage lending continue to be problems in urban areas around the country despite laws such as the Fair Housing Act, which was intended to ban housing discrimination.153 And in instances where minorities have been able to purchase homes, their homes have been undervalued. According to recent research, the value of homes in majority Black neighborhoods are undervalued by $48,000 per home, and this undervaluation is not explained by the quality of the home or the neighborhood.154 New Deal programs and the GI Bill of 1944 provided significant support to many Americans before, during, and after World War II and played a significant role in building the middle-class. However, White Americans were the primary beneficiaries of
these programs. New Deal housing programs continued long- standing practices that discriminated against persons of color and, in general, limited their housing choices to segregated neighborhoods. Similarly, the GI Bill allowed war veterans to take advantage of financial assistance for education, low- interest loans, jobs-skills training, and unemployment compensation, but these benefits were unavailable to many African American and Hispanic veterans.155 Historically, people of color have faced a variety of challenges in their efforts to accumulate wealth. Moreover, efforts to accumulate wealth have been further hampered by the economic recession of 2007–2008 that hurt African Americans and Hispanics more than Whites.156 Regardless of race or ethnicity, the inability to accumulate wealth is a significant problem and is associated with a variety of negative outcomes. The lack of wealth blocks people’s access to decent housing and education and is associated with poor physical and mental health and lower life expectancy.157 All of these inhibit the accumulation of additional wealth. In addition, wealth is important because it serves as insurance against economic downturns and unforeseen life events such as accidents and illness, and it contributes to the quality of life experienced by individuals and their families. A problem related to the difficulty of accumulating wealth for most Americans has been the unequal distribution of income which, since the 1970s, has gone increasingly to those at the top of the income distribution. Although wage and income inequality were significant problems before World War II, wage and income inequality was reduced after the war because of New Deal programs, successful advocacy for improved wages and benefits by strong labor unions, and demand for American goods at home and abroad. During this period, American productivity increased steadily, as did compensation (wages and benefits) as workers were rewarded for their productivity. However, by the late 1970s worker compensation began to slow
even though productivity continued grow. As a result, low- and middle-wage workers have seen their real wages (wages adjusted for inflation) decline or remain stagnant since the 1970s. Even workers with bachelor’s degrees or higher have experienced stagnant or declining real wages since the early 2000s.158 The result has been a widening inequality gap as an increasing share of the income generated by increased productivity has gone to those at the top of the income distribution. This has occurred because of policies that have weakened supports and protections for workers and produced lower-quality jobs (i.e., jobs without living wages and good benefits). In addition, a decline in union strength, downsizing, outsourcing, cost cutting, and a shift to more temporary and part-time jobs has contributed to workers’ struggles as have the erosion of benefits such as health care and adequate retirement programs.159 For most Americans, the economic resources of their birth families play a critical role in their future economic status. A person born into a poor family will likely remain poor or close to the poverty level, and a person born into a wealthy family will likely remain wealthy. Although many people are taught that wealth is available to anyone who is willing to work for it, research indicates that upward economic mobility across generations is highly dependent on parental income, and this is particularly true of youths born into families at the lower end of the economic distribution.162 This does not mean, however, that everyone’s economic circumstances remain static over time. Even individuals from middle-class families experience some unexpected changes in their economic circumstances at some point in their lives, and most will experience periodic, though predictable, changes in their standards of living during their lifetimes. Divorce or separation, the death of a spouse or parent, becoming a family head or spouse, unemployment, work loss because of retirement, health problems, and a reduction in the work hours of individuals and family members can lead to
financial hardship. Thus, it is more than the poor who are likely to suffer economic hardship during their lifetimes; they are merely more likely to suffer longer and more acutely because of their economic situation. An important key to economic well-being is the ability to find and hold a job that pays a decent wage. Yet many Americans have a hard time locating such jobs. Periodic economic recessions in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s; decisions by U.S. companies to move their production operations to other countries; reductions in the workforce as a result of automation; efforts to make businesses more efficient; the development of a tiered wage structure that pays lower wages for newer jobs and provides fewer benefits; and a shift away from the production of goods to the provision of services have reduced job opportunities and have affected the wages and the future employment prospects of Americans. Although these trends have influenced people of all racial groups and ages, they have had a profound influence on people living in urban areas, many of whom are minorities and children. The shift from manufacturing jobs to service jobs; the movement of entry-level jobs in manufacturing, retail sales, and customer services from urban areas to the urban periphery or overseas; and the relocation of high-tech jobs to cities have resulted in fewer job opportunities for low-skilled urban residents. Moreover, a lack of affordable rental housing in the urban periphery, coupled with racial residential segregation, prevents many poor and low-skilled workers from relocating to areas that are closer to these jobs. Furthermore, low levels of automobile ownership and poor public transportation mean that poor low-skilled urban residents find it difficult to commute to jobs.164 Indeed, research indicates that distance from home is a major factor that influences workforce participation for both men and women, but it is particularly strong for women, who are often hesitant to take jobs that are far from home because they do not want to be
too far away from their children’s caregivers. Simultaneously, many new jobs that have been created in urban areas require a high degree of skill and are not well matched to the skills of many urban residents. The result has been a high degree of economic segregation characterized by concentrated pockets of poverty, particularly in urban areas,165 at one extreme and areas of affluence at the other. Locating and keeping good-paying jobs with benefits has been a problem not only for urban residents but also for rural Americans. A decline in manufacturing jobs and job losses in industries such as timber, mining, and agriculture has occurred because these jobs have shifted to more reliance on automation. These changes also have impacted rural workers so that rural residents’ workforce participation rates are lower than those of urban residents.166 Economic resources are important because of the material goods and opportunities that such resources can procure. For those living in affluent areas, it means having a range of public services and private resources. It means well-funded schools, recreational and cultural facilities, programs for youths, and access to a range of private resources that can be used to support and respond to family and individual problems. In poor communities, it often means an absence of resources or a lack of quality resources for youths and families. It means that those who are disproportionately exposed to the stress of life have the fewest resources to help them deal with the problems that they encounter. Adverse economic conditions such as unemployment and declining wages place a strain on many families. For example, research on unemployed men has found them to feel less satisfied with themselves and their lives in general. They also tend to feel more victimized, anxious, depressed, and hostile toward others than men who are employed.167 Financial loss appears to be related to changes in men’s attitudes and parenting practices, and many fathers whose earnings decline
become more tense, irritable, explosive, arbitrary, and punitive in responding to their children.168 Of course, women are also affected by financial hardship, and financial hardship is particularly acute for families headed by single women. In 2017, slightly more than one-quarter (25.7%) of all female-headed families lived in poverty.169 Moreover, life for single women who head families is often complicated by the many responsibilities that these women have. Females who head families have multiple responsibilities and demands that go beyond their own immediate needs. They are responsible for providing food, shelter, and clothing for their children; seeing that they get to school; keeping them healthy; supervising and monitoring their behavior; meeting their emotional and psychological needs; managing family finances; and meeting a wide variety of other demands that emanate from employers, relatives, and others. In addition, they must deal with issues of gender discrimination, poor labor market prospects, and welfare policies and programs that provide minimal relief and are often seen as humiliating.170 Economic hardship also affects the young. Poor infants are much more likely to suffer low birth weight, die during the first year of life, and suffer hunger or abuse while growing up. Compared with nonpoor children, children below the poverty threshold are also less likely to receive immunizations and other health care and to have poor health. Moreover, poor children are more likely to experience learning disabilities and developmental delays, have lower school achievement, and experience a wider range of emotional and behavioral problems.171 And there are negative psychological and social effects that are associated with poverty. Long-term exposure to poverty is related to increased levels of anxiety and unhappiness among children, and current exposure to poverty is associated with behaviors such as disobedience and aggression.172 Economic resources clearly influence the ability of people to obtain those things that are necessary for survival and that are
desired in our society. Such resources influence an individual’s life chances. As Hans Gerth and C. Wright Mills noted, life chances involve everything from the chance to stay alive during the first year after birth to the chance to view fine art, the chance to remain healthy and grow tall, and if sick to get well again quickly, the chance to avoid becoming a juvenile delinquent—and very crucially, the chance to complete an intermediary or higher educational grade.174 Furthermore, economic status is an important factor from a juvenile justice perspective because it is strongly related to delinquent behavior. Indeed, many theories of crime and delinquency stress the role of economic inequality in the production of crime, and these theories have received considerable support in the research literature. For example, ethnographic studies of low-income neighborhoods,175 large- scale self-report studies of the link between social class and delinquency, and research on the relationship between persistent childhood poverty and delinquency have found that poverty appears to affect delinquent behavior. In a large-scale study of social class differences in delinquency, Delbert Elliott and David Huizinga found that, although class differences were almost nonexistent when minor types of delinquency were examined, lower-class youths reported significantly more involvement in serious forms ofdelinquency.176 In a more recent study of the relationship between persistent poverty and delinquency, Roger Jarjoura, Ruth Triplett, and Gregory Brinker found that exposure to persistent poverty is associated with delinquency. Moreover, they also found that exposure to persistent poverty during early childhood is related to an increased likelihood of delinquency later in life.177 Indeed, economic deprivation is consistently cited as a risk factor for deliniquency.178 Political and economic arrangements that foster inequality among Americans influence the types of lives that many people, including children, experience. As noted, evidence suggests that
political and economic arrangements have an important effect on delinquent behavior. In addition, they provide a context that influences the operation of other important socializing institutions that are related to delinquent behavior such as families, schools, communities, and peer groups. So far, this discussion has highlighted the contextual nature of delinquent behavior and pointed out some of the ways in which economic, political, family, school, neighborhood, and peer contexts influence juvenile offending. In addition, it noted many individual-level factors that are risk factors for delinquent behavior although it indicated that many of these individual risk factors are influenced by the social context in which youths develop. From a practice standpoint, juvenile justice personnel interact with youths who are unique individuals who have been shaped by their socialization experiences within families, schools, communities, peer groups, and other institutions with which they interact (e.g., religious institutions, clubs, arts groups, athletic teams), including juvenile justice agencies. The presenting problems exhibited by youths may include individual level problems such as mental illness, ADHD, learning disabilities, and low self-control. However, these issues by themselves only explain a small amount of youths’ delinquency. Indeed, many youths engage in delinquency but do not exhibit any individual risk factors. Their presenting problems revolve around issues found in the social context of the family, school, community and peer group and the wider political and economic context within which they live. Moreover, some youths, particularly youths involved in serious or chronic delinquency (i.e., repetitive illegal behaviors over a period of time), often experience multiple individual and social institutional risk factors. Importantly, to prevent or reduce youths’ involvement in delinquency, juvenile justice practitioners will need to identify the risk factors presented by youths and
develop plans to effectively address those risk factors that can be addressed. The Social Context of Juvenile Justice The previous sections of this chapter examined the influence of social context on delinquency and on the ways we explain delinquency. Social context also influences the practice of juvenile justice. Indeed, as noted previously, different explanations of delinquency are associated with different juvenile justice responses. Other aspects of the sociopolitical environment influence the practice of juvenile justice as well, and some of these are examined in the remainder of this chapter. The Influence of the Political Economy on the Practice of Juvenile Justice The development, management, and distribution of political and economic resources influence not only children, families, schools, communities, and other socializing institutions but also the institutions that make up the juvenile justice process. The economic resources available to law enforcement agencies, juvenile courts, and correctional agencies have a profound effect on the level of staffing, the types of programs operated, the ability to evaluate juvenile justice programs, and the support (both personnel and material) provided to the individuals and agencies charged with responding to delinquency. For example, an increase in the funding for a probation department might allow more staff to be hired and additional types of interventions to be developed and evaluated. In turn, this may lead to better services for youths and their families, leading to a reduction in juvenile offending. Similarly, reductions in funding levels can result in staff reductions, increased caseloads, a reduction in services and
monitoring of clients, difficulty in providing quality services to clients, additional stress for juvenile services workers, a diminished capacity to assess program effectiveness, and higher levels of recidivism. Although the effects of changing levels of resources on the operation of juvenile justice agencies are easy to imagine, keep in mind that such changes take place in a highly political environment. In other words, funding allocation decisions are the result of a political process in which various ideas and interests vie for supremacy at the federal, state, local, and agency levels. At the federal and state levels, legislative as well as executive decisions can have a profound effect on the levels of funding available to juvenile justice agencies for correctional programs, staff salaries, staff hiring and promotions, staff training, research, and technical assistance. State-level political decision making plays a particularly important role in those states where juvenile courts and correctional agencies are state operated. However, even when juvenile justice agencies are county or city run, state-level political decisions can affect their operation. For example, political decisions made at the state level can determine the level of monetary and human resources, as well as the types of institutions and programs (and their operations) available to local courts and other agencies that work with youths. Local political decision making also can profoundly affect the operation of juvenile justice agencies. For example, when juvenile justice agencies are county run, political decisions made by county governments play a major role in determining the level of monetary and human resources available to the courts as well as the types and quality of programs operated at the local level. Similarly, political decisions made within juvenile justice agencies also can affect the allocation of monetary and human resources, the amount and types of training given to staff, the types and quality of programs that are operated by those agencies, and the ability to assess the
effectiveness of programs. Political decision making at the state, local, or agency level is often characterized by considerable conflict between groups possessing different ideologies and interests. State legislatures, county and city governments, executive agencies at the state and local levels, and local juvenile justice agencies typically encompass groups and individuals that have conflicting views about delinquency and juvenile justice. As a result, conflict is a common element of juvenile justice practice, and this conflict often fails to serve the needs of children, families, and the larger community. The Influence of the Local Community and the Media on the Practice of Juvenile Justice The local community and news media play a substantial role in determining juvenile justice practice. Many communities possess at least one group that seeks to influence the local response to juvenile delinquency. Indeed, the practice of juvenile justice, like the practice of criminal justice in general, is often a highly political endeavor. In addition, if juvenile justice decision makers such as prosecuting attorneys and judges are elected officials, they can be quite sensitive to public perceptions of their performance. As a result, support for various juvenile justice programs and practices can be extended or withdrawn, depending on perceptions of “what the public wants.” The decisions made by prosecuting attorneys and judges can also influence the actions of other important decision makers. For example, in some states, court personnel (e.g., court administrators) and corrections staff (e.g., detention unit, intake, probation, and other casework personnel) are, in effect, employees of the judge. As a result, a judge in one of these states can have tremendous influence over the allocation of juvenile justice resources. Even in jurisdictions where judges do not directly control probation and other juvenile justice staff, they are often
able to exert considerable influence over other components of the juvenile justice process. Courts that deal with juveniles are also political entities. Most juvenile court judges are elected officials who not only are accountable to the electorate but also must contend with other elected officials for coveted tax dollars. Competition for local dollars among local officials and law enforcement or law- related agencies such as prosecutors, sheriffs, and the courts can force courts to make decisions about juvenile services based on economic considerations rather than on the best interests of youths. When juvenile courts are faced with budget limits restricting the number of probation staff or the amount of money available for out-of-home placements, certain actions by those courts are predictable. First, judges will limit out-of-home placements by increasing their tolerance for delinquent behavior or probation violations before removal. Second, many courts will try to develop dispositional alternatives such as day treatment programs, expand use of local detention facilities, and increase the number of foster home or group home beds. Although these strategies are fiscally responsible, they may allow more youths who have committed serious offenses to remain in the community. As a result, courts can be caught between the public outcry to get dangerous youths off the streets and budgetary restraints that prevent them from heeding the public’s demand for protection. The public influences nonelected juvenile justice decision makers as well as elected ones. Court administrators, middle- management personnel such as chief probation officers, and other juvenile justice personnel are often sensitive to public perceptions and demands. For example, complaints made by organized community groups or perceptions held by local political leaders, including judges and prosecuting attorneys, that juvenile justice practices are at odds with community preferences can produce changes in these practices. In the
community, the news media often play an important role in framing public perceptions of delinquency and the operation of juvenile justice. Indeed, much of what the public knows about juvenile justice practices is a reflection of media-controlled perceptions. This is not surprising because the juvenile justice process has historically been a closed process intended to prevent the stigmatization of children who come before the court. However, the media may not present the most balanced view of juvenile crime or juvenile justice practices to the public, preferring instead to focus on the most sensational cases and the most obvious failings. Whether or not media coverage is balanced, the public relies on the media for information about juvenile justice practices, and the information received by the public can be used by organized groups in their efforts to influence juvenile justice practices. Notes 1. Pfohl, S. J. (1994). Images of deviance and social control (2nd ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, p. 12. 2. Jacobs, M. D. (1990). Screwing the system and making it work: Juvenile justice in the no-fault society. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. See this resource for an interesting account of how juvenile justice practitioners work to manipulate the “system” to help clients. 3. Developmental Resources Group, Inc. (2015). Risk factors for delinquency. Literature Review. Washington, DC: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention; Le Vries, S. L. A., Hoeve, M., Assink, M., Jan, G., Stams, J. M., & Asscher, J. J. (2015). Practitioner review: Effective ingredients of prevention programs for youth at risk of persistent juvenile delinquency—recommendations for clinical practice. Journal of Child Psychology and
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168. Belle & Bullock (n.d.); Galambos, N., & Silbereisen, R. (1987). Income change, parental life outlook, and adolescent expectations for job success. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 49, 141–149; Lempers, J., Clark-Lempers, D., & Simons, R. L. (1989). Economic hardship, parenting, and distress in adolescence. Child Development, 60, 25–39. 169. U.S. Census Bureau. (2018). Income and poverty in the United States: 2017. Table 4. Families and people in poverty by type of family: 2016 and 2017. Retrieved from https:// www.census.gov/library/publications/2018/demo/p60-263 .html 170. Shulman, B. (2003). The betrayal of work: How low-wage jobs fail 30 million Americans. New York, NY: New Press. 171. Duncan, G. J., & Brooks-Gunn, J. (1997). Consequences of growing up poor. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation; Emig, C. (2015). Poverty’s pernicious and persistent toll on young children. Child Trends. Retrieved from https://www .childtrends.org/povertys-pernicious-and-persistent-toll-on -young-children; Moore, K. A., Redd, Z., Burkhauser, M., Mbwana, K., & Collins, A. (2009, April ). Children in poverty: Trends, consequences, and policy options. Child Trends Research Brief, no. 2009-11. Washington, DC: Child Trends; National Commission on Children. (1991). Beyond rhetoric, A new American agenda for children and families. Final report of the National Commission on Children. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. 172. Emig (2015); McLeod, J. D., & Shanahan, M. J. (1993). Poverty, parenting, and children’s mental health. American Sociological Review, 58, 351–366. 173. Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. (2018). OECD Data. Poverty Rate. Retrieved from https:// data.oecd.org/inequality/poverty-rate.htm 174. Gerth, H., & Mills, C. W. (1953). Character and social
structure: The psychology of social institutions. New York, NY: Harcourt, Brace & World; p. 313. 175. Anderson, E. (1990). Streetwise: Race, class, and change in an urban community. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press; Anderson, E. (1997). Violence and the inner city street code. In J. McCord (Ed.), Violence and childhood in the inner city. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press; Sanchez-Jankowski, M. (1995). Ethnography, inequality, and crime in the low income community. In J. Hagan & R. D. Peterson (Eds.), Crime and inequality. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. 176. Elliott, D. S., & Huizinga, D. (1983). Social class and delinquent behavior in a national youth panel: 1976–1980. Criminology, 21, 149–177. 177. Jarjoura, R., Triplett, R. A., & Brinker, G. P. (2002). Growing up poor: Examining the link between persistent childhood poverty and delinquency. Journal of Quantitative Criminology, 18, 159–187. Also see Farnworth, M., Thornberry, T. P., Kroh, M. D., & Lizotte, A. J. (1994). Measurement in the study of class and delinquency: Integrating theory and research. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 31, 32–61. 178. See Developmental Services Group. (2015). Risk factors for delinquency. Literature Review. Washington, DC: OJJDP. 179. Lilly, J. R., Cullen, F. T., & Ball, R. A. (2007). Criminological theory: Context and consequences (4th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. 180. Regoli, R. M., Hewitt, J. D., & DeLisi, M. (2018). Delinquency in society (10th ed.). Sudbury, MA: Jones & Bartlett. This resource contains a theory focusing on child oppression. 181. See, for example, Bridges, G., et al. (1995). Racial disparities in the confinement of juveniles: Effects of crime
and community social structure on punishment. In Kempf- Leonard et al. (Eds.), Minorities in juvenile justice. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage; Leiber, M., Bishop, D., & Chamlin, M. B. (2011). Juvenile justice decision-making before and after the implementation of the disproportionate minority contact (DMC) mandate. Justice Quarterly, 28, 460–492. _

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2Source Elrod, P., & R. Scott Ryder (2021). Juvenile justice.docx

  • 1.
    2 Source: Elrod, P.,& R. Scott Ryder (2021). Juvenile justice: A social, historical and legal perspective (5th ed.). Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning. Introduction Delinquency and the practice of juvenile justice occur not in a vacuum but in a social context. This does not mean that individual factors such as biological makeup and psychological functioning do not play a role in delinquency or the operation of juvenile justice. Nor does it imply that individuals do not make choices, often conscious choices, to engage in delinquent behaviors. However, it recognizes that individuals and the choices they make cannot be adequately understood without considering the social contexts in which they live and act. Social context also helps shape our views of juvenile crime and the operation of juvenile justice through the portrayal of delinquency and juvenile justice in the media. In fact, much of what most people (including many policy makers) know about juvenile crime and juvenile justice comes from the news media. However, the social context of juvenile delinquency and juvenile justice comprises more than the media. In the United States, juvenile delinquency and juvenile justice are influenced by a variety of factors found in the political economy of the United States and in communities, families, schools, peer groups, and other important socializing institutions. How political and economic arrangements and socializing institutions such as families, schools, communities, and peers influence delinquency is a primary focus of theory and research in the field of criminology. Indeed, courses in criminology, juvenile delinquency, and criminological theory focus attention on how factors such as economic inequality, school failure, residence in high-crime neighborhoods, child-discipline
  • 2.
    practices, child abuse,association with criminally involved peers, and many other factors are related to delinquency. Explanations of illegal behavior that refer to such factors compose a significant body of criminological theory. Moreover, theories are important, as Stephen Pfohl has noted, because they “provide us with an image of what something is and how we might best act toward it.”1 The development of good theories of delinquency, then, could be used to develop policies that reduce or prevent it. They can also be used to develop effective responses to youths involved in the juvenile justice process. The following reading is intended to help you can a better understanding of the relationship between social context and delinquency and how various risk factors within this social context influence youths’ behavior. Individual Factors and Delinquency Many individual factors have been found to be related to delinquent behavior. These factors are often referred to as risk factors because their presence increases the likelihood of delinquency or involvement in the juvenile justice process. These risk factors consist of biological, genetic, or psychological characteristics of individuals that are strong predictors of delinquency, although such characteristics may be heavily influenced by the social or physical environment in which youths live. As noted earlier, youths undergo substantial biological and neurological development as they transition from childhood to adolescence and to young adulthood. As a result, errors in judgement and poor decision making are common as youths develop. Moreover, genetic and physiological factors that result in cognitive and neurological deficits and mental and behavioral disorders are linked to delinquent behaviors. Common challenges exhibited by these youths include learning disabilities, attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD), traumatic brain injury, low IQ, impulsiveness, low self-control, and sensation seeking—all of which increase the probability
  • 3.
    of delinquent behavior.3 Inaddition to genetic or physiological factors, a variety of other individual risk factors have been found to be closely related to youths’ involvement in illegal behavior. For example, youths who have attitudes that support delinquent behaviors, gun ownership, and drug use and youths who display antisocial and aggressive behaviors at an early age (referred to as early onset) are at greater risk of delinquency than youths who do not exhibit such attitudes and behaviors. Similarly, children who are exposed to violence or are the victims of physical or sexual abuse are at greater risk of delinquent behavior.4 Although each risk factor previously cited can contribute to delinquency, some youths experience multiple risk factors. For example, a youth who has a cognitive deficit may also be the victim of child abuse and display aggressive behavior at an early age. The cumulative effects of multiple risk factors would place the child at heightened risk of delinquent behavior and juvenile justice process involvement. Moreover, as the previous example indicates, youths with one or more individual level risk factors are often exposed to environmental risk factors. Child victimization is the result of inappropriate family socialization practices that have significant impacts on children. As last week, many youths are exposed to a range of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). Indeed, 45% of children in the United States have experienced at least one ACE, and one in 10 children has experienced three or more. The most common ACEs are economic deprivation and parental divorce or separation, but they include a range of other experiences such as living in a home in which a parent or guardian served time in prison or jail, someone was mentally ill or suicidal, a person in the home had a drug or alcohol problem, and where the youth witnessed crime or was a victim of violence.5 Exposure to an ACE does not mean that a child will be permanently harmed, but exposure
  • 4.
    to multiple adverseexperiences or exposure to experiences that result in severe trauma increase the chances that the individual will experience a variety of negative life outcomes if no efforts are made to help the child work through the trauma. For example, exposure to ACEs has been linked to alcoholism, drug use, depression, suicide, poor physical health, low educational attainment, unemployment, and poverty.6 Moreover, serious trauma can influence a child’s physical and mental development and produce changes in the brain that produce psychological and behavioral symptoms that impair youths’ relationships with others and increase the likelihood that they will have contact with school and juvenile justice authorities. Psychological symptoms include hypervigilance (i.e., feeling an acute sense of threat), hyperreactivity (i.e., difficulty calming down once hyperreactivity is triggered), an unstable sense of self, anxiety, depression, and brief periods of paranoia. Behavioral symptoms include poor school performance, self- harming behaviors such as cutting, difficulty relating to others, intense and inappropriate outbursts of anger, substance use, and weapon carrying, and they may also come across as tough, uncaring, hostile, and threatening.7 Note that there has been a good deal of research that has documented a strong association between low self-control and delinquent behavior.8 According to Michael Gottfredson and Travis Hirschi, youth who exhibit low self-control are “vulnerable to the temptations of the moment.”9 Thus, when these youths ae involved in the juvenile justice process, juvenile justice workers must recognize these symptoms and consider their causes so that they can make appropriate decisions related to the treatment of these youths. Individual factors play an important role in delinquent behavior. Moreover, the effective treatment of youths’ behavior requires that individual risk factors be addressed. But note that even though some individual risk factors are the products of genetics or biological or psychological abnormalities that can influence youth’s behaviors regardless of their social environment,
  • 5.
    many individual factorsare also influenced by the family, community, and larger political and economic context in which children and adolescents live. In addition, many youths who engage in delinquent behavior are not exposed to the individual risk factors covered in this section. Indeed, delinquent behavior, which covers a wide range of behaviors, is not uncommon and cannot be easily explained by individual risk factors alone. As a result, a more complete understanding of delinquency needs to consider the wider social context in which youths live. The Family and Delinquency There appears to be widespread agreement among both social scientists and the general public that the family plays a key role in child development and socialization. The family can be a place where members love each other, care for one another, and provide a mutually beneficial environment for healthy human growth. However, the family can also be characterized by conflict, a lack of mutual support and nurturance, and violence. Like other major socializing institutions, families are profoundly influenced by the political and economic context within which they operate. As D. Stanley Eitzen, Maxine Baca Zinn, and Kelly Eitzen Smith note, a family’s placement in the class system is the most important factor in determining family outcomes.10 For example, a family’s placement in the political and economic structure shapes the family’s access to and interconnection with other institutions such as work establishments, schools, churches, and voluntary associations. These institutions can function as resources for the family and facilitate access to other resources.11 Thus, children from wealthy families will have a definite advantage in life, whereas children from poor families will face a variety of obstacles in their efforts to achieve the American dream. The family not only determines the economic conditions in which children live but also plays a primary role in shaping a child’s values, personality, and behavior. It is no surprise that a
  • 6.
    variety of criminologicaltheories suggest that the family plays a significant role in the production or prevention of delinquent behavior, and numerous studies have examined various aspects of the family that appear to be associated with delinquency. As Walter Gove and Robert Crutchfield note, “The evidence that the family plays a critical role in juvenile delinquency is one of the strongest and most frequently replicated findings among studies of deviance.”12 Essentially, this research has focused on two broad areas—family structure and family relations—that are felt to have a strong influence on juvenile delinquency and later criminality. Indeed, one important conclusion that can be drawn from this research to date is that the individual’s experiences during infancy and early childhood influence behavior over the life course.13 Family Structure and Delinquency Family structure refers to the ways in which families are constituted. For instance, are both natural parents present, is a stepparent present, is the family headed by a single parent, and how large is the family? One element appears clear: The structure of the American family has changed dramatically over time. The Effect of the Single-Parent Home on Delinquency Children today are more likely to live in single-parent households than in the past. For example, in 1960 8% of all children lived with one parent, typically their mother; by 2018, the percentage of children living in single-parent homes was approximately 23%.14 The increase in the number of children who live in single-parent homes has two main causes. First, many marriages—perhaps as many as 50%—end in divorce or permanent separation,15 and many of these marriages involve children. Second, more children live in single-parent homes because they live with mothers who have never married. For
  • 7.
    example, 21% ofthe children born in 1984 were born to unmarried women, but that percentage increased to 42% by 2014.16 Of course, the high rate of marital dissolution and the growing number of out-of-wedlock births have not occurred in a social and economic vacuum. Rather, they are influenced by a complex set of social and economic factors. Although most Americans indicate that they value marriage, considerable evidence suggests that the importance given to marriage and two-parent families has eroded in recent years. The result has been a relaxation of social constraints on divorce, out-of-wedlock childbearing, and single parenthood.17 At the same time, the economic prospects of many young men, particularly those who are minorities, have worsened. Growing up in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods has negative impacts on young men’s future economic prospects.18 Furthermore, one important factor that contributes to this disadvantage is the higher rates of incarceration experienced by poor men,19 particularly men of color. For example, Black men are almost six times more likely to be incarcerated than Whites and Latino men are three times more likely.20 Moreover, once incarcerated, men have reduced job and legitimate earnings opportunities. This influences marital dissolution and makes these men less attractive as marriage partners who can support a family.21 The relationship between single-parent families and juvenile delinquency has been the focus of considerable debate in the fields of criminology and juvenile justice. Indeed, some research has discovered statistically significant relationships between delinquency and single-parent homes or nontraditional families.22 However, research also suggests that the effects of coming from a single-parent or nontraditional home may not be the same for all youths. For instance, some research has indicated that coming from a single-parent home is associated not with serious delinquency but with status offenses such as
  • 8.
    running away fromhome and truancy.23 Also, some research has found that White youths, young females,24 and youths from high-income families25 are more likely to be affected in more adverse ways by parental absence. Yet other studies have reported that minority youths and children in low socioeconomic communities who lived in single-parent families were at greater risk of delinquency.26 Clearly, research has produced conflicting results regarding the characteristics of single-parent families that are related to delinquency.27 Although there does appear to be a relationship between living in a single-parent home and involvement in delinquent behavior, the research indicates that the relationship is not as strong as some people believe. Furthermore, much of the early research uncovering such a relationship was based on official data. A potential problem with using official data is that authorities may treat youths from single-parent homes differently from youths who live in intact homes.28 For example, police may be more inclined to formally process youths from single-parent homes than youths from two-parent homes. The existence of such a bias is suggested by the fact that studies relying on self-report data have often failed to find a strong relationship between single-parent homes and delinquency.29 Research that has not discovered a relationship between single- parent homes and delinquency suggests that what is most important is not whether youths come from a single-parent or two-parent family, but the quality of the relationship that exists between those parents who are present and their children.30 For example, a study using a national sample of youths that looked at various family structural and family process variables and their relationship to delinquency found that youths’ attachment to their mother was the most powerful predictor of delinquency.31 The Effect of Family Size on Delinquency Family size is another aspect of family structure that may influence delinquency. In his classic study of delinquency,
  • 9.
    Travis Hirschi foundthat, even when controlling for academic performance, parental supervision, and attachment between youths and their parents, family size was related to delinquency.32 This finding is supported by research conducted in England, although the relationship discovered was much weaker for middle-class families than for lower-class families,33 which suggests that it may be economic resources rather than family size that is most important. Perhaps parents of larger families who have substantial economic resources may be better able to meet their children’s needs in ways that reduce the probability of delinquency. Some researchers have questioned the relationship between family size and delinquency, arguing that a more important variable is having a delinquent sibling. Their line of reasoning is that having a brother or sister who is involved in illegal behavior is related to delinquency and that youths are more likely to have a delinquent sibling in larger families.34 Family Relations and Delinquency The term family relations refers to the quantity and quality of interactions and relationships among family members. Like family structure, however, family relations are also influenced by the larger social context in which families reside as well as the economic condition of the family itself. As previously noted, families have changed in a variety of ways in recent years in response to political and economic developments. The Influence of Women’s Employment on Family Relations and Delinquency In 1960, less than 7% of married women with children participated in the paid labor force.36 In 2017, almost 69% of married women with children were employed.37 Indeed, one of the most important changes in the American family has been the growing number of women, including mothers, who are entering the workforce. The effects of mothers’ employment on children
  • 10.
    are not entirelyclear, however. By working outside the home, mothers are able to improve the economic well-being of their families. In fact, in poor families and many middle-income families, the mother must work if the children are to receive adequate care.38 A working mother can make a significant contribution to the economic well-being of the family—but it also means that the mother has less time to spend interacting with her children. This is a problem that single working mothers share with parents in dual-earner families when both husband and wife work outside the home. In response, many families have come to rely increasingly on childcare or leave children to care for themselves for at least part of the day.39 The percentage of children who care for themselves for part of the day, often referred to as latchkey children, has declined in recent years from around 25% of all K–12 school children in 2004 to some 20% in 2014. Nevertheless, that means 11.3 million children have no supervision for some period of time.40 Although many people feel that a decline in the amount of parent–child interaction can obstruct child development, the extent of the effect is far from apparent. Some research indicates that there is virtually no developmental difference among toddlers who attend day-care programs and children taken care of at home, although there may be some negative health outcomes for infants.41 Moreover, quality childcare programs can facilitate children’s cognitive, emotional, and social development, and this is particularly true for disadvantaged children.42 Nevertheless, more recent research on the effects of childcare indicate that although there are some positive effects for some children in high-quality programs, children who spend more time in day care displayed more behavioral problems compared with those who spent fewer hours.43 Even self-care does not always result in poor outcomes. Many children who are left unsupervised become more independent and learn to become more responsible for themselves over time. In contrast, other children who care for themselves experience
  • 11.
    loneliness and isolationand may be significantly disadvantaged by a lack of adult supervision. Furthermore, they may be at greater risk of accidents, injuries, and involvement in risky and problem behaviors.44 The importance of good adult supervision has been noted in a study by Thomas Vander Ven and his colleagues, who found that mothers’ employment had little effect on children’s delinquent behavior when they were adequately supervised.45 Thus, having good adult supervision for children appears to be a key factor in limiting delinquency. Researchers also have examined the ways in which parents’ roles and experiences in the workplace influence their relationship with their children. Criminologists Mark Colvin and John Pauly argue that parents tend to reproduce at home the authority relations they experience in the workplace. The problem is that the differences in power characteristic of a capitalist economy result in workplace experiences that are authoritarian and coercive. In turn, these experiences engender coercive and authoritarian relationships in many homes—relationships that are not conducive to the establishment of intimate bonds between family members and increase the likelihood of delinquency.46 The relationship between the economic system and the family is also the focus of John Hagan’s power control theory. According to Hagan, “Work relations structure family relations, particularly relations between fathers and mothers and in turn relations between parents and their children, especially mothers and their daughters.”47 Data collected by Hagan and his colleagues in Canada tend to support this hypothesis. From Hagan’s perspective, the power that parents have in the workplace is typically reproduced in the family. Hagan argues that when both parents are in positions of power in the workplace, the parents share power and the family structure is egalitarian. In such families, male and female children are socialized in similar ways, which results in comparable levels of delinquency among male and female children. However, in traditional patriarchal families, in which the mother remains at
  • 12.
    home, as wellas in single-parent families, daughters are more likely to become the objects of control by mothers, who socialize their daughters to avoid risk. One outcome is that males tend to engage in more delinquency than females in such families.48 Family Socialization and Delinquency An important process through which family relations are developed is socialization. Socialization refers to the ways that a child is taught cultural roles and normal adult responsibilities, and it involves a variety of interactions such as touching, holding, hugging, kissing, and talking to the child; listening to the child; feeding and clothing the child; and taking care of the child’s need for safety, security, and love. All of these interactions convey important messages to children. One important aspect of socialization—one that is associated with delinquent behavior—is the process by which social control is developed and implemented in the family. One form of social control consists of the bonds that children develop with the family and family members. Indeed, research indicates that youths who lack closeness to parents or caregivers, or who feel there is little family cohesiveness, are more likely to engage in delinquency.49 In addition, some researchers have uncovered a relationship between family conflict, hostility, a lack of warmth and affection among family members, and delinquency.50 Others have found a relationship between parental criminality, as well as parental imprisonment, and delinquent behavior.51 Family crises and changes also have an effect on family relations and appear to be related to delinquency. Some evidence suggests that disruptions in family life, such as moving to a new residence, separation or divorce of parents, and family conflict, can produce pressures that push youths toward acting-out behaviors.52 Overall, these studies suggest that when the quality of parent–child relations is poor or when there are significant disruptions in family life, delinquency
  • 13.
    is more likely.They also suggest the converse: Positive parent– child relations act to control delinquent behavior. Of course, parents exert other forms of social control, including the imposition of discipline. Considerable evidence suggests that inconsistent discipline, as well as overly harsh or lax discipline, is related to delinquent behavior.53 Unfortunately, some parents’ responses to their children’s objectionable behavior are not simply lax or overly harsh; they are neglectful or abusive. Child abuse consists of acts of commission—things done to children. Types of child abuse include physical, sexual, psychological, and emotional abuse. Neglect consists of acts of omission; in other words, a parent or guardian fails to meet the needs of his or her child (e.g., the need for food, shelter, medical care, clothing, education, or affection). Neglect can be physical, emotional, or psychological. However, although child abuse and neglect consist of different forms of behavior, they often occur simultaneously—that is, children who are abused are often neglected as well, and children who are neglected are often abused. The sad fact is that many children are subjected to abuse and neglect by their parents. Moreover, abuse and neglect have been found to be related to a variety of health, cognitive, educational, and social difficulties, including brain injuries, mental disorders, poor school performance, fear, anger, and antisocial behavior. 54 In one of the most comprehensive studies done on the relationship among child abuse, neglect, and criminality, Cathy Spatz Widom and Michael Maxfield found that youths who were abused or neglected were 59% more likely to be arrested as a juvenile and 28% more likely to be arrested as an adult than youths with no abuse or neglect history. Moreover, youths who had been abused or neglected were 30% more likely to be arrested for a violent crime.55 These findings support the idea of a cycle of violence (a cycle in which those who experience violence as children are more likely to engage
  • 14.
    in violence asadults). Aside from child abuse and neglect, another indicator of the quality of family life is conflict between parents. Such conflict sometimes takes the form of domestic violence, which usually, although not always, involves males abusing their female companions. Like child abuse, the actual extent of domestic violence is not known because much of this behavior is not reported to the police. Nevertheless, domestic violence is a significant problem. Like child abuse, domestic violence rarely occurs as an isolated incident, possibly because each act of violence tends to reduce the inhibition against violence.56 Also, like child abuse, domestic violence has negative effects on children. Research indicates that children who observe domestic violence tend to be more withdrawn and anxious; they are more likely to perform well below their peers in school, organized sports, and social activities; and they are more likely to exhibit aggressive and delinquent behaviors.57 In addition, research suggests that domestic violence and child abuse are related.58 For example, research on the co-occurrence of domestic violence and child maltreatment indicates there is a 30% to 60% overlap between violence directed at women and violence directed at children in the same families,59 and that dual exposure to domestic violence and maltreatment is related to a variety of negative outcomes, including depression, delinquency, and aggression.60 An undeniable connection exists between violence in families and children’s violence. Parents who physically abuse their children teach them that it is okay to physically confront other people when angry and that physical violence is an acceptable form of interaction between people. Men who abuse their wives or girlfriends teach their male children that it is acceptable to hit women. By their behavior, they also teach female children that it is acceptable for women to be hit by men and that women should expect and accept physical abuse by men. In a similar manner, children who have been sexually abused, especially those victimized by a close family member or a person who has
  • 15.
    authority over them,often become perpetrators themselves. The inappropriate forms of social and sexual contact inherent in sexual abuse teach the child victim all of the wrong lessons about appropriate sexuality and, just as important, break down natural or societal taboos regarding sexual behavior. Schools and Delinquency School is another social institution that has a profound influence on the lives of young people. Today, a much larger percentage of the youth population attends school than in the past. For example, in 1940, only 79% of youths between ages 14 and 17 attended school, but this figure had increased to 96% by 2009, largely as a result of compulsory school laws.63 Moreover, the amount of time that youths spend in school has been increasing. For example, in 1940, only 38% of persons in the United States between ages 25 and 29 had completed high school. By 2017, the percentage of persons between 25 and 29 who had completed high school had risen to 92%.64 School is an important institution because it gives young people the academic skills that are critical for effective participation in today’s society. Yet school is important for other reasons as well. It has become the primary socializing institution “through which . . . community and adult influences enter into the lives of adolescents.”65 It is in school that youths learn values, attitudes, and skills, such as punctuality and deference to authority, that are necessary for participation in economic and social life. For many families, a substantial amount of the interaction between parents and children revolves around school-related issues.66 Indeed, school is generally acknowledged to affect “the lives of youth in ways which transcend the more obvious influences of academic knowledge acquisition.”67 Among other things, school is where youths develop a better sense of who they are and how they stand in relationship to others, both peers and adults. Aside from its role as a major socializing institution, school is
  • 16.
    important because itis a primary determinant of both economic and social status. For many people, it is the primary avenue to economic and social success because it confers the credentials necessary for entry into well-paying jobs. Consequently, higher educational attainment is associated with higher earnings, and this is true regardless of gender or race and ethnicity.68 Although economic and other benefits are tied to educational attainment, many youths live in conditions that place them at risk of school failure. Poverty, particularly living in an area characterized by concentrated poverty, a lack of health care, and little exposure to literacy-building activities in the home, place children at risk of school failure.71 As a result, many working- class and poor youths find schooling stressful and unrewarding. Faced with school expectations such as academic success that are difficult to live up to, many youths engage in disruptive behaviors, perform poorly in their courses, and drop out.72 Moreover, considerable evidence shows that failure in school and other school-related factors are related to delinquent behavior. The remainder of this section examines some of the school-related factors found to be associated with delinquency. School Failure and Delinquency Many studies have been done demonstrating a relationship between school failure and delinquency. For example, after reviewing several studies, John Phillips and Delos Kelly found a strong relationship between school failure and delinquency. They also discovered that, opposite to the view held by some, school failure precedes delinquency and not the reverse.73 Similar findings were reported after a review of the research by Eugene Maguin and Rolf Loeber, who found that children who were not doing well academically were almost twice as likely to engage in delinquency as youths earning good grades.74 Considerable research has been done on many other factors
  • 17.
    found to berelated to school failure and delinquency. For example, research on students’ feelings of belonging, attachment, and commitment to school reveal that these factors are related to school violence, vandalism, and delinquency. Studies also have found that students who do not like their teachers or school are more likely to report involvement in delinquency than those who claim strong attachments to their teachers or school.75 Similarly, in the 1978 Safe Schools Study Report produced by the National Institute of Education and delivered to the U.S. Congress, student alienation was found to be an important factor linked to school violence and property loss.76 Multiple studies have found that students who are less committed to school, less attached to their teachers and schools, and feel alienated are the ones most likely to engage in disruptive or delinquent behaviors in and out of school.78 However, a lack of attachment and commitment to school should not be seen simply as a product of individual failure, but as a product of the position students occupy in relation to others in school and as a product of the differences in opportunity available to students in the educational environment. Social class is one factor that determines the position that students occupy and the opportunities they may have. Social Class, School Performance, and Delinquency The importance of social class to the school failure–delinquency relationship was first made explicit by Albert Cohen in his 1955 book Delinquent Boys.79 According to Cohen, school is the one place youths of all social classes come together and compete for status. However, working-class youths are at a disadvantage in this competition because they lack the necessary skills to be successful—and success is defined in middle-class terms. One tempting response available to working-class youths is to form a delinquent subculture (with its own status system) that adheres to nonconventional values and encourages delinquent behavior.
  • 18.
    Although working-class youthsmay have difficulty adhering to the middle-class expectations of the school, they have less difficulty conforming to the expectations of delinquent peers. Good evidence suggests that lower-class youths experience lower levels of academic success compared to their more affluent peers.80 Moreover, other evidence suggests that various school practices also act as barriers to achievement for many students.81 Indeed, various practices make it difficult for some students to succeed academically or socially in the school environment. Moreover, many of these practices have been found to encourage delinquent behavior. Tracking, School Performance, and Delinquency Tracking, the sorting of students according to ability or achievement, is one practice that fosters inequality among students and has been found to be associated with delinquent behavior. Common in American schools, tracking typically begins early in students’ educational careers. Once assigned to a particular track, students tend to stay in that track. Although tracking is common, a variety of negative consequences are associated with this practice, including delinquency. Research has found that students in college preparatory tracks get much higher grades than those in noncollege tracks.82 Also, placement in a noncollege track has been found to be related to a lack of participation in school activities, lowered self-esteem, school misbehavior, dropping out, and delinquency.83 Irrelevant Curricula, School Performance, and Delinquency Today, school curricula are designed primarily for students who are planning to attend college, whereas noncollege and technical programs are frequently of inferior quality. As a result, many students have difficulty understanding how much of what they are taught will help them in the future roles they will occupy. This appears to be particularly true of low-income, noncollege-
  • 19.
    track students, whooften feel that school is a waste of time. Research indicates that when students feel that school is not relevant to their future job prospects, rebelliousness, school violence, property loss, and delinquency tend to increase.84 School Dropouts and Delinquency For many students, dropping out is seen as a solution to the problems they face in school, but it has substantial negative consequences for individuals, their families, and the communities in which they live. For example, research in 2007 found that the average dropout costs the economy an estimated $262,000 over an individual’s lifetime because of lower tax contributions and increased reliance on welfare, Medicaid, and Medicare and because of higher rates of criminal activity.85 The skills that people need to function effectively in society have increased because of continuing technological sophistication. Consequently, dropouts are often woefully unprepared to compete for and maintain positions requiring even basic skills. As a result, they face diminished job prospects and often experience difficulty meeting subsistence income needs. In addition to the economic consequences of dropping out of school, leaving school before graduation has psychological and social consequences. Research indicates that dropouts usually regret their decision to drop out,86 and dropping out appears to be associated with further dissatisfaction with themselves and their environment.87 In addition, dropouts typically have lower occupational aspirations than those who graduate, and they also have lower educational aspirations for their children.88 Important differences are apparent between youths who remain in school and those who drop out. Compared with students who stay in school, those who drop out tend to be from low socioeconomic status groups, to be members of minority groups, and to come from homes with fewer study aids and fewer opportunities for nonschool-related learning. Dropouts also are
  • 20.
    more likely to comefrom single-parent homes, have mothers who work, and receive less parental supervision. In addition, compared with those who stay in school, future dropouts are more likely to receive poor grades and low scores on achievement tests in school, are less likely to be involved in extracurricular activities and school in general, and are more likely to have school discipline problems.89 As noted previously, dropping out of school clearly makes it more difficult for the individual to obtain a well-paying job in an economy that requires increasing technological sophistication on the part of workers. It is not surprising that many people assume a direct relationship between dropping out and involvement in delinquency. However, research on the relationship between dropping out and delinquency has produced conflicting results. For example, research conducted by Delbert Elliott and Harwin Voss found that youths who drop out of school engage in more delinquency than those youths who remain in school. Yet their research also found that the level of delinquency among youths who drop out was greatest right before they dropped out rather than after. Also, the reasons youths gave for dropping out were directly tied to their negative schooling experience. Specifically, dropouts tended to find school alienating, they were not successful academically, and they associated with peers who were involved in delinquency.90 The finding that delinquency tends to decrease after youths drop out suggests that negative school experiences encourage youth to engage in delinquency and leave school. After the conditions leading to these negative experiences are eliminated, however, the motivation to engage in delinquency tends to decrease. In contrast, other studies have uncovered evidence that when youths drop out of school, their involvement in criminal activities tends to immediately increase. For instance, research conducted by Terrence Thornberry and his colleagues found that dropouts were more likely to engage in crime soon after leaving
  • 21.
    school than studentswho stayed in school. Furthermore, they found consistently higher arrest rates for dropouts until the two groups reached their mid-20s.91 Thornberry and his colleagues argue that delinquency immediately increases for school dropouts because leaving school severs ties with an important conventional socializing institution— namely, school. Similar results have been noted in a more recent study by Marvin Krohn and his associates, who analyzed data from the Rochester Youth Development Study. Their analysis revealed that school dropouts tended to engage in more delinquency and reported more drug use than youths who remained in school.92 The literature on school dropouts has clear policy implications. Some researchers have suggested that compulsory education laws be relaxed, based on findings that dropping out leads to a decrease in delinquent behavior.94 However, others are strongly opposed to such a policy. They argue that the research is not clear on the relationship between dropping out and delinquency. Their position is based on the research that indicates dropping out of school is associated with a variety of negative outcomes, such as poor labor market outcomes and increased involvement in criminal behavior.95 Consequently, they maintain that the focus of policy should be on reducing the dropout rate by improving the ability and willingness of schools to meet the educational needs of all students. The Community and Delinquency As Robert Bursik and Harold Grasmick note in their book Neighborhoods and Crime: The Dimensions of Effective Community Control, concern about the influence of the neighborhood on delinquency and crime is hardly new.96 Indeed, since the development of cities in the United States, considerable emphasis has been placed on the negative influences found in some areas of the urban environment— influences believed to be related to delinquency, adult crime, and a host of other social problems such as poverty and
  • 22.
    drunkenness.97 However, particularattention began to be devoted to some of the more negative aspects of the urban environment around the turn of the century, and it was then that sociologists such as Clifford Shaw and Henry McKay started their pioneering work designed to understand the influence of the community on delinquency. As part of their efforts, Shaw and McKay mapped areas of Chicago where official delinquents lived. The maps indicated that the highest rates of delinquency were located in deteriorating inner-city areas characterized by decreasing population, a high percentage of foreign-born persons and African American households, low levels of home ownership, low rental values, close proximity to industrial and commercial establishments, and an absence of agencies designed to promote community well-being.98 Also, they discovered that, despite changes in the ethnic composition of these high-delinquency areas over time, the delinquency rates remained relatively constant. This convinced Shaw and McKay that the high delinquency rates in certain areas could not be attributed to residents’ individual pathologies but resulted from a set of conditions that added up to, in their terminology, social disorganization. They believed that these transitional neighborhoods typically suffered a breakdown in social control characterized by a lack of community cohesiveness, common values, and institutions that prevented delinquency. They also thought that gangs and delinquent groups in these neighborhoods formed delinquent traditions that were passed from one generation to the next (i.e., through “cultural transmission”). According to Shaw and McKay, cultural transmission accounted for high rates of delinquency in these areas despite changes in their ethnic composition over time.99 Many research efforts have documented the importance of community influences on delinquency. Ora Simcha-Fagan and Joseph Schwartz examined the effects of both community and individual factors on delinquency in a study of 12 New York
  • 23.
    City neighborhoods andfound that communities characterized by low organizational participation by residents and the existence of a criminal subculture are likely to experience high levels of delinquency.100 Robert Bursik examined delinquency rates and a variety of other variables for 74 communities in Chicago from 1930 to 1970. In many of the communities studied, the results were similar to those found by Shaw and McKay: Delinquency rates remained high even though the racial and ethnic composition of the communities changed. Some communities did not exhibit this pattern, however. In one community, an increase in delinquency rates appeared to be influenced by rapid changes in adjacent neighborhoods.101 This finding suggests the importance of examining the ways in which communities are linked together as well as possible causal factors outside the community. Still other research has found that neighborhoods go through cycles of change.102 Although some changes such as neighborhood deterioration have been found to be related to increases in delinquency, other changes such as neighborhood revitalization may be associated with decreases in youths’ illegal behaviors.103 Research on the relationship between community characteristics and delinquency has found that communities play an important role in the encouragement of delinquent behavior. Communities that are economically deprived appear to be particularly susceptible to high levels of criminality. Indeed, economic deprivation appears to interact with a variety of other community and family characteristics that produce increased levels of delinquency, and this appears to be true regardless of the racial makeup of community members.104 Poor, physically deteriorating communities where drugs are readily available to youths, residents avoid involvement in community organizations, and criminal subcultures exist are likely to experience high rates of delinquent behavior.105 In such communities, there appears to be a lack of close personal ties between residents and a variety of criminal role models that
  • 24.
    result in alessening of restraints on illegal behavior. Most research on collective efficacy—the existence of bonds between community members that allows them to take action either individually or with others to address neighborhood problems—has found that communities with high levels of collective efficacy are associated with lower levels of delinquency.106 In such communities the development of relationships between adults and between adults and children places adults in a position to closely monitor youths and empowers adults to address instances of misbehavior on the part of youths. Thus, it is the influence of informal controls within communities, or their absence, that seems to play an important role in influencing levels of delinquency. Moreover, this appears to be true regardless of neighborhood characteristics such as concentrated economic disadvantage, population density or immigrant concentration.107 Peer Associations and Delinquency Concern about delinquency as a group phenomenon is hardly new. In fact, concern about youth groups that threatened citizens was a major impetus for the establishment of the first juvenile courts in the United States, which occurred at the turn of the 20th century. Furthermore, early efforts to study delinquency using a sociological approach typically focused on the group nature of delinquent behavior. The early research of Shaw and McKay in Chicago, as well as some of the more popular theoretical work on delinquency through the mid-1960s, focused on gangs and other types of delinquent subcultures. Considerable evidence shows that youths’ peers exert a strong influence on their behavior, and such influence seems apparent when groups engage in delinquent behaviors. Around 40% of youths who engage in illegal behavior commit most of their offenses with other youth, and this is particularly true for younger adolescents. Furthermore, youths who engage in delinquency with other youths, which is
  • 25.
    called co-offending, aremore likely to be recidivists than youths who are primarily solo offenders.111 There is also evidence that the larger a youth’s accomplice network (the pool of potential co-offenders a youth associates with), the more likely a youth is to engage in delinquency112 and that the more likely a youths is to commit particular types of offenses. For example, when youths engage in violent behaviors with co-offenders, they are more likely to engage in violent behaviors in the future.113 Indeed, the peer group is a primary site where youths learn the knowledge, attitudes, and skills that encourage different forms of delinquent behavior. This is borne out in research on co- offending that indicates that youths who participate in similar types of co-offending networks engage in less varied forms of delinquency compared to youths whose co-offending networks engage in a wider range of illegal behaviors.114 Other research on the relationship between peers and delinquency indicates that many, though not all, youths pass through a progression from no delinquency to more serious delinquency that involves the following steps: (1) Youths interact with mildly delinquent peers before the onset of delinquency; (2) minor delinquency results from this association; (3) involvement in minor delinquency leads to interactions with more delinquent peers; and (4) this interaction leads to involvement in more serious forms of delinquency.115 However, peer influence may also be present when an individual commits a lone act of deviance. Conversely, simply because two or more youths in the same location are engaging in delinquent acts does not always mean that their illegal behavior is a product of group dynamics.116 The gang is one type of peer group that has received attention in both the research literature and the popular press. However, there is little agreement among researchers on the proper definition of the term gang. Sometimes, the term is used to describe any congregation of youths who have joined together
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    to commit adelinquent act. At other times, it is used to refer to more structured ongoing groups that hold or defend a particular territory. Indeed, some communities have highly structured groups that fit the popular conception of a gang. Nevertheless, it is worth noting that research on gangs has discovered that gangs vary in many ways, including their involvement in delinquent behavior.117 Other researchers have noted that some groups actually have minimal organization and cohesion. Lewis Yablonsky has argued that a more accurate description of many youth groups involved in crime would be “near group.” Such groups are characterized by (1) diffuse role definitions, (2) limited cohesion, (3) impermanence, (4) minimal consensus on norms, (5) shifting membership, (6) disturbed leadership, and (7) a limited definition of membership expectations.118 Yablonsky draws our attention to the fact that not all youth groups that engage in delinquent activities are highly organized and cohesive. This is not to say that organized gangs are not a significant problem in many communities around the country. However, although gang membership appears to be common in some areas, only a minority of youths belong to gangs at any point in time, even in neighborhoods where gangs exist.119 Nevertheless, gang membership is linked to drug dealing, vandalism, violent crime, and a variety of other illegal activities, although different gangs may favor different types of criminal activities. Moreover, research indicates that gang involvement leads to an increased risk of continued violence and arrest over and above the risk experienced by youths who associate with delinquent peers but who are not involved in gangs.120 Evidence also shows that many gangs today are more oriented toward violence than in the past. Early studies of gangs found that violent activity was not common in these groups. Furthermore, when gangs did engage in violence, they rarely used firearms.121 Today, gang activity is more likely to be violent and lethal because of the availability and possession of
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    sophisticated weapons bymany gang members and the types of violent behaviors they exhibit (e.g., drive-by shootings).122 Illegal gang activity is a significant problem in many large cities and even in some smaller cities and rural counties. However, the actual level of gang involvement is unclear. The National Gang Center collected data on gang problems between 1996 and 2012 from a representative sample of police departments and found that the prevalence of gang problems has varied over time. For example, reports of gang problems by police agencies declined from the mid-1990s to the early 2000s, then increased between 2001 and 2005, and then leveled off between 2006 and 2012. Nevertheless, the prevalence of reported gang problems in 2012 was still substantially lower than in 1996.123 However, other research indicates that gang involvement may be more common than some estimates indicate. For example, David Pyrooz and Gary Sweeten analyzed data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, a nationally representative sample of youths born between 1980 and 1984 who were surveyed on multiple occasions between 1997 and 2011 and included survey items on gang membership. By combining results of the survey data with information from the 2010 U.S. census, the researchers were able to produce estimates of the frequency prevalence, and turnover in gang membership among youth ages five through 17 years of age. Their research revealed more than 1 million juvenile gang members in 2010. Similar to other studies, they found that gang members were disproportionately male, Black, and Hispanic and lived in single-parent, economically disadvantaged households. They also found that, on average, 2% of youths five to 17 years old were involved in gangs, and that the peak age for juvenile involvement was 14 years of age. Among 14 year olds approximately 5% of youth were involved in gangs. In addition, the researchers found that 401,000 youth join gangs
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    each year and378,000 leave gangs each year for a turnover rate of 36%.124 A variety of factors are associated with youth involvement in gangs. Gang formation appears to be facilitated by a social context characterized by broader changes in the economy, poverty, inequality, social disorganization, easy access to drugs, and an absence of well-paying jobs.125 Many youths who join gangs are marginalized in their communities. Such youths face a variety of stressful conditions: They have few legitimate opportunities for earning money, and they have few strong bonds to conventional institutions such as school and family. In many instances, gang members come from destitute and troubled families where parents exhibit poor parenting practices. Moreover, many gang members have family members who are involved in gangs, and they have few positive educational or vocational role models.126 Research also indicates that learning disabilities, poor academic performance, having friends who engage in problem behaviors, early use of drugs, and involvement in violence at a young age are strong predictors of gang involvement.127 For many marginalized youths, gangs hold out the promise of economic and social opportunities.128 Gangs also provide youths with a sense of belonging and status129 as well as protection from other gangs and a means for dealing with a socioeconomic environment that fosters aggression and violence.130 Youth involvement in gangs appears to be linked to increases in delinquent behavior. For example, several studies have found that, before joining gangs, members’ involvement in delinquency was similar to that of nongang youths. When these youths joined a gang, their involvement in delinquency increased, particularly their involvement in violent delinquency and drug sales. However, after youths left gangs, their involvement in delinquency decreased with the exception of drug sales.131 Organized gangs are one type of peer group that promotes
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    delinquency, but researchershave noted that other peer groups also encourage delinquent behavior. As previously noted, Yablonsky argues that many youth groups involved in delinquency lack the type of organization and cohesion often associated with gangs. In studying delinquency in Flint, Michigan, in the 1960s, Martin Gold found that a considerable amount of delinquent behavior occurred spontaneously in rather loosely structured youth groups.134 Gold concluded that delinquency of this type resembles a “pickup game” in which opportunities for delinquent behavior present themselves to ordinary peer groups and lead to delinquent behavior. The research of Herman and Julia Schwendinger has done the most to highlight the complexity of peer groups and how various peer groups contribute to delinquency.135 Their book Adolescent Subcultures and Delinquency focuses on the complexity of youth culture and the variety of peer groups that exist. The Schwendingers’ observational studies of youth culture in Southern California communities reveal that youth culture is far more complex than many assume, a finding supported by other researchers.136 Rather than being monolithic or strictly based on social class, youth culture comprises a variety of subcultures and peer networks that cut across class lines. The various peer formations have their own designations (e.g., “intellectuals,” “greasers,” “homeboys,” “socialites,” and “athletes”) and their own distinctive dress and linguistic patterns. They also are accorded differing degrees of status and prestige by their members as well as by other youths and adults. Although the Schwendingers identified a variety of adolescent subcultures, they noted that there were three persistent types: streetcorner, socialite, and intellectual groups. Moreover, they found that delinquency tended to vary between these types. For example, delinquency is less common among intellectuals, who focus on academic or technical interests (e.g., computers, mathematics, electronics, and physics), have little interest in adolescent fashion, and often spend considerable time doing
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    homework or participatingin adult-sponsored activities. In contrast, streetcorner groups are more likely to consist of youths who are economically and politically disadvantaged and who engage in delinquency, including serious delinquency. Falling between intellectual and streetcorner groups regarding involvement in serious delinquency, socialite groups typically consist of youths from economically and politically advantaged families. Although members of these groups typically engage in less serious delinquency than members of streetcorner groups, they nevertheless engage in a considerable amount of garden-variety delinquency such as driving violations, vandalism, drinking, petty theft, truancy, gambling, and sexual promiscuity. The Schwendingers’ studies not only help us understand the complexity of youth culture but also indicate the necessity of carefully examining the ways in which youth subcultures encourage or inhibit delinquency among their members. Socializing institutions such as families, schools, communities, and peer groups—institutions where youths learn norms and expectations and develop the knowledge, attitudes, and skills needed for social life—have a significant influence on youths’ behaviors, including delinquency. However, these socializing institutions do not function in isolation but are influenced by wider social forces. For example, families are influenced by economic conditions and political decisions that are made at the local, state, and federal level. Consequently, to better understand delinquency it is important to understand the influence of these wider social forces, what sociologists refer to as social structure, and their relationship to socializing institutions and youths’ behavior. In the following section, we’ll examine the influence of broad social structural factors on social institutions such as families, communities, schools, peer groups, work, and on individuals and delinquency.
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    The Political andEconomic Context of Juvenile Delinquency and Juvenile Justice In this section we explore the relationship between the political economy (i.e., the basic economic and political organization of society) and delinquency. The political economy of any society has a profound effect on members because it determines the ways in which economic and political resources are developed, managed, and distributed. The development, management, and distribution of these resources are important because they directly affect the ability of basic socializing institutions such as families and schools to meet people’s needs. For example, the distribution of job opportunities and the pay earned by workers influence the amount of economic resources possessed by families and the quality of life experienced by family members. As the National Commission on Children noted back in 1993, “Economic security is fundamental to children’s well-being. Children need material support to have a better chance to grow up healthy, succeed in school, and become capable and caring adults.”137 That is still true today. However, decisions regarding the development, management, and distribution of economic resources do not occur in a social vacuum but are products of a political process in which different groups with conflicting concerns and varying degrees of power try to protect and further their interests. The Political Context The forms of political organization found in most modern societies can be separated into two main categories: (1) relatively democratic forms and (2) authoritarian forms. The United States is far from a pure democracy in which every citizen has an equal voice in decision making; many political decisions are designed to protect the interests of the few rather than maximize the common good. Indeed, governmental decision making is regularly influenced by
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    powerful special intereststhat seek to maximize benefits for themselves at the expense of others. These special interest groups consist of individuals, families, corporations, unions, the military, and various other organizations, and they use a variety of means to obtain tax breaks, favors, subsidies, and favorable rulings from congressional committees, regulatory agencies, and executive agencies.138 Although the government can and does act in ways that benefit the majority of Americans, it is not always neutral.139 When government entities decide to regulate certain activities and not others, when they enforce certain laws and not others, when they select which resources to develop and how to manage and distribute those resources, their decisions and actions invariably favor some groups and interests over others. Whether to provide or withdraw governmental support for abortion, whether to increase or reduce regulations concerning gun ownership, whether to reduce or eliminate support for summer jobs programs for youths, or whether to make it more difficult for low-income youths to receive loans for higher education while providing a range of tax breaks and subsidies to large corporations are hardly neutral decisions. In determining what should be done, government is generally biased toward policies that benefit the wealthy, especially the big business community and corporations.140 The ability to influence political decision making is a form of power, or the “capacity of some persons to produce intended and foreseen effects on others”141 and to influence how others think and act. However, power is not equally distributed across individuals and groups in our society. Instead, it is concentrated among those who possess substantial economic resources— resources that can be used to directly and indirectly influence government decision making. The expenditure of those resources to influence government decision making is seen as a reasonable cost because the decisions reached partially determine the development, management, and distribution of
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    resources within societyand typically benefit those who possess substantial economic resources. From the standpoint of juvenile delinquency and juvenile justice, the question we must ask is, To what extent do current political arrangements contribute to the well-being of children and to the healthy functioning of other socializing institutions such as families and communities that have an important effect on children’s lives? We also must another important question: To what extent do current political arrangements encourage delinquency directly or indirectly? Decisions to invest our resources in ways that encourage the healthy development of communities, schools, families, and children are political decisions. This does not mean that families, communities, schools, and other organizations do not share responsibility for the welfare of children and for the problem of delinquency. Community decision making and school decision making are inherently political activities. However, we must keep in mind that government decision making has important ramifications for the quality of life experienced by many Americans and for the level of delinquency that exists in our society. The following section examines one important outcome of decision making in the United States—namely, economic inequality—as well as the relationship of economic inequality and delinquency. The Economic Context There are two primary forms of economic organization in the modern world: capitalism and socialism. Although pure capitalism and pure socialism do not exist, the economic organization of many countries, including the United States, carries some blend of these forms of economic organization. In the United States, the predominant form of economic organization is capitalism, although socialist forms of organization are also found (e.g., public libraries, national parks and other public lands, public schools, and worker-owned enterprises). Capitalist economic organization is often
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    associated with threebasic principles: private ownership of personal property, personal profit, and competition. In addition, according to those who favor pure capitalism, government interference in economic life should be kept to a minimum. The basic view of capitalism’s supporters is that “the profit motive, private ownership, and competition will achieve the greatest good for the greatest number in the form of individual self- fulfillment and the general material progress of society.”142 Although private ownership of personal property, personal profit, and competition are features of capitalism, they do not distinguish capitalism from other forms of economic organization. For example, slave economies can also possess these characteristics. What distinguishes capitalist economies, according to economist Richard Wolff, is that capitalists (owners) control the surplus value (the value of products above what it takes to produce them) rather than the workers who are involved in production. Moreover, it is capitalists who make decisions about how the surplus value is allocated.143 Unlike capitalism, an economic system, socialism is both a political and economic system. Although there are different versions, socialism is based on democratic decision making, equality of opportunity for all, collective decision making designed to further the interests of the entire community, worker ownership or worker power that equals that of owners, and economic and social planning. Note, however, that countries such as the former Soviet Union and modern China were never socialist countries. They were examples of state capitalist societies were elites controlled and continue to control economic and political life. Today, countries that are more socialist would include the Nordic counties (i.e., Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland), although capitalism also plays a central role in their economic and political lives. Clearly, many people in the United States are able to achieve considerable prosperity. Yet it is also true that many others have relatively few material resources and struggle to meet
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    basic needs. Althoughthe number of persons living below the official poverty line has declined since the end of the 1950s, the number of people living in poverty is roughly the same. For example, in 1959, 39,490 million persons (22.4% of the population) were living in poverty. In 2017, 39,698 million persons or 12.3% were below the official poverty line.144 However, other estimates of the number of poor persons— estimates not based on the official poverty line—suggest that the number of people who lack an adequate income to meet their basic needs is much higher than official data indicate.145 For example, the Urban Institute surveyed respondents during late 2017 and early 2018 and found that almost 40% of nonelderly adults reported that they or their families faced difficulty meeting at least one material need during 2017, whether food, health care, housing, or utilities. Although these difficulties were experienced most often by people who were poor and the unemployed, they also affected middle-class persons and people who were working. For example, 35% of families with at least one working adult reported difficulty meeting a least one basic need.146 Although poverty influences many Americans, poverty is not equally distributed across the population. For example, most poor people are White; however, African Americans, American Indians and Alaska Natives, and Hispanics all experience poverty rates that are at least twice that of Whites.147 Moreover, and particularly important for our focus, poverty disproportionately affects children. As the Children’s Defense Fund notes, “It is a national moral disgrace that children remain the poorest age group in the United States of America—one of the richest countries in the world.”148 For example, in 2017, almost one in five children, some 12.8 million in total, were officially poor. Moreover, more than 45% of those children lived in extreme poverty in which family income was less than one-half the official poverty level. In addition, 70% of poor children were children of color.149 The gap between the wealthiest Americans and the majority of
  • 36.
    Americans has changedover time. In the 1920s, the wealthiest 1% of Americans owned more than 50% of the nation’s wealth. However, that percentage began to decline in the 1930s because of the Great Depression and New Deal policies that were developed in response to the depression. However, since the 1970s, efforts to roll back New Deal policies have led to widening of the gap once again.151 As a result, the richest 1% has seen its share of the country’s wealth increase to more than 40% while the net worth (i.e., assets minus debts) of average Americans has declined since 2000. Particularly disadvantaged in efforts to accumulate wealth has been people of color.152 Prejudice and racist policies throughout our history have made it difficult for many minorities to accumulate wealth. Redlining—a practice that began in the 1930s in which property maps of neighborhoods were color-coded and redlined communities were determined to be least desirable based on racial and ethnic criteria—made loans in those areas more expensive. As a result, many people have been unable to purchase homes, a major way Americans build wealth. Also, redlining made properties in those communities less valuable, which prevented owners from accumulating wealth. Moreover, redlining and discrimination in mortgage lending continue to be problems in urban areas around the country despite laws such as the Fair Housing Act, which was intended to ban housing discrimination.153 And in instances where minorities have been able to purchase homes, their homes have been undervalued. According to recent research, the value of homes in majority Black neighborhoods are undervalued by $48,000 per home, and this undervaluation is not explained by the quality of the home or the neighborhood.154 New Deal programs and the GI Bill of 1944 provided significant support to many Americans before, during, and after World War II and played a significant role in building the middle-class. However, White Americans were the primary beneficiaries of
  • 37.
    these programs. NewDeal housing programs continued long- standing practices that discriminated against persons of color and, in general, limited their housing choices to segregated neighborhoods. Similarly, the GI Bill allowed war veterans to take advantage of financial assistance for education, low- interest loans, jobs-skills training, and unemployment compensation, but these benefits were unavailable to many African American and Hispanic veterans.155 Historically, people of color have faced a variety of challenges in their efforts to accumulate wealth. Moreover, efforts to accumulate wealth have been further hampered by the economic recession of 2007–2008 that hurt African Americans and Hispanics more than Whites.156 Regardless of race or ethnicity, the inability to accumulate wealth is a significant problem and is associated with a variety of negative outcomes. The lack of wealth blocks people’s access to decent housing and education and is associated with poor physical and mental health and lower life expectancy.157 All of these inhibit the accumulation of additional wealth. In addition, wealth is important because it serves as insurance against economic downturns and unforeseen life events such as accidents and illness, and it contributes to the quality of life experienced by individuals and their families. A problem related to the difficulty of accumulating wealth for most Americans has been the unequal distribution of income which, since the 1970s, has gone increasingly to those at the top of the income distribution. Although wage and income inequality were significant problems before World War II, wage and income inequality was reduced after the war because of New Deal programs, successful advocacy for improved wages and benefits by strong labor unions, and demand for American goods at home and abroad. During this period, American productivity increased steadily, as did compensation (wages and benefits) as workers were rewarded for their productivity. However, by the late 1970s worker compensation began to slow
  • 38.
    even though productivitycontinued grow. As a result, low- and middle-wage workers have seen their real wages (wages adjusted for inflation) decline or remain stagnant since the 1970s. Even workers with bachelor’s degrees or higher have experienced stagnant or declining real wages since the early 2000s.158 The result has been a widening inequality gap as an increasing share of the income generated by increased productivity has gone to those at the top of the income distribution. This has occurred because of policies that have weakened supports and protections for workers and produced lower-quality jobs (i.e., jobs without living wages and good benefits). In addition, a decline in union strength, downsizing, outsourcing, cost cutting, and a shift to more temporary and part-time jobs has contributed to workers’ struggles as have the erosion of benefits such as health care and adequate retirement programs.159 For most Americans, the economic resources of their birth families play a critical role in their future economic status. A person born into a poor family will likely remain poor or close to the poverty level, and a person born into a wealthy family will likely remain wealthy. Although many people are taught that wealth is available to anyone who is willing to work for it, research indicates that upward economic mobility across generations is highly dependent on parental income, and this is particularly true of youths born into families at the lower end of the economic distribution.162 This does not mean, however, that everyone’s economic circumstances remain static over time. Even individuals from middle-class families experience some unexpected changes in their economic circumstances at some point in their lives, and most will experience periodic, though predictable, changes in their standards of living during their lifetimes. Divorce or separation, the death of a spouse or parent, becoming a family head or spouse, unemployment, work loss because of retirement, health problems, and a reduction in the work hours of individuals and family members can lead to
  • 39.
    financial hardship. Thus,it is more than the poor who are likely to suffer economic hardship during their lifetimes; they are merely more likely to suffer longer and more acutely because of their economic situation. An important key to economic well-being is the ability to find and hold a job that pays a decent wage. Yet many Americans have a hard time locating such jobs. Periodic economic recessions in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s; decisions by U.S. companies to move their production operations to other countries; reductions in the workforce as a result of automation; efforts to make businesses more efficient; the development of a tiered wage structure that pays lower wages for newer jobs and provides fewer benefits; and a shift away from the production of goods to the provision of services have reduced job opportunities and have affected the wages and the future employment prospects of Americans. Although these trends have influenced people of all racial groups and ages, they have had a profound influence on people living in urban areas, many of whom are minorities and children. The shift from manufacturing jobs to service jobs; the movement of entry-level jobs in manufacturing, retail sales, and customer services from urban areas to the urban periphery or overseas; and the relocation of high-tech jobs to cities have resulted in fewer job opportunities for low-skilled urban residents. Moreover, a lack of affordable rental housing in the urban periphery, coupled with racial residential segregation, prevents many poor and low-skilled workers from relocating to areas that are closer to these jobs. Furthermore, low levels of automobile ownership and poor public transportation mean that poor low-skilled urban residents find it difficult to commute to jobs.164 Indeed, research indicates that distance from home is a major factor that influences workforce participation for both men and women, but it is particularly strong for women, who are often hesitant to take jobs that are far from home because they do not want to be
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    too far awayfrom their children’s caregivers. Simultaneously, many new jobs that have been created in urban areas require a high degree of skill and are not well matched to the skills of many urban residents. The result has been a high degree of economic segregation characterized by concentrated pockets of poverty, particularly in urban areas,165 at one extreme and areas of affluence at the other. Locating and keeping good-paying jobs with benefits has been a problem not only for urban residents but also for rural Americans. A decline in manufacturing jobs and job losses in industries such as timber, mining, and agriculture has occurred because these jobs have shifted to more reliance on automation. These changes also have impacted rural workers so that rural residents’ workforce participation rates are lower than those of urban residents.166 Economic resources are important because of the material goods and opportunities that such resources can procure. For those living in affluent areas, it means having a range of public services and private resources. It means well-funded schools, recreational and cultural facilities, programs for youths, and access to a range of private resources that can be used to support and respond to family and individual problems. In poor communities, it often means an absence of resources or a lack of quality resources for youths and families. It means that those who are disproportionately exposed to the stress of life have the fewest resources to help them deal with the problems that they encounter. Adverse economic conditions such as unemployment and declining wages place a strain on many families. For example, research on unemployed men has found them to feel less satisfied with themselves and their lives in general. They also tend to feel more victimized, anxious, depressed, and hostile toward others than men who are employed.167 Financial loss appears to be related to changes in men’s attitudes and parenting practices, and many fathers whose earnings decline
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    become more tense,irritable, explosive, arbitrary, and punitive in responding to their children.168 Of course, women are also affected by financial hardship, and financial hardship is particularly acute for families headed by single women. In 2017, slightly more than one-quarter (25.7%) of all female-headed families lived in poverty.169 Moreover, life for single women who head families is often complicated by the many responsibilities that these women have. Females who head families have multiple responsibilities and demands that go beyond their own immediate needs. They are responsible for providing food, shelter, and clothing for their children; seeing that they get to school; keeping them healthy; supervising and monitoring their behavior; meeting their emotional and psychological needs; managing family finances; and meeting a wide variety of other demands that emanate from employers, relatives, and others. In addition, they must deal with issues of gender discrimination, poor labor market prospects, and welfare policies and programs that provide minimal relief and are often seen as humiliating.170 Economic hardship also affects the young. Poor infants are much more likely to suffer low birth weight, die during the first year of life, and suffer hunger or abuse while growing up. Compared with nonpoor children, children below the poverty threshold are also less likely to receive immunizations and other health care and to have poor health. Moreover, poor children are more likely to experience learning disabilities and developmental delays, have lower school achievement, and experience a wider range of emotional and behavioral problems.171 And there are negative psychological and social effects that are associated with poverty. Long-term exposure to poverty is related to increased levels of anxiety and unhappiness among children, and current exposure to poverty is associated with behaviors such as disobedience and aggression.172 Economic resources clearly influence the ability of people to obtain those things that are necessary for survival and that are
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    desired in oursociety. Such resources influence an individual’s life chances. As Hans Gerth and C. Wright Mills noted, life chances involve everything from the chance to stay alive during the first year after birth to the chance to view fine art, the chance to remain healthy and grow tall, and if sick to get well again quickly, the chance to avoid becoming a juvenile delinquent—and very crucially, the chance to complete an intermediary or higher educational grade.174 Furthermore, economic status is an important factor from a juvenile justice perspective because it is strongly related to delinquent behavior. Indeed, many theories of crime and delinquency stress the role of economic inequality in the production of crime, and these theories have received considerable support in the research literature. For example, ethnographic studies of low-income neighborhoods,175 large- scale self-report studies of the link between social class and delinquency, and research on the relationship between persistent childhood poverty and delinquency have found that poverty appears to affect delinquent behavior. In a large-scale study of social class differences in delinquency, Delbert Elliott and David Huizinga found that, although class differences were almost nonexistent when minor types of delinquency were examined, lower-class youths reported significantly more involvement in serious forms ofdelinquency.176 In a more recent study of the relationship between persistent poverty and delinquency, Roger Jarjoura, Ruth Triplett, and Gregory Brinker found that exposure to persistent poverty is associated with delinquency. Moreover, they also found that exposure to persistent poverty during early childhood is related to an increased likelihood of delinquency later in life.177 Indeed, economic deprivation is consistently cited as a risk factor for deliniquency.178 Political and economic arrangements that foster inequality among Americans influence the types of lives that many people, including children, experience. As noted, evidence suggests that
  • 43.
    political and economicarrangements have an important effect on delinquent behavior. In addition, they provide a context that influences the operation of other important socializing institutions that are related to delinquent behavior such as families, schools, communities, and peer groups. So far, this discussion has highlighted the contextual nature of delinquent behavior and pointed out some of the ways in which economic, political, family, school, neighborhood, and peer contexts influence juvenile offending. In addition, it noted many individual-level factors that are risk factors for delinquent behavior although it indicated that many of these individual risk factors are influenced by the social context in which youths develop. From a practice standpoint, juvenile justice personnel interact with youths who are unique individuals who have been shaped by their socialization experiences within families, schools, communities, peer groups, and other institutions with which they interact (e.g., religious institutions, clubs, arts groups, athletic teams), including juvenile justice agencies. The presenting problems exhibited by youths may include individual level problems such as mental illness, ADHD, learning disabilities, and low self-control. However, these issues by themselves only explain a small amount of youths’ delinquency. Indeed, many youths engage in delinquency but do not exhibit any individual risk factors. Their presenting problems revolve around issues found in the social context of the family, school, community and peer group and the wider political and economic context within which they live. Moreover, some youths, particularly youths involved in serious or chronic delinquency (i.e., repetitive illegal behaviors over a period of time), often experience multiple individual and social institutional risk factors. Importantly, to prevent or reduce youths’ involvement in delinquency, juvenile justice practitioners will need to identify the risk factors presented by youths and
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    develop plans toeffectively address those risk factors that can be addressed. The Social Context of Juvenile Justice The previous sections of this chapter examined the influence of social context on delinquency and on the ways we explain delinquency. Social context also influences the practice of juvenile justice. Indeed, as noted previously, different explanations of delinquency are associated with different juvenile justice responses. Other aspects of the sociopolitical environment influence the practice of juvenile justice as well, and some of these are examined in the remainder of this chapter. The Influence of the Political Economy on the Practice of Juvenile Justice The development, management, and distribution of political and economic resources influence not only children, families, schools, communities, and other socializing institutions but also the institutions that make up the juvenile justice process. The economic resources available to law enforcement agencies, juvenile courts, and correctional agencies have a profound effect on the level of staffing, the types of programs operated, the ability to evaluate juvenile justice programs, and the support (both personnel and material) provided to the individuals and agencies charged with responding to delinquency. For example, an increase in the funding for a probation department might allow more staff to be hired and additional types of interventions to be developed and evaluated. In turn, this may lead to better services for youths and their families, leading to a reduction in juvenile offending. Similarly, reductions in funding levels can result in staff reductions, increased caseloads, a reduction in services and
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    monitoring of clients,difficulty in providing quality services to clients, additional stress for juvenile services workers, a diminished capacity to assess program effectiveness, and higher levels of recidivism. Although the effects of changing levels of resources on the operation of juvenile justice agencies are easy to imagine, keep in mind that such changes take place in a highly political environment. In other words, funding allocation decisions are the result of a political process in which various ideas and interests vie for supremacy at the federal, state, local, and agency levels. At the federal and state levels, legislative as well as executive decisions can have a profound effect on the levels of funding available to juvenile justice agencies for correctional programs, staff salaries, staff hiring and promotions, staff training, research, and technical assistance. State-level political decision making plays a particularly important role in those states where juvenile courts and correctional agencies are state operated. However, even when juvenile justice agencies are county or city run, state-level political decisions can affect their operation. For example, political decisions made at the state level can determine the level of monetary and human resources, as well as the types of institutions and programs (and their operations) available to local courts and other agencies that work with youths. Local political decision making also can profoundly affect the operation of juvenile justice agencies. For example, when juvenile justice agencies are county run, political decisions made by county governments play a major role in determining the level of monetary and human resources available to the courts as well as the types and quality of programs operated at the local level. Similarly, political decisions made within juvenile justice agencies also can affect the allocation of monetary and human resources, the amount and types of training given to staff, the types and quality of programs that are operated by those agencies, and the ability to assess the
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    effectiveness of programs. Politicaldecision making at the state, local, or agency level is often characterized by considerable conflict between groups possessing different ideologies and interests. State legislatures, county and city governments, executive agencies at the state and local levels, and local juvenile justice agencies typically encompass groups and individuals that have conflicting views about delinquency and juvenile justice. As a result, conflict is a common element of juvenile justice practice, and this conflict often fails to serve the needs of children, families, and the larger community. The Influence of the Local Community and the Media on the Practice of Juvenile Justice The local community and news media play a substantial role in determining juvenile justice practice. Many communities possess at least one group that seeks to influence the local response to juvenile delinquency. Indeed, the practice of juvenile justice, like the practice of criminal justice in general, is often a highly political endeavor. In addition, if juvenile justice decision makers such as prosecuting attorneys and judges are elected officials, they can be quite sensitive to public perceptions of their performance. As a result, support for various juvenile justice programs and practices can be extended or withdrawn, depending on perceptions of “what the public wants.” The decisions made by prosecuting attorneys and judges can also influence the actions of other important decision makers. For example, in some states, court personnel (e.g., court administrators) and corrections staff (e.g., detention unit, intake, probation, and other casework personnel) are, in effect, employees of the judge. As a result, a judge in one of these states can have tremendous influence over the allocation of juvenile justice resources. Even in jurisdictions where judges do not directly control probation and other juvenile justice staff, they are often
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    able to exertconsiderable influence over other components of the juvenile justice process. Courts that deal with juveniles are also political entities. Most juvenile court judges are elected officials who not only are accountable to the electorate but also must contend with other elected officials for coveted tax dollars. Competition for local dollars among local officials and law enforcement or law- related agencies such as prosecutors, sheriffs, and the courts can force courts to make decisions about juvenile services based on economic considerations rather than on the best interests of youths. When juvenile courts are faced with budget limits restricting the number of probation staff or the amount of money available for out-of-home placements, certain actions by those courts are predictable. First, judges will limit out-of-home placements by increasing their tolerance for delinquent behavior or probation violations before removal. Second, many courts will try to develop dispositional alternatives such as day treatment programs, expand use of local detention facilities, and increase the number of foster home or group home beds. Although these strategies are fiscally responsible, they may allow more youths who have committed serious offenses to remain in the community. As a result, courts can be caught between the public outcry to get dangerous youths off the streets and budgetary restraints that prevent them from heeding the public’s demand for protection. The public influences nonelected juvenile justice decision makers as well as elected ones. Court administrators, middle- management personnel such as chief probation officers, and other juvenile justice personnel are often sensitive to public perceptions and demands. For example, complaints made by organized community groups or perceptions held by local political leaders, including judges and prosecuting attorneys, that juvenile justice practices are at odds with community preferences can produce changes in these practices. In the
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    community, the newsmedia often play an important role in framing public perceptions of delinquency and the operation of juvenile justice. Indeed, much of what the public knows about juvenile justice practices is a reflection of media-controlled perceptions. This is not surprising because the juvenile justice process has historically been a closed process intended to prevent the stigmatization of children who come before the court. However, the media may not present the most balanced view of juvenile crime or juvenile justice practices to the public, preferring instead to focus on the most sensational cases and the most obvious failings. Whether or not media coverage is balanced, the public relies on the media for information about juvenile justice practices, and the information received by the public can be used by organized groups in their efforts to influence juvenile justice practices. Notes 1. Pfohl, S. J. (1994). Images of deviance and social control (2nd ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, p. 12. 2. Jacobs, M. D. (1990). Screwing the system and making it work: Juvenile justice in the no-fault society. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. See this resource for an interesting account of how juvenile justice practitioners work to manipulate the “system” to help clients. 3. Developmental Resources Group, Inc. (2015). Risk factors for delinquency. Literature Review. Washington, DC: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention; Le Vries, S. L. A., Hoeve, M., Assink, M., Jan, G., Stams, J. M., & Asscher, J. J. (2015). Practitioner review: Effective ingredients of prevention programs for youth at risk of persistent juvenile delinquency—recommendations for clinical practice. Journal of Child Psychology and
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    Psychiatry, 56(2), 108–121. 4.Developmental Resources Group, Inc. (2015). 5. Sacks, V., & Murphey, D. (2018). The prevalence of adverse childhood experiences, nationally, by state, and by race/ ethnicity. Research Brief. Bethesda, MD: Child Trends. 6. Metzler, M., Merrick, M. T., Klevens, J., Ports, K. A. Ports, & Ford, D. C. (2017). Adverse childhood experiences and life opportunities: shifting the narrative. Children and Youth Services Review, 72, 141–149. 7. Dudley, R. G., Jr., (2015). Childhood trauma and its effects: Implications for police. New Perspectives in Policing Bulletin. Washington, DC: National Institute of Justice. 8. Burt, C., Simons, R. L., & Simons, L. G. (2006). A longitudinal test of the effects of parenting and the stability of selfcontrol. Criminology, 44, 353–396; Courey, M., & Pare, P. (2016). A closer look at the relationship between low selfcontrol and delinquency: The effects of identity styles. Crime and Delinquency, 62(3), 368–396; Gottfredson, M. R. (2006). The empirical status of control theory in criminology. In F. T. Cullen, J. P. Wright, & K. R. Blevins (Eds.), Taking stock: The status of criminological theory—Advances in criminological theory (Vol. 15, pp. 77–100). New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers; Piquero, A. R., & Bouffard, J. A. (2007). Something old, something new: A preliminary investigation of Hirschi’s redefined self-control. Justice Quarterly, 24, 1–27. 9. Gottfredson, M. R., & Hirschi, T. (1990). A general theory of crime. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, p.87. 10. Eitzen, D. S., Zinn, M. B., & Smith, K. E. (2011). Social problems (12th ed.). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon. 11. Rapp, R. (1982). Family and class in contemporary America. In B. Thorne & M. Yalom (Eds.), Rethinking the family: Some
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    feminist questions. NewYork, NY: Longman. 12. Gove, W., & Crutchfield, R. (1982). The family and juvenile delinquency. Sociological Quarterly, 23, 301–319, p. 302. 13. Wright, K. N., & Wright, K. E. (1994). Family life, delinquency, and crime: A policymaker’s guide, research summary. Washington, DC: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. 14. U.S. Census Bureau. (2018). Figure CH-1. Living arrangements of children: 1960 to present. Retrieved from https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library /visualizations/time-series/demo/families-and-households /ch-1.pdf 15. DePaulo, B. (2017). What is the divorce rate, really? Psychology Today. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday .com/us/blog/living-single/201702/what-is-the-divorce -rate-really 16. Livingston, G. (2016). Births outside of marriage decline for immigrant women. Pew Research Center, Social & Demographic Trends. Retrieved from http://www .pewsocialtrends.org/ 2016/10/26/births-outside-of-marriage -decline-for-immigrant-women/ 17. National Commission on Children. (1991). Beyond rhetoric: A new American agenda for children and families. Final report of the National Commission on Children. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. 18. Chetty R., Hendren, N., Lin, F., Majerovitz, J., & Scuderi, B. (2016). Childhood environment and gender gaps in adulthood. Working paper 21936. Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research. 19. Western, B., & Pettit, B. (2010, Summer). Incarceration and social inequality. Daedalus, 8–19. 20. The Sentencing Project (2018). Report of the Sentencing Project to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia, and related
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