Education Vs. First Offenders: A Case Study

Assuaging poverty is one of the gist missions of the Harlem Children’s Zone. In the United States today, exceeding “13 million” children live in poverty. We understand that children, who experience the backlash of poverty, often live in an unpleasantly conditions, unstable homes, and are at a great distance less likely than other children to get a favorable education and/or sufficient health care. The exposure to life of poverty more often limits learning abilities; bringing about the inability of getting the best jobs and earning maximum income, making it impossible for them to live up to their full potential, which will more like result in imprisonment.

Dysfunctional Families The novel Into the Wild is a true story about Christopher McCandless narrated by the author Jon Krakauer. Krakauer focuses on revealing the journey taken by Christopher McCandless, but more importantly the development of McCandless’ psychological behavior. After finishing high school, McCandless single-handedly takes a road trip alone, where he discovers that his father has a second family. Keeping this secret away from Chris only angered him as he felt remarkably betrayed from his father.

The face of poverty is changing in the United States. When someone mentions that a person is living in poverty, we are inclined to think of a bum living on the street, eating at shelters, and using whatever money they have for alcohol, drugs and tobacco. Usually we visualize this person as being a middle-aged male with drab clothing and a long beard. This description may have fit the average person living in poverty or on the street a few years ago, but it is no longer a correct generalization. Children are the face of poverty in 2015. These children have little chance to rise up out of the lifestyle they are born into. Many of these children are born to teenage girls. The economic states of these mothers and their lifestyles many times

It is known that the children are unable to determine their life circumstances, their families, and care solely for themselves without supervision. With this being said, children have little to no jurisdiction in determining the situations that they are confronted with. Most of the time when we ponder child poverty we think of low-income families or lack of food in the household, but it extends beyond that to “an environment that is damaging to their mental, physical, emotional and spiritual development” (“Children Under Threat,” 2005). Unfortunately, the prevalence of youth poverty in the United States may seem uncommon to those who are personally unaffected by the crisis; however, statistics show that 15 million children (21% of all children) live in families with incomes below the federal poverty threshold (Child Poverty, 2017). Moreover, when considering the demographics of impoverished children the following are true: a child in the U.S. has a 1 in 5 chance of being poor and the younger they are the poorer they are likely to be, and a child of color is more than twice as likely to be poor than a White child (Child Poverty, 2017). Research proves that poverty is the single greatest threat to a child’s well-being as it decreases the likelihood of a child graduating from high school, and it increases the chances of them becoming involved with the criminal justice system (Ending Child Poverty Now, 2017).

Possessing a functional or dysfunctional family is of much importance to a healthy development, helping children through peer pressure, acceptance, and the anxiety of belonging. Yet how important is the environment that a child is raised on, this being shared or non-shared? How difficult or easy can peer pressure be? Will peer pressure help or deter a child from being functional. How much do these factors affect development from childhood to adolescence? This paper will explain the different stages of childhood to adolescence, and how a child and adolescence copes with nature and nurture .

Children dont like when they don’t have someone to talk to if they are bothered, and when they don’t have their parents to talk to, it will show when they act or cause trouble. A debater from debate.org stated “parents raised their child, teaching them right from wrong, so they are morally responsible” (debate.org). What this shows, is that even if when kids do know what the right thing to do is, teaching them right from wrong isn’t powerful enough; therefore, more needs to be done if parents want their children to act right. If parents keep a clean background, and make the right the decisions around their child, show them love and attention, and have a more positive influence on them, the child wont commit and anything wrong, and the reason why this is true, is because kids won’t have a reason to do anything wrong if the parents are consistently doing the right

The lacking role of parental figures, mostly the father figure, leads children every day to self-loathing, behavior problems, poor academic performance, commitment of crimes, etc. Children, mostly boys, that grow up with that lack of a father role usually go more towards being the everyday criminals if they don’t have a sense of discipline, or if they don’t know right from wrong.

     Some causes for conduct in adolescents are no discipline, unstructured discipline and a broken home. A broken home is one of the factors that can produce a delinquent child. A broken home reduces the opportunity for creating a strong attachment between child and parents and that reduces the parent’s ability to condition the child. Many theories concerning the causes of juvenile crime focus either on the individual or on society as the major contributing influence. Theories centering on the individual suggest that children engage in criminal behavior because they were not sufficiently penalized for previous delinquent acts or that they have learned criminal behavior through interaction with others.

There are three theories that all describe the reasons why child abuse and neglect lead to juvenile delinquency. This first of these theories is the social bonding theory which states that the weaker the bond between parent and child, the more likely the child is to become delinquent as stated by Ronald Akers. A parent’s role in an adolescent’s life is to foster a social

In the article, Family Management, and Youth Violence: Are Parent or Community More Salient?, Maria Joao Lobo from Westat and Eileen M. Ahlin from Penn State Harrisburg studies four family management strategies and community influence on youth. The four family management strategies are supervision, discipline, restrictiveness, and familiarity with child’s peers. The data is collected on three cohorts of youths ages 9 to 19 from the PHDCN, and the data is analyzed by using HLM. The results are harsh disciplining practices increase violence by 33%. In the community youth who was unsupervised show a decrease of violent behavior by 40%. Also, the youth violence is influenced by family management than community influences. The article supports my

Control Theory is the theory of support. This theory demonstrates an individual's social bonds in relation to their performance. Since certain bonds are stronger in certain kinds of lifestyles the affects will be different in all situations. Control theorists believe “in the rationality of the criminal act that the individual behaves in a criminal manner for ordinary reasons, and this behavior arises out of the person’s own free will” (Moyer, 2001, 133). However, deviant behavior is prevalent in today’s society. It is a major problem concerning adolescents all across the world. This theory carries serious paternalistic roles.

Parents have the ability to directly influence whom their child associates with. Through effective monitoring and discipline, a youth’s access to an affiliation with deviant peers is affected (Simons et al 1991). Through effective monitoring, a parent keeps track of their child’s whereabouts. In doing this a parent can limit where the child goes and who they associate with. Along with monitoring and disciplining, a strong parent-child bond is also influential. An adolescent who is closer to their parents is more likely to care about their parent’s opinions regarding their friends. Coercive parenting can weaken this bond. When this bond is weakened through parental conflict, there are higher levels of the youth externalizing their problems (Buehler

this is point out that family, school and other social environment can lead young people to be a good person or a person who break law. I will focus on parts of family and school to support Rio’s idea. There is evidence that family relations are closely linked to (non) crimes. In a study examining the impact of social control on crime, these studies found a negative correlation between parental attachment and crime. Therefore, the greater the attachment to parents, the less likely they are to engage in illegal activities. It is noteworthy that in only one study of this report, only one parent was found to have no influence on criminal behavior (Brannigan et al., 2002). Also according to Sheldon and Eleanor Glueck’s article of “Unraveling Juvenile Delinquency”, they found that the impact of fathers and mothers on children is one of the five best predictors of crime. They also found that from another perspective, emotional relationships between children and their parents tend to be weaker among criminals. From this we can conclude that family attachment plays a role in the child's socialization and maintains his or her subsequent compliance with social rules. Researchers report that home attachments may explain the obvious impact of other variables. These interrelationships are certainly evidence of the importance of parental supervision. They are better seen as evidence of the importance of communication between parents and children (Glueck, S., & Glueck, E. 1950).

Some spectators question the value of neighborhoods and if neighborhoods make any difference in a child’s development. For individuals to assume that neighborhoods do not matter much to a child’s development would be careless. From history we know that poverty is deep rooted from economic shifts in demographics, family make up, changes in migration, segregation and a drastic decline in our nations industrialization labor force. In a response to understand and address these trends in our society, academic scholars and policy makers developed an interest in the contexts in which children are fostered beyond their families. These scholars denoted a field of study that is known today as neighborhood research (brooks-Gunn, Duncan, & Aber, 1997) as cited in (Leventhal, 2003). But the important questions to identify and answer here are; how do neighbors effect children’s and youths and their well-being? And what can we do to alleviate neighborhood disadvantages and its potentially harmful effects on children’s development?

Criminologists argue that social bonds to adult institutions such as the family help support informal social control which can reduce the likelihood of criminal behavior in adulthood. For most individuals, immediate family members are the first socializing forces in their lives. Which, in turn, helps to teach and enforce respect for self, and others, compassion, empathy, controlling of unacceptable behaviors and delaying of gratification. On the other hand, a child can also learn aggressive, violent, and deviant behaviors from their family circle.