Essay about Hirschi’s Social Bonding Theory

The Supreme Court reviewed the constitutionality of mandatory life sentences without parole enforced upon persons aged fourteen and younger found guilty of homicide. The court declared unconstitutional a compulsory sentence of life without parole for children. The states have been barred from routinely imposing sentences based on the crime committed. There is a requirement for individual consideration of the child life circumstance or the defendant status as a child. The court rejected the definite ban on life sentences without parole. This is because in some cases the instances may be uncommon, but jurors

Akers & Sellers (2013) noted that there are various common theories that are pertinent to the study of crime as the extents of crime explanations range from the genetic/biological through to the economic and social perspective. Howitt (2012) divided these theories into four categories: macro-level or societal theories; locality or community level theories; group and socialisation influence theories; and individual level theories. This essay first describes the major theories of crime in the discussion section, which also discusses the impacts of crime at the individual and societal level, followed by conclusion based on the previous discussion.

In the article “On Punishment and Teen Killers” by Jennifer Jenkins asserts that teens are becoming more violent and starting commit more crimes because of the national television they watch.Jenkins tells the reader about “JLWOP” (Juvenile Life Without Parole) and how kids are being sentenced to life in prison without parole.Some people are trying to advocate to minimize the offender culpability because of their age.While kids are getting sentenced to life without parole, this disproves juvenile advocates reliance on the undeveloped brain.Some juvenile offenders truly understand what the victim family go through and how long it takes them to recover.There were millions of dollars spent to end JLWOP and to set convicted murderers free.

Hirschi’s social bond theory is made up of four basic elements; attachment, commitment, involvement and belief. The element of attachment has to do with one’s involvement in society, and the bonds they form with others. Social bond theory is based on the idea that deviancy occurs in an individual when social connections are weak or non-existent, the element of attachment has to do with the bonds one forms with individuals or institutions. Attachment acts as an indirect control factor, as attachment determines one’s status in society, which in turn determines how much social capital one possesses. Attachment is largely influenced by one’s parents, interpreted as children “inheriting” social capital from their parents based on the level of

How can theories help us to understand criminal behavior and to design strategies intended to control such behavior?

Sociological theories of crime contain a great deal of useful information in the understanding of criminal behavior. Sociological theories are very useful in the study of criminal behavior because unlike psychological and biological theories they are mostly macro level theories which attempt to explain rates of crime for a group or an area rather than explaining why an individual committed a crime. (Kubrin, 2012). There is however some micro level sociological theories of crime that attempts to explain the individual’s motivation for criminal behavior (Kubrin, 2012). Of the contemporary

Gail Garinger, the author of “Juveniles Don’t Deserve Life Sentences,” argues that children should not be struck down for life because they commit the most vile and horrible crimes imaginable, based on the sole fact that they are still adolescents, and that they should be given the chance for parole and rehabilitation because they are not fully developed; therefore, in her article she shows exceptionally strong ethos to support her claim. Garinger first exposes her strong ethos by using the authority of the Supreme Court to exclaim why the youth shouldn’t be punished to a life sentence for homicide or manslaughter by saying, “the Supreme Court

The author of this article is Kallee Spooner is a PHD candidate at Sam Houston State University. Currently she works on a National Institute of Justice study as a Doctoral Research Assistant. Her focus is corrections, juvenile justice, and legal analyses in criminal justice (S.H.S University). In her article, “Juvenile Life Without Parole,” Spooner addresses the punishment of Juvenile life without parole and questions its constitutionality. She begins with raw numbers, including which states have the most juvenile serving LWOP. Further discussed are the facts that 98% of JLWOP inmates are male, and that black youth are 10 times more likely to receive the sentence than white youth. In terms of severity, LWOP is significantly harsher for

Supreme Court ruling Graham v. Florida (2010) banned the use of life without parole for juveniles who committed non-homicide crimes, and Roper v. Simmons (2005) abolished the use of the death penalty for juvenile offenders. They both argued that these sentences violated the 8th Amendment, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. While these landmark cases made great strides for the rights of minors passing through the criminal justice system, they are just the first steps in creating a juvenile justice system that takes into consideration the vast differences between adolescents and adults. Using sociological (Butler, 2010) and legal (Harvard Law Review, 2010) documents, this essay will explicate why the next such step to be taken is

In August of 2004, Robert Acuna was sentenced to the death penalty. His crime? Shooting his two elderly neighbors, James and Joyce Carroll, "execution style" and then proceeding to steal their car (Liptak). This heinous crime only adds to the current debate: should juveniles be sentenced as adults? The answer is yes, there should be no leniency displayed towards minors who commit the same serious crimes as adults. Although young, juveniles should be capable of understanding the serious extent of the crime they commit. Sentencing juveniles as adults will prevent perpetrators of major crimes, such as mass murder, from walking free. Furthermore, judges have enough experience to know whether to try a minor as an adult or not. Juvenile sentencing as adults is not a wrong but rather a form of justice in the face of rising teen violence.

At the beginning of 2010, The United States Supreme Court consistently stated that the eight amendment of the United States Constitutional restricts juvenile life without parole sentences. At first, prohibiting it for non-homicide offenses, and then proscribing it’s mandatory application for any offense. In 2016, it was clarified that it may only be imposed in the rare instance in which a juvenile’s homicide demonstrates his or her “irreparable corruption” (Mills, 2016). The problem that runs in this case is, should legislation abandon or restrict Juveniles life without parole applications. Due to some belief that life sentences to juveniles may be too harsh a punishment and represented a trend that would otherwise suggest that there may be

Some juvenile delinquents are being treated like adults and being sent to adult prisons instead of juvenile prisons. In an article called “ADULT PRISONS: No Place for Kids,” by Steven J. Smith, Smith presents an argument against treating juveniles like adults. His argument states that minors shouldn’t be trialed and placed into adult prisons because instead of being rehabilitated, they typically come out worse because of the daily exposure to already hardened criminals. Smith provides reasons why juveniles are convicted as adults, the drawbacks of placing adolescents in prisons with adults, and an alternative punishment for juvenile criminals.

Capital punishment for juveniles is one of the most controversial topics to ever be explored in society and in the criminal justice system. The death penalty is a rare occurrence amongst juveniles since it is so arguable as to whether they should be tried as adults. Lynn Cothern from the Juvenile Justice Resource Center suggests that “the primary purpose of the juvenile justice system is to hold juvenile offenders accountable for delinquent acts while providing treatment, rehabilitative services, and programs designed to prevent future involvement in law-violating behavior” (Cothern). The juvenile death penalty has been argued over for centuries and has stirred enough people to still be around today. While juveniles have been known to commit heinous crimes, sentencing a juvenile to death is an inhumane and cruel fate to serve someone who is incapable of making rational lifelong decisions, and should not be allowed in the juvenile justice system.

The criminal justice system can sometimes seem unfair because of the way juveniles are being sentenced. In many cases the question is whether or not to send a child to prison for the rest of his life for commiting a crime.The sentencing of a minor to life in prison is detrimental to society because it's like taking away two lives instead of one. One being the life of the victim and the other being the young criminal who may have been too young to know what he was actually doing. Kenneth Young is an example of how cruel the justice system can be to juveniles because at only 15 years old he was sentenced to life in prison for armed robbery.

Many theories of crime are macro theories, which are used to explain crime based on a large group of people or society. While macro theories are the predominant type of theory used to explain crime, there are also a variety of “individual”, or micro, factors which are equally important. Two such individual factors s are maternal cigarette smoking (MCS) and cognitive ability, or Intelligence Quotient (IQ).