Criminal Justice

1- Your paper should be 6 pages long (not including the cover page or references), and it should answer a question that you ask about juvenile delinquency.

2- How to develop a question: What interests you from this course? What do you want to spend a significant amount of time reading and writing about? That is how you start to develop a question. A good question begins with a “wh-“ or “how” stem, as it can lead to a more complex and interesting answer than a question that can be answered with a “yes” or a “no.” In addition, a good question is clear; each word is easily understood. Finally, a good question is answerable using research. Here are some examples of appropriate questions.

1- What are the consequences of transferring youth to adult court?
2- What is the most effective intervention strategy for youth who are in gangs?
3- How do youth form their attitudes about the police?
4- How do neighborhoods influence juvenile delinquency?
5- Why do most youth desist from delinquency by early adulthood?
6- How does brain development make youth susceptible to delinquency?
7- How are youth competent or incompetent to make legal decisions in the juvenile justice system?
8- What are issues of measurement in understanding how many youths engage in delinquency?
9- How are youth susceptible to police investigations and interrogations?
10- How does disproportionate minority contact influence the juvenile justice system?
11- How well can the juvenile justice system predict who will desist and who will persist in juvenile delinquency?
12- What factors predict persistence in juvenile offending, leading to adult criminal behavior?
13- How does childhood victimization relate to juvenile delinquency?
14- What are the effects of bullying on juvenile delinquency?
Once again – this is not a comprehensive list – just a starting point to get you interested in thinking about what you might want to ask and answer.

3- Empirical, scholarly, or peer-reviewed research: Empirical/scholarly/peer-reviewed papers derive knowledge from findings, study and logic, not from emotion or anecdote. Your primary source citations should come from “peer-reviewed” journals – meaning that these papers were evaluated by other experts before they were published, allowing them to have more credence. Everything provided under “connecting it to research” throughout this course meets these criteria. As such, these articles could provide a good starting point for your paper. However, they are not comprehensive, and it is expected that to do well on this paper you will need to find additional primary sources. You can find these articles through the ASU library or google scholar – both have selection criteria for only showing results that are peer-reviewed. This means that if you choose to include additional sources, such as case studies, news articles, documentaries, or non-peer-reviewed papers, they cannot be primary sources or evidence. You can use these other secondary sources to supplement your writing, but most of your evidence should come from primary sources which are peer-reviewed, or scholarly journal articles.

4- Structure of the paper: Your paper should begin with an introductory paragraph where you introduce the topic of examination. Somewhere in that paragraph, you will want to explicitly state the question you aim to answer, as well as an outline for what you will cover in your paper. The body of your paper should assess what the state of knowledge is, based on research that you read and summarize, to help answer your question. Your paper should conclude with an original evaluation of the state of the field. What is the best answer to the question you ask, currently? How clear is this answer? Is there conflicting evidence or dissent? What still is unknown? What are future areas for research on this topic? It is not enough to conclude by restating what is known – your conclusion should summarize and expand on what you’ve learned.

5- Example of structure: A paper answering the following question, “What is the relationship between childhood victimization and juvenile offending?” might start off by talking about victimization rates in the U.S. How prevalence is childhood victimization? Why should we care about what happens to these children? Then it might connect this to the classic finding that those who are victimized are at a greater likelihood to act out in adolescents, earning the label of “delinquent.” The introduction would then explain why delinquency is an important area of study – children who are delinquent are more likely to be offenders lifelong; by understanding how children become delinquents, we might be able to better intervene to prevent adverse life course trajectories. The introduction might then explicitly state the purpose of the investigation (e.g. the research question investigated), and that in an ability to answer this question, literature is reviewed on how children cope with victimization, and how this might lead to delinquency. At the end of the introduction, the author might identify three primary realms of work that will be reviewed, regarding how victims cope, and how this might put them at an increased risk for offending: poor emotion regulation, substance abuse, and mental health. Each section might cover the relevant work connecting childhood victimization to juvenile delinquency. For example, the first section might address how children respond to victimization in different ways, and some struggle to cope with what has happened, struggling to regulate their emotions. In doing so, they may act out and gravitate towards deviant peer groups who exhibit poor models for coping with trauma (e.g. delinquency). The second section might elaborate on this first by saying that victimized children are at a higher risk for substance abuse, and when children abuse substances this is associated with poor decision making, linking to higher rates of delinquency. The final body section might address how mental health, resulting from victimization, might exacerbate poor decision making and already poorly developed coping skills. Each section would report, substantively, on research on each topic. In doing so, each section would present simple findings from research articles that were reviewed. In conclusion, the paper might conclude that youth who are victimized are at an increased risk for engaging in delinquency, particularly when they struggle early to develop positive coping behaviors, engage in substance use/abuse, and developmental health issues as a consequence of their victimization. Such findings might lead to concrete recommendations about how to intervene effectively to help those who are victimized from becoming offenders. The paper might then ask some novel questions about what is still unknown and make recommendations for future research.

6- APA format is required. The submitted paper should be 6-8-pages double spaced with 1-inch margins (not including title page or references). It should include at least 5 empirical peer-reviewed references cited. You should cite all claims that you can, and always utilize evidence from those references when possible. The strongest papers will include regular citations of specific information from the textbook and other primary source materials (empirical peer-reviewed articles). Please do not plagiarize. All papers will be submitted through plagiarism software to check – this includes previous papers you have written for other classes.

To earn a high grade on this paper it must be well written, meet the formal criteria, avoid the first person, answer all of the required questions, incorporate specific information from the textbook/lectures/case/other sources, synthesize learned information, and draw original conclusions. Please see the grading rubric here:

ANSWER

How Does Social Disorganization Influence Juvenile Delinquency?

Introduction

Over the years, juvenile delinquency has been a disturbing issue within societies. Although many factors affect juvenile delinquency, they are related to physical, social, occupational, and mental factors. Therefore, with the growing interest in factors that influence delinquency, the study of social disorganization influence on juvenile delinquency has increased across varying disciplines. Bellair (2017) confirms that structural disadvantages characterize social disorganization. Disadvantaged and disorganized neighborhoods tend to have less bonded residents with limited resources, limited social networks, and endangered mutual trust. For instance, peers, parents, and the social community tend to influence adolescent problem behavior. Therefore, this paper will address the question of how social disorganization influences juvenile delinquency. The paper will discuss the occurrence of juvenile delinquency and the influence of social disorganization on juvenile crimes and delinquency. Understanding how social disorganization influences juvenile delinquency will identify the main risks and ways to reduce youth crime.

The nature and extent of Juvenile Delinquency

Juvenile delinquency is a term used by minors who commit a crime. These are typically persons under the age of 18 years participating in illegal behaviors. Children engage themselves in varying types of crimes such as stealing, murder, drug possession, gun violence, pickpocketing, sexual perversion, fraud, fighting, among others (Valuiskov, Bondarenk, and Arutiunian, 2017). Juvenile crimes are among the most serious crimes in many countries. In the United States, 2.1 million individuals under 18 years are arrested annually due to their involvement in illegal activities (Valuiskov, Bondarenk, and Arutiunian, 2017). Juvenile delinquency policies have described all illegal actions by minors, such as skipping school and severe crimes, violent actions, and burglary. Therefore, depending on the type and severity of the crime, the persons under 18 years can be charged and tried in a court of law.

Over the years, there is a growing concern about the crimes that young individuals commit. The current trends of juvenile delinquency indicate that there has been an increase in aggravated and violent crimes among the youths (Valuiskov, Bondarenk, and Arutiunian, 2017). Youths have also been involved in drug-related crimes and acted as ready reserves for organized crime groups involved in drug trafficking, armed conflicts, and sexual exploitation. The new accounts of youth crimes have indicated serious crimes committed by children, which has warned the coming wave of vicious juveniles. The most affected individuals are victims who incur healthcare expenses, lost wages, psychological care, and replace the destroyed and damaged items. Juvenile delinquency has also affected those that commit crimes since they lose their freedom to the residential detention centers, which may have life consequences in their future.

Ideally, teens are still immature and may tend to commit crimes for various reasons. The constraints and motivations that promote juvenile delinquency are highly linked to the social environment. According to strain theory, delinquency results from failure to achieve their goals and frustration. Environments such as neighborhood, school, and family are highly considered sources of delinquency. Strain theory has been grounded on the idea that delinquency results from certain stressors and strains that increase crime likelihood. Therefore, the extent and nature of juvenile delinquency in societies are the same and greatly depend on the socio-economic reality. Research on child development and development of delinquency has indicated that social, individual interactions and community conditions greatly influence children’s behavior.

Influence of Social Disorganization on Juvenile Delinquency

Social disorganization is a perspective that tends to elaborate on ecological variations in levels of crime based on the cultural and structural factors that shape the extent and nature of social order across communities (Wilcox and Land, 2017). Social disorganization leads to conflict, loss of control, disintegration, and weakening of group solidarity. Socially disorganized neighborhoods have experienced different levels of crimes from the young members. According to Piscitelli and Doherty (2018), social disorganization has led to community breakdown that has caused high youth crime rates. Therefore, juvenile crimes have been linked to social engagements and comparative neighborhoods.

The socio-environmental factors such as neighborhoods and family structure in which children grow and live are the main determinants of children’s development outcome (Lane, 2018). Ideally, just as parents and family shape a child’s life, children are also influenced by the neighborhood conditions. These neighborhood structures include the places where the children see their role models or where violence and crime are common. Neighborhoods differ from one another in ways that affect the behavioral adjustment of a child. For instance, a poor neighborhood may threaten a children’s emotional, social, and behavioral outcomes.

Piscitelli and Doherty (2018) found out that social disorganization influences juvenile delinquency through its impacts on family stability and structures. Families in socially disorganized societies consist of single parents, chaotic and broken families. In such a chaotic ridden community, juvenile crime frequency is high due to poor parental supervision and dysfunctional relationships. Children living in such conditions are likely to accept, learn and rely on physical violence to satisfy their needs and desires. In the absence of concerned adults such as parents, and nuclear family members, children may fail to understand what is considered wrong or acceptable in society. In socially disorganized societies, children are not educated on the basic values and how they should live with people and show respect. Ideally, children tend to learn what is right or wrong through learning from adult examples. Lack of moral guidance and increased moral poverty have led to juvenile delinquency.

The various aspects of parental care have affected juvenile delinquency. Ideally, parents of young children have been blamed for delinquent behavior. In some instances, parents have even been penalized for the anti-social behavior of their teenagers.  Research findings by Zapolski, Clifton, Banks, Hershberger, and Aalsma (2019) indicate that lack of parental control, supervision, parental rejection, and poor parental engagement has increased the conflict levels among conflict and family problems which have increased the affiliation with delinquent groups. For instance, single parents and grandparents may find it challenging to supervise and pay attention to the children who may result in unfavorable environments. This may push the child to commit crimes. Additionally, parental indifferences, domestic violence, and parents that engage in crimes may provoke criminal behaviors among children.

Rathinabalan and Naaraayan (2017) added that dysfunctional family settings such as inadequate parent control, harsh punishments, premature autonomy, and weak internal linkages are closely linked to juvenile delinquency. For instance, children subjected to violence at home have a high probability of becoming violent people. Teens that experience violent actions or witness others are likely to act out of frustrations and fears.

Community characteristics such as unemployment and poverty tend to interfere with community member’s ability to effectively live and work together. Low economic status and poorer neighborhoods have greatly affected juvenile delinquency (Park, 2019). Ideally, unemployment within the family can lead to long periods of poverty. The children have to survive through this period of unfulfilled desires and needs, thus engaging in crimes. Economic pressures within society may lead children to engage in delinquent actions (Erdmann, 2020). Teens living in overcrowded areas such as slums and live in depressed conditions tend to engage in crimes to survive the low socio-economic status. Concentrated poverty has been linked to more neighborhood disorders and residential instability, and less social cohesion.

Peer deviance within societies has greatly contributed to juvenile delinquency. Zapolski, Clifton, Banks, Hershberger, and Aalsma (2019) discovered that all adolescents tend to gravitate towards their peers’ influence during their teenage years. In the company of deviant peers, a child gradually learns how they can exploit. For that reason, peers are increasingly involved in delinquent companies. For instance, if all other friends are engaged in delinquent acts, a child may feel pressured and accept to engage in the same. Molbert (2018) states that peers also consciously pressurize each other to engage in criminal activities. Therefore, interaction and exposure to deviant peers and gangs have led to increased deviance and delinquency.

Increased social instability in societies has played a great role in influencing the juvenile population’s crime decisions due to lack of appropriate guidance. The existence of crime among adults in society has played a severe role in influencing juveniles’ crime rates (Park, 2019). This is because it a catalyzing effect for the young members who tend to learn about crimes from their senior members in the society. Children in poor neighborhoods may face unfavorable conditions such as slums, gangs, cliques, and criminal neighborhoods that influence their criminal behaviors. In such conditions, the children believe that committing crimes is the only way to prosper in such conditions.

Neighborhood processes have played a great role in the link between juvenile crimes and social disorganization. Considerably, inadequate social controls such as unsupervised peer groups have led to juvenile crime outcomes. Baysinger and Cresswell (2017) Stated that Insufficient behavior regulation in socially disorganized communities tends to generate criminal traditions that can be inherited to generations of youths. The pro-delinquency behaviors can easily be learned from older juveniles. Therefore, the neighborhood becomes fertile for juvenile crimes due to cultural spreads of delinquent values and inappropriate control mechanisms.  For instance, in the drug trade culture, children are socialized and engaged in the drug trade. Adopting code-based beliefs in societies has increased drug trafficking and gun violence among teenagers (Baysinger and Cresswell, 2017). In risky neighborhoods, discrimination and social isolation have led to an oppositional culture among the youths whose values and norms have been alienated from mainstream society.

Conclusion

Despite the reduction in the number of arrests made every year, juvenile delinquents’ figures remain extremely high. Social disorganization has remained a great predictor of juvenile delinquency. Social disorganization is linked to community characteristics such as socio-economic conditions, neighborhood processes, family processes, and peer deviance that influence juvenile delinquency rates. Studies that rely on social disorganization as a predictor of juvenile delinquency have offered cumulative research on the neighborhood effects and social processes that lead to juvenile delinquency. The findings indicate that different neighborhood and institutional factors have contributed to the high levels of juvenile delinquency. These include inadequate social controls, increased social instability, low economic status and poorer neighborhoods, peer deviance, and dysfunctional family settings that have influenced juvenile delinquency. This paper indicates a relationship between a population’s social behavior and its influence on crime disruption. Therefore, there is a high possibility of juvenile delinquency in a socially disorganized society. Future research on juvenile delinquency should focus on varying dimensions of neighborhood social functioning and their impact on juvenile delinquency development.

References

Baysinger, L. & Cresswell (2017). Leading Factors Contributing to Juvenile Delinquency.

Bellair, P. (2017). Social disorganization theory. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice.

Erdmann, A. (2020). Does the Neighborhood Context Shape Violent Victimization Independent of Delinquency? A Mediation Analysis of Victimization among German Urban Adolescents. Victims & Offenders, 1-24.

Lane, J. (2018). Addressing juvenile crime: what have we learned, and how should we proceed?. Criminology & Public Policy, 17(2), 283-307.

Molbert, C. L. (2018). The Influence of Peer Groups, Gangs, and Neighborhoods on Juvenile Delinquent Alcohol and Marijuana Use. University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

Park, R. E. (2019). V. Community Organization and Juvenile Delinquency. In The city (pp. 99-112). University of Chicago Press.

Piscitelli, A., & Doherty, S. (2018). Connecting social disorganization to broken windows and routine activities. The Canadian Geographer/Le Géographe canadien, 62(4), 589-596.

Rathinabalan, I., & Naaraayan, S. A. (2017). Effect of family factors on juvenile delinquency. International Journal of Contemporary Pediatrics, 4(6), 2079-2082.

Valuiskov, N. V., Bondarenk, L. V., & Arutiunian, A. D. (2017). Juvenile crime: current state and dynamics. J. Pol. & L., 10, 225.

Wilcox, P., & Land, K. C. (2017). Social disorganization and criminal opportunity. Challenging Criminological Theory: The Legacy of Ruth Rosner Kornhauser, 237.

Zapolski, T. C., Clifton, R. L., Banks, D. E., Hershberger, A., & Aalsma, M. (2019). Family and peer influences on substance attitudes and use among juvenile justice-involved youth. Journal of child and family studies, 28(2), 447-456.