Delinquency, criminal, or antisocial behavior of juvenile denotes various offenses made or committed by children or youths under the age of 18.
Children’s offenses include delinquent acts which would be considered crimes if committed by adults, and status offenses which are less serious misbehaviors such as truancy and parental disobedience. Both of these are within the jurisdiction of the juvenile court, more serious offenses committed by minors may be tied in criminal court and be subject to prison sentences. Juvenile delinquent behavior is one of the most important issues every nation faces today.Despite the social awareness, juvenile delinquency is on the rise.
It’s increasingly more sophisticated and its participants are becoming younger. A lot of people believe that crimes are caused by negligence and ineffective parenting of children (Wilson and Herrnstein, 1985) others believe it is caused by an individual’s low self-control. One of the most widely accepted findings in criminology and developmental psychology is that families play an important role in producing or reducing delinquency and that childhood conduct problems are a strong predictor of subsequent involvement in antisocial behavior.Studies showed that children who are aggressive and non-compliant during elementary school are at risk for adolescent delinquency and adult crime (Caspi and Moffitt, 1995; Conger and Simons, 1997; Loeber, 1982, Patterson, Reid, and Dishion, 1992; Sampson and Laub, 1993) Many theories concerning the causes of juvenile crime focus either on the individual or on society as the major contributing factor or influence in delinquency and crime. Sheldon and Eleanor Glueck conducted a research linking inept parenting to crime and delinquency (Laub and Sampson, 1998, 1991).
They also crafted the Unraveling Juvenile Delinquency (UJD) study which corroborated researches completed in the late 1980’s and 1990. These theorists argue that the age of onset of delinquency was a key factor in understanding criminal careers. The younger the onset, the more persistent and serious the criminal career of the person becomes. They contended that the most important determinant of delinquent behavior was family environment: parental supervision, disciplinary practices, and child-parent attachment. Sociologists such as Ron Akers contend that delinquency was a function of cultural and social structural influences.
The Social Learning Theory or the differential association theory states that the balance of learned criminal and anti-criminal definitions determines whether one will be conforming or deviant with respect to a given legal code. If the balance of definitions is favorable to abiding by the law, the outcome is conformity; if violative definitions are in excess criminal behavior is the result’ (Akers, p. 27). The four concepts central to Akers’ theory are differential association, differential reinforcement, imitation, and definitions (p. 50).
An individual is more likely to commit a violation when he or she differentially associates with others who commit, model, and support law violation; the violation is differentially reinforced; he or she is exposed to more deviant than conforming behavior; and his or her own learned definitions are favorable to committing deviance (Akers, p. 51). Further, he contended that crime is learned, and therefore that exposure to delinquent definitions (more precisely, the ratio of definitions favorable to law violation over definitions unfavorable) is the key to explanation.It is ‘self evident that variables such as parents’ criminality and disciplinary practices are measures of the social learning concepts. ’ Social Control Theory or The Social Bonding Theory proposes that people's relationships, commitments, values, norms, and beliefs encourage them not to break the law.
That if moral codes are internalized and individuals are tied into it, and have a stake in their wider community, they will voluntarily limit their propensity to commit deviant acts.This theory does not consider motivational issues; it simply states that human beings may choose to engage in a wide range of activities, unless the range is limited by the processes of socialization and social learning. The earliest form of the theory was proposed by Reiss (1951: 196) who defined delinquency as, “the behavior consequent to the failure of personal and social controls. Personal control was defined as the ability of the individual to refrain from meeting needs in ways which conflict with the norms and rules of the community while social control was the ability of social groups or institutions to make norms or rules effective.
Reiss' version did not specify the sources of said "abilities" nor the specific control mechanisms leading to conformity, but he asserted that failure of primary groups such as the family to provide reinforcement for non-delinquent roles and values was crucial to the explanation of delinquency. On the other hand, Travis Hirsch’s Social Control Theory of Crime in 1969 included the parent-child relationship as one of its elements. According to him, to be able determine why people are deviant, one should ask why people conform to the norms instead.Hirsch’s theoretical perspective occupied a central place within the field of criminology and became the most frequently discussed and tested of all theoretical frameworks within the discipline ( Stitt and Giacopassi, 1992). He contended that “delinquent acts result when an individual’s bond to society is weak or broken “(Hirschi, 1969, 16) According to this perspective, the bond to society has four elements: attachment, commitment, involvement, and belief.His perspective implied that deviants are versatile in their anti social behavior.
Individuals who lack self-control will engage in a wide variety of deviant activities or actions rather than in specializing in any particular type of deviance. Without the four elements mentioned, they are free to engage in any deviant actions. Involvement in a deviant peer group is not also an important cause of delinquency and that they do not have strong attachments or relationships with their peers.Several studies have shown that these predictions are not correct because relationship between delinquents appear to be close and as strong as those between non delinquents (Giordano, Cernkovich, and Pugh, 1986; Kandel and Davies, 1991) The evidence suggests that attachment to peers lead to conformity only when the friends are themselves conventional.
Contrary to Hirsch’s contentions, youth who are strongly attached to delinquent peers are more likely to be delinquent (Conger, 1976; Elliott, Huazinga, and Ageton, 1985; Linden and Hackler, 1973)The Self Control Theory on the other hand goes beyond the assumption to posit that criminal and delinquent acts will also be correlated with analogue activities. Rather than specializing in a particular form of deviance, self-control theory contends that criminals are likely to display a lifestyle that involves a wide assortment of illegal and analogue activities (Arneklev et al. , 1993; Evans et al. , 1997).
Gottfredson and Hirschi argued that individuals who are low in self control are those who are easily attracted to crime.They are individuals who are impulsive, uncompromising, self-centered, insensitive, risk-taking, and unconcerned about the long term consequences. Such persons are attracted to crime which provides immediate reward whereas they avoid activities that involve a lot of time, energy, and delayed gratification. They contend that master thieves are not always those people who hones their craft and outsmarts their victims but rather, an adolescent delinquents and adult criminals who are lazy, lacking in self-discipline and looking for a very easy way to get what they want.They are attracted to crime because it promises immediate gratification with little investment of time and energy.
Thus offenders are likely to capitalize on criminal opportunities as they present themselves with most crimes being poorly planned and organized. Studies however, have investigated the extent to which the relationship between exposure to inept parenting during childhood and anti social behavior as explained by low self-control theory (Cochran et al. 1998; Gibbs, Giever, and Martin, 1998; Hays, 2001; Polakowski, 1994) These studies suggest that self-control explains only a portion of the relationship between parenting and anti social behavior. Parental behavior influences the child’s risk for deviance in more ways than simply through its impact on self-control. Moreover, Pat and Cullen (2000) concluded that although self-control may be an important predictor of deviance, other factors are clearly important as well and that parents has a great influence on their child’s behavior in more ways than those identified by the self-control theory.
It is also contradicted that most adult criminals were antisocial children because not all social children grow up to be criminal (Patterson, Reid, Nad Dishion, 1992; Sampson and Laub, 1993) Finally evidence indicates that the theory is incorrect regarding its view on peer influences, that peer affiliations do not influence a person’s involvement in anti-social behavior. Gottfredson and Hirschi grant that delinquents tend to form friends with each other. They assert this because individuals who are low in self-control are attracted to peers who are also low in self-control.People develop friends with persons who are similar to themselves. However, having deviant friends does not amplify involvement in delinquent behavior but rather inept parenting because it fails to teach self-control in the individual, thus, the primary cause of delinquency.
There is evidence that both delinquents (Simons, Gordon, Stewart, and Conger, 2002) who switch to a more conventional friendship network tend to reduce their involvement in anti social behavior.Delinquent youth reduce their involvement in anti social behavior when they exchange their deviant peer group for a more conventional set of friends, and adult criminals engage in fewer illegal activities after trading their deviant friends for a more conventional set of companions. Conclusion: Many of these theories are intuitively convincing, especially that “individuals will not engage in crime if they think that this will sacrifice the affection or respect of significant others”. The social control theory provided a thorough explanation why people act in a delinquent and deviant manner.All of us experience tough moments and situations in our lives that sometimes, we think and feel, we are alone and no one cares for us. It is at this point when our basis of self-worth and identity is shaken and the meaning of our personal existence diminishes.
Being criticized and ignored is one of the most self-invalidating experiences because our life revolves around social relationships and self-concept. It hurts our feelings and egos when people treated us someone inferior or unworthy of their attention and respect.This is so because we value our relationship with the people around us. However, all these theories actually considered parenting as part, if not the main cause of an individual’s anti social behavior. Parents are the first teachers of their children. It is from them that children learn about their world.
Based on research, a healthy home environment, one in which parents and children share affection, cohesion, and involvement, reduces the risk of delinquency and that parental rejection appears to be one of the most significant predictors of delinquency.Parental attachment does not only affect the likelihood of delinquency but so does the attachment of the child to his parents too. This dual relationship implies an interaction between characteristics of both the parent and the child. Similarly, a child’s disposition toward impulsive, aggressive, and antisocial behavior may initiate a process within the family that ultimately leads to delinquency. Parents therefore, through effective socialization, should provide their children a parenting style that is positive.
Parents must adequately monitor their children's behavior, whereabouts, and friends.They must consistently discipline their children for antisocial and prohibited behavior, but must do so neither rigidly nor severely. They should assist their children in solving their problems, in negotiating conflicts, and that they themselves too should model good behavior. Delinquency is more likely when normative development is incomplete, when children are unable to distinguish right from wrong, feel little or no obligation toward standards of behavior, or and have little respect for rights and welfare of others.As such, parents play a critical role in the child’s life as a healthy home environment is the single most important factor necessary to keep children from becoming delinquent.
Further, marital discord is a more powerful predictor of delinquency than divorce or single-parent family structure. Family relations, not just the separation, therefore influence delinquency as well. Abuse on the other hand, directly affects the child, yet the link between abuse and delinquency is not as strong as the link between rejection and delinquency.Abused children tend to manifest more problematic and aggressive behavior than children who are not abused.
But some abused children withdraw, become self-destructive, or focus their reaction inward too. Being abused increases the chances of delinquency. It is therefore the role of parents to provide their children solid psychological, emotional, and spiritual foundation. When parents fail to provide them these healthy experiences, they eventually become inferior and not confident with their selves and thus lack self-control.
Skills, self-concept, self-confidence, self-esteem, as well as interpersonal skills should be honed or cultivated at the early age of an individual. When these needs are met, the individual becomes mature, confident, happier, positive, appreciative of his self and of his life, and becomes a good and law abiding citizen of his society. As what they would often say, “It is only when a person loves himself that he can love others, when he accepts himself that he accept others, when his needs are met can he meet the needs of others, forgives himself can he forgive others”.
