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Influential Factors on a Juvenile's Life

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There are numerous influential factors that can determine the path a juvenile takes in life. Research has consistently shown that a juvenile’s family setting is one of the most influential factors in the juvenile’s life (Hawkins, Herrenkohl, Farrington, Brewer, Catalano, and
Harachi, 1998). A common finding among research has been that children from “broken homes” or single parent homes are more likely to become involved in delinquent behaviors (Tanner). Single parent homes are more often than not, headed by a working mother, living at or below the poverty level, primarily living in a community surrounded by other families in similar situations. Poverty and education are inextricably linked where education is a primary means of social mobility, enabling those born into poverty to rise in society. Powerful evidence of the link include the fact that 46 percent of Americans who grew up in low-income families but failed to earn college degrees stayed in the lowest income quintile, compared to 16 percent for those who earned a college degree (Freidman, 2012). Recent data from the Civil Rights Project show that school segregation is very high for Latino and Black students and that this segregation is almost always what Gary Orfield called “double segregation,” that is, segregation by both race/ethnicity and poverty. In the 2009–2010 school year, 74 percent of Black and 80 percent of Hispanic students attended schools where 50 to 100 percent of the students were minori¬ties. In

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