A Report On The Crime On Children

Outline and evaluate Functionalist views of the role of the family in society. [33 marks]

Functionalist’s sees that society is made up of a range of different sub-systems which depend on each other, and that society needs these functions or order for survival and is vital towards society. Functionalists see the family as a very important sub-system, as it raises and teaches children norms and values. According to Peter Murdock, he argues that the family performs four main functions to meet the needs of society and the members of society. One of the

‘The family performs important tasks that contribute to society’s basic needs and helps perpetuate social order.’ (Anthony Giddens 2006 - Page 238) Functionalists believe a family’s paramount purpose is to raise and support their children within society.

On 04/16/15, I received a call from Special Agent Scott Sutehall with Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) who is a member of the Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) task force. I am also a member of the ICAC task force and work with HSI frequently. Agent Sutehall has worked with me on several cases and was confident with my knowledge and understanding of child exploitation cases. Agent Sutehall informed me that between 02/19/15 and 03/01/15, while acting in an undercover capacity, he utilized a law enforcement version of eMule, a client software for the eDonkey2000 (eD2k) peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing network, to monitor for P2P users possessing and distributing image and video files depicting child pornography. During that time period, Agent Sutehall utilized the law enforcement version of eMule to establish connections with IP address Test and to download several files depicting child pornography from that IP address.

Child abuse is a serious crime, whereas the abuser “acts out of commission.” According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention , this is defined as the act of being “deliberate and intentional.” Unfortunately, it was no accident for Gabriel Fernandez, who was tortured to death by his biological mother and boyfriend. Court reports indicated the 8-year-old boy was doused with pepper spray, forced to eat his own vomit and cat feces, and locked inside a kitchen cabinet with a sock stuffed in his mouth to silence him. On May 24, 2013, paramedics arrived to a 911 call from Gabriel’s mother Pearl, as they first saw Gabriel unresponsive and laying down naked in the bedroom with a fractured skull, burns to his body, three broken ribs and BB pallets were found inside his lungs and groin. Remorsefully, Gabriel had passed away two days later. Despite the facts stated by Statistic Brain, yearly 681,000 children in the United States are abused and four children each day loses their lives, there are many parents who still believes harsh physical punishment is the only effective method way to get children to behave. Some, do not see anything wrong with this and others have a mindset of “showing who’s the boss” standing the ground as an authority figure. Soumya Manna from India says:

The first perspective which I will be explaining will be Functionalism. Functionalism is the view that our society is based onagreed norms and values. A norm is social rules that define correct behaviour in society. An example of a norm can be an individual attending school until they are the age of 18. Values are what are important to an individual and this differs in class, culture, ethnicity and gender. An example

An estimated 39 million survivors of childhood sexual abuse exist in America today (Darness2Light, 2009a ). This figure continues to grow daily as perpetrators of this crime continue in this destructive path. The definition of child sexual abuse is the force, coercion, or cajoling of children into sexual activities by a dominant adult or adolescent. Sexual abuse of children includes touching (physical) sexually including: fondling; penetration (vaginal or anal using fingers, foreign objects or offenders organs; oral sex, or non-physical contact including: sexual comments; indecent exposures; masturbating in a child’s presence; child prostitution or child pornography (Child Welfare, 2009a).

When I first started reading, ‘Burning Down the House,’ by Nell Bernstein, I was surprised at what juveniles went through while in jail. One of the chapters that caught my attention the most was chapter 5, called “The Fist and the Boot.” This chapter covered physical abuse in jail, and while reading the chapter, one of the examples of physical abuse which stood out to me the most was on page 84, where it said that, “In Mississippi, guards ripped the clothing from suicidal girls, then hog-tied them, naked and tossed them into solitary.” When I read this, I was shocked that the prison in Mississippi could even do that. Ripping clothes from suicidal girls and hog-tying them naked will not help them at all, that will only make them worse for them.

The functionalist’s perspective does not pay attention on agency, it covers macro social analysis. It does not take into consideration the individual’s feelings, it just assumes that lovers settle and fit in their positions as expected in the societal norms.

The distinctive cultural groups contrast to conventional norm of subculture has demonstrated the increase of prison enrollment. Norms that is labelled as deviant that can range from pickpocketing, stealing, rapes and murders. These vast differences of degree of deviant behaviors causes juvenile jails or regular jails. From the mass enrollment with the general populations in prison of the same sex that can range from different severity. While in jail many unwilling sexual intercourse if performed. Rape, is the unwanted and force sexual intercourse from someone of the same or opposite sex. According to the Editorial Board, “Previous studies have found that juveniles housed in adult facilities were at greater risk of sexual assault than

Functionalism is a consensus perspective, whereby society is based on shared values and norms into which members are socialised. For functionalists, society is seen as a system of social institutions such as the economy, religion and the family all of which perform socialisation functions.

As a functionalist view, they believed that the family had to teach the norms and values so they believed that the ‘Traditional Nuclear Family’ was the best type of family. Functionalists believed that the husband and wife have segregated

When so many limitations of the functionalist theory are put forward it is difficult for one to submit to this theory as one of universal application. The conception of consensual norms and values presents one of the major limitations of the functionalist theory. By accepting the status quo in terms of core values, functionalist theories fail to explain how structural inequality contributes to deviance .

Every year, child abuse and neglect affect more than one million children nation-wide (Currie and Tekin 1). Along with this, child abuse is the source of severe injury to more than 500,000 children and the death of over 1,500 children (Currie and Tekin 1). These outrageously large numbers reveal the extent to which child abuse and neglect impact society; however, they do not acknowledge the effect abuse can have on a child’s life and the repercussions that may occur in both the individual’s childhood and adulthood. While the effects most certainly include physical pain and possibly future disabilities, child abuse and neglect can also affects the child’s psychological welfare. Psychological effects are often more difficult to recognize,

Functionalist theory is one of the major theoretical perspectives in sociology. It can be argued that the functionalist theory has made a significant contribution to the study of society. It originates from the work of Emile Durkheim who suggests that social order is possible and society remains stable due to the functioning of several institutions. Everything has a specific function in society and society will always function in harmony. The main institutions studied by functionalism are the family, the education system, religion and crime and deviance.