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JUVENILE CRIME & JUSTICE.
Term Paper ID:26553
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Summarizes & examines three articles on delinquency & relates their ideas to theories in "Juvenuile Justice" (J. Whitehead & S. Lab).... More...
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Paper Abstract:
Summarizes & examines three articles on delinquency & relates their ideas to theories in "Juvenuile Justice" (J. Whitehead & S. Lab).
Paper Introduction:
The purpose of this research is to examine three articles dealing with crime and delinquency. The plan of the research will be to provide a summary of each of the articles and then to relate what the articles themselves say, as appropriate, to certain theories of delinquency and crime discussed in Whitehead and Lab's text Juvenile Justice: An Introduction, with a view toward providing an interpretation and opinion of them.
Schwartz, Ira M., Rendon, Jose A., and Hsieh, Chang-Ming. "Is Child Maltreatment a Leading Cause of Delinquency?" Child Welfare 73 (September 1994): 639-655.
This article is a forceful criticism of the public-policy focus on juvenile justice as the remedy for and appropriate response to delinquency and juvenile crime, by way of a criticism of th
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A Test of Developmental and General Theories of Crime." Criminology 35 (February 1997): 49-84.Schwartz, Ira M., Rendon, Jose A., and Hsieh, Chang-Ming. Now this is where the irony kicks in. The key argument inthis regard is the fact that most public resources (i.e., tax money) aimedat solving the problem of juvenile crime have been spent on making thejudicial system that must dispose punishments for the crimes more workable,efficient, and fair. "Learning Disabilities, Crime, Delinquency, and Special Education Placement." Adolescence 32 (Summer 1997): 451-462. Ironically, the learning disability may be directly correlated to thedropout rate, and the so-called maladaptation can be connected partly tothe fact that dropping out of school entails a severing of the social aswell as academic ties that may have an impact on the shaping of socializeddevelopment. Paternoster and Brame cite work by James Q. The plan of the research will be to provide asummary of each of the articles and then to relate what the articlesthemselves say, as appropriate, to certain theories of delinquency andcrime discussed in Whitehead and Lab's text Juvenile Justice: AnIntroduction, with a view toward providing an interpretation and opinion ofthem.Schwartz, Ira M., Rendon, Jose A., and Hsieh, Chang-Ming. Like Juvenile Justice, Schwartz, Rendon, and Hsieh explain dominantmethods of research into juvenile crime. This criticism is borne out in laterdiscussions of the apparently failed attempts to deal in good faith withjuvenile delinquency. Butthe logic works the same, so to speak, in reverse: Negative self-image,perceived through the eyes of others who have labeled he individual asnegative, will tend to aggravate the tendency toward behavior thatbasically reinforces the negative image that others have of him or her.Thus if others, such as the school system, have labeled the individual aslearning disabled and special-ed material and not done anything to remedythe situation, then those others are held responsible by the individual forthe individual's self-image. Thelack of socialization may be physical, psychological, or cultural, but itsroots lie in childhood and can be as fundamental in origin and effect asIQ. However, the position takenby this article is that the focus is on the offenders per se and not onidentifying what motivates or otherwise causes the offenses in the firstplace. . So in effect, the subject ofresearch has already had a significant social failure. Schwartz, et al.,conclude their discussion with the observation that there is "desperateneed to allocate more funds to explore strategies most likely to preventand control serious juvenile crimes, particularly violence. That theory is complex, but a key component ofit is the finding that "an individual [who] perceives a positive image ofhimself or herself from others . In other words, criminal behavior can beconnected to the fact that the subject somehow failed to learn acceptedlimits of social behavior, and so wound up a part of the justice system. A common feature of these various articles is that they show how hardit is to generalize about crime and delinquency at the level of researchand theory. New York: Free Press, 1995.Paternoster, Raymond, and Brame, Robert. Even thoughdevelopmental theories are difficult to pin down, Paternoster and Brameconclude that nurture, or external, "dynamic" conditions such as peerpressure and vicissitudes of individual social experience, give a morecredible, if less certain, account of delinquency. This article confirms a point made repeatedly in Juvenile Justice:that theories about how juveniles enter the justice system are difficult totrust. But as with Schwartz, et al., Juvenile Justice makesthe point that it is difficult to identify offending youths that willbecome career criminals in the first place, and secondarily it is difficultto predict whether and how this will happen (Whitehead and Lab 187). The significant pieces ofinformation are the facts that subjects are dropouts and that the subjectsblame something outside themselves for their justice-system problem. To be sure, treatment of juvenile offenders, and notjust punishment, appears to be a part of this. "Multiple Routes to Delinquency? Wintersargues for earlier identification, or labeling, of learning disabilities inchildren, which would seem to say that labeling is an effective method ofdealing with at-risk individuals. Indeed, this would helpexplain why delinquency is not confined to lower-class morons but rathercrosses demographic lines and can be attributed, as Juvenile Justicesuggests (113ff), to a variety of forces, consistent with Sutherland'stheory of differential association, the name given to explaining behaviorin terms of "various social inputs faced by individuals [of all classes,races, etc.] throughout their lives. and Richard J. This is consistentwith the observation in Juvenile Justice that "identification ofdevelopmental stages and problems typically occurs after the problems havebeen manifested in some type of deviant behavior" (Whitehead and Lab 9 ).The second outstanding feature of the article is that such a significantpercentage of those offenders who come into the justice system areidentified as learning disabled in some way: "Between 28 and 43% ofincarcerated juveniles have special education needs. The criticism is also at thecore of the discussion that closes Juvenile Justice, which explains thatthe juvenile justice system is characterized by "uncertainty and change"(Whitehead and Lab 439). The Bell Curve. "Is Child Maltreatment a Leading Cause of Delinquency?" Child Welfare 73 (September 1994): 639-655. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985.Winters, Clyde A. Controversy surrounds development of theories that will give aconvincing and adequate account of how crime and delinquency come about.This article challenges the assertion made by Whitehead and Lab (91) that"developmental arguments have proved much more useful in treatment ofdeviant individuals" and the plea in Winters's discussion, cited above,that intervention in the problems created by developmental problems mayhave the effect of limiting delinquency and crime. Where matters of public policy come into play,there seems a great opportunity for persuasive theorists to undulyinfluence nonexpert lawmakers to pursue policies that may be consistentwith a pet theory but that may also be inconsistent with desirable resultsover the long term. According to JuvenileJustice, learning disability is connected to the failure to complete adevelopmental stage (91). Juvenile Justice: An Introduction. The fact that that extraindividual factorsare to blame for their academic failure (and by extension, justice-systeminvolvement) is more difficult to explain theoretically, even though thephenomenon has been observed. While differing in their specific features, developmental theories all assume that different explanatory factors affect crimes occurring at different points in life (Paternoster and Brame 52).The great developmental challenge is to settle on what these many variablesare. will hold a positive self-image"(Whitehead and Lab 137). Cincinnati, Ohio: Anderson Publishing, 199 .Wilson, James Q. This calls for a highly disciplined approach to the creation ofstudies on the subject and for critical scrutiny of studies already done,for logic, consistency, and integrity. But there are other implications aswell, even more disturbing. It is another articulation ofthe nature-vs.-nurture debate over human behavior. Juvenile Justice refers to this dynamic as the theory ofmodeling as a form of development, where modeling describes behaviorlearned by copying that of peers and adults (Whitehead and Lab 91). . "Learning Disabilities, Crime, Delinquency, and Special Education Placement." Adolescence 32 (Summer 1997): 451-462. But Winters also argues for moreefficient mainstreaming of learning-disabled persons--easier to achieve thesooner identification is made and remedial action implemented--so thatthose who may internalize the disability label and transform it intodeviant behavior may be able to transform so as to avoid such behavior.This is consistent with the judgment in Juvenile Justice that labeling hasbeen classified as both theory and mere "perspective."Paternoster, Raymond, and Brame, Robert. Butit appears that after decades of attempts to transform or cut offdelinquent behavior the experts on the subject, who may have good will inthe project, are divided about strategies and methods for doing so, andindeed do not know which strategy or method is most likely to besuccessful.Winters, Clyde A. The nature of thechallenge comes down to the observation that no current theory of criminalbehavior adequately accounts for it and that theoretical competition, whichis a motif of discourse in Juvenile Justice as well, is likely to continue. "Is Child Maltreatment a Leading Cause of Delinquency?" Child Welfare 73 (September 1994): 639-655.Whitehead, John T., and Lab, Steven P. This article is a forceful criticism of the public-policy focus onjuvenile justice as the remedy for and appropriate response to delinquencyand juvenile crime, by way of a criticism of the research that has beendone into the issue of the causes of juvenile crime. Herrnstein. This would beconsistent with maladaptivity. Rather,while making the point that various theories are not necessarily supportedby the facts and statistics of juvenile crime and later adult behavior ofjuvenile criminals, Whitehead and Lab say that the most the research cansay with certainty is that "at least some youthful offenders do becomelater delinquents and adult criminals" (187). Crime and Human Nature. Three features of the discourse stand out. Wilson, a neoconservativesociologist, and Richard Herrnstein (co-author of the controversial 1995nonfiction Bell Curve, which argued that racial and cultural differencesaccount for different performances between whites and minorities on IQtests). . so that they can become self-sufficient" (462). Paternoster and Brame distinguish between "general" and"developmental" theories of crime, with the former tending to account forall criminal behavior in terms of a specific set of variables and thelatter tending to account for such behavior by relating specific populationgroups and subgroups to a whole range of specific kinds of crimes(violent/nonviolent, adolescent/adult, etc.) and to other group-specificinfluences on behavior (ethnic, cultural, etc.). The logical progression here is that a positiveself-image will tend to dampen antisocial behavior because the individualwill act in ways that reinforce the view tat others have of him or her. "Multiple Routes to Delinquency? Winters says that learning-disabled students"may be at risk for future incarceration if their disability is notremediated . They usually havemaladaptive, passive learning styles, and attribute their lack of academicsuccess to extraindividual factors" (454). . The third aspect of the articlethat is of note is related to the second, that so many of those sameoffenders attribute their incarceration, not to behavior for which they areresponsible but instead to something outside themselves: "Typical inmatesof a correctional institution are school dropouts. Works CitedHerrnstein, Richard J., and Charles Murray. "Thecontemporary[theoretical] debate," they say, "pits those who argue forgeneral theory against theorists who anticipate differences in thedevelopmental pathways that lead to offending behavior" (5 ). Many of them havelearning disabilities. Outsidethe loop of the educational system, then, the subjects would have no role-model behavior on which to base their own behavior. Juvenile Justice's section on identification and prediction injuvenile justice (summarized on page 2 7) is really a focus on method,first, and secondly (and no less significantly) a focus on how hard it isto develop methods that will result in research that is reliable in thematter of cause and effect rather than research that is distinguishedmainly by the fact that it is equipped to offer only correlation ofvariables that may affect delinquency. In JuvenileJustice, Whitehead and Lab also cite biological, psychological, and socialtheories that are meant to explain juvenile delinquency, although they donot specifically attribute theory clusters to specific decades. Developmental theories, as Juvenile Justice explains and asPaternoster and Brame confirm, focus on a much greater variety of variables-and suffer credibility on that account: The contemporary developmental theory movement provides various theoretical rationales that may guide research using the offending stages and dimensions identified by criminal career proponents. Thus it is possible to infer from general theory that criminals,like those with self-control, are born and not made, even though the makingof criminals may be a feature of early upbringing in the context ofsocially deviant cultural norms. The purpose of this research is to examine three articles dealing withcrime and delinquency. This is connected to labeling theory, a subset of the theoryof symbolic interactionism. As Juvenile Justice suggests, methodologicalstudy of human subjects' learning strategies has been of limited use.However, Winters points to studies showing that adolescents in particularmay experience alienation associated with being identified as learningdisabled, by citing figures (passim) showing the large percentage ofincarcerated juveniles who were enrolled in special education beforeincarceration. . In adult correctional facilities between 3 and 5 %of the inmates need special education" (453). However,general theory at its most basic involves the opportunity for crime plus aninsufficiently socialized individual who exploits that opportunity. This is most problematic inasmuch as the fact ofdelinquency is acknowledged to be a social problem. This, developmental theory in general has been unable to do, althoughit is important to recognize that it focuses on environmental and socialfactors rather than on individual factors such as self-control, whendescribing how crime and delinquency emerge. Whitehead and Lab (3 9) trace the failure of apresidential commission on delinquency aimed at diverting young people fromcrime to other activities to the failure of method, specifically, failing"to delineate exactly what it meant when it promoted diversion." Theproblem was not necessarily that diversion was a bad answer to delinquencybut rather that the definitions of diversion and delinquency were notsufficiently understood by the policy makers to make a meaningful impact inthe problem the program was meant to solve. First,there is the fact that this accounting for behavior that led to theindividual's involvement in the justice system comes ex post facto, i.e.,after the crimes have been committed and incarceration or other post-offense situation has been established. Within bothgeneral and developmental theories there are theoretical subsets. The problem is finding aconsistent and coherent theoretical explanation for the facts and figuresof crime statistics. . . They divide research methods intodecades, saying that during the 196 s the focus was on minor juvenileoffenses such as truancy, which could lead to adult crime; that during the197 s the focus had shifted to learning disabilities as the cause ofjuvenile crime; that in the 198 s nature (i.e., genetic and biologicalfactors) was held to be the cause; that in the 199 s the dominant view isthat child maltreatment/abuse explains juvenile delinquency. A Test of Developmental and General Theories of Crime." Criminology 35 (February 1997): 49-84. One hopes thatsuch knowledge will be developed before the end of this century" (655). This article lies within the scheme of theory about juvenile crimethat is associated with the explanatory power of learning disabilities as afeature of developmental theory to account for behavior associated withdelinquency and crime.
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