Juvenile Violence Essay

THESIS STATEMENT: The world’s media today seem to have more violence than ever. Video games have vivid depictions of accident catastrophes, fighting and murder. Television news programs generally lead with a violent story in order to gain an audience. This is free society people can stay what they want. ‘’ Media violence has many negative effect on youth today to commit crimes in society.’’

To many Americans today, the country is a hostage-but not from oversea terrorism as one might expect to think. No today, we live in fear from our own children; and these are the same young people who we are entrusting the future of this great country with. According to the Department of Justice report released in November, thirty-eight percent of those arrested for weapons offenses in 1995 were under the age of eighteen (Curriden). In the same report, the Bureau of Justice Statistics stated that in 1995, 3 out of every 100 eighteen-year-olds were arrested for weapons offenses. A rate three times higher than for males twenty-five to twenty-nine and five times higher than for males thirty to thirty-four (Curriden).

It is a matter of great importance how much of media content children are exposed to and what exactly they are viewing on media. The issue of violence is not a new phenomenon among children and keeps increasing with time and change in technology and information technology. The causes of violence in children are seen to be multifactorial and exposure of children to media violence is said to be an important factor when it comes to the etiology of behaviors that are violent among children.

     Ever since the terrible tragedy at Columbine High School, there has been a numerous list of recent school shootings in America. Youth violence is a major issue in today’s society. Many people dread what causes adolescents to be so violent, committing horrible crimes.     

A sudden increase of youth violence in public schools in early 1990 has caused many to raise concerns about violent behaviors in schools. In the past, the most common form of violence that took place in schools was bullying, physical fights, or

refuge was established to meet the same kinds of needs the JJS of today tries to

Violence among youth has become a serious problem worldwide. In 2016, the United States ranked homicide as the third leading cause of death for people ages ten to twenty-four years old. Homicide is ranked as the fourth leading cause of death for this age group worldwide. A juvenile is defined as a person who is under the age of eighteen. Six hundred and five juveniles were arrested in 2015 for murder, two thousand seven hundred and forty-five for forcible rape, and twenty-one thousand nine hundred and nine-three for aggravated assault. These acts of violence make the communities in which citizens live more dangerous. As these crime rates rise, the values of the homes and business begin to go down as well. This has become an issue for concern because more and more youth are being convicted of serious crimes. In 2010, juveniles made up 13.7% of those who were arrested from violent crimes. While youth violence has always been present in society, it is becoming present through technology too. In earlier times in order to hurt someone they had to be physically present. Now a days, it has become easier to bully someone from his or her home through the Internet. 15.5% of students admit to being bullied through electronics in 2015. Youth violence is a cause for concern in Family and Consumer Science related fields because those who are working with juveniles should be aware of the problems they are facing.

Violence has helped children lose the ability to decipher between what is real-life and recreational violence. When they lose this ability they believe that violence is accepted and a perfect way to solve their problems. Children who lose their ability to know right from wrong also have a greater tendency to believe that violence is natural and something to be

The issue of child sexual assault has been present since the beginning of history. There is however, surprisingly little research that has been done on it prior to the 1960s and 1970s. As the Director of Children’s Services at the American Humane Association Vincent De Francis stated in 1969, “social work ‘literature seems devoid of reference to or content on this subject [the sexual assault of children],’” (Myers, 2008). In 1975, David Walters, an American politician, stated, “‘Virtually no literature exists on the sexual abuse of children,’” (Myers, 2008). The idea that very little was found on the topic is rather disturbing. Most of the information that is available now was gathered after the mid-1980s when interest in the subject arose (Fenkel, Ormrod, and Chaffin, 2009).

The media has a huge influence on how crime is presented and perceived. In fact, the media might even have an impact on crime prevalence and type. Reiner (2007) points out that "hard scientific evidence" shows that television viewing affects the ways children behave, and that "children imitate violent images," (Reiner, 2007, p. 302). Based on this information, it is not just the news media that may be to blame for some types of crime rate increases. Violent video games could also be implicated in overall desensitiziation or normalization of violence. Desensitization might cause individuals to perpetrate criminal acts. Alternatively, desensitization from overexposure to media might cause some individuals to condone or under-report crime. Media depicting law enforcement and other social institutions in a negative light could also lead to an antagonistic view of the law, leading to a general sense of anomie.

Recent school shootings and youth cause homicides have increased majorly since the media and its violence have become an everyday thing for us. “ America has the largest number of juvenile arrests for violent acts as of 2015”(Louise 1). The media has impacts on teens whether we see it or not. Violence in our society has skyrocketed since media has become a main source of info. Studies have proven that violence in the media has a larger impact on teens than we realize. Media violence does contribute to teen violence by exposing teens to violent heroes on tv, and increasing violence as a part of their coverage and sharing more violent tv shows and segments.

Family violence is not a new phenomenon, as it has essentially existed since the beginning of time. Only in modern times, however have societies begun to recognize violence and family members as a social problem (Barnett, Miller-Perrin & Perrin, 2005). For many years, the social problem of family violence had not only been heavily ignored, but for a number of years, had not been fully understood. For example, family violence takes many forms and has a number of different names. Family violence, also known as domestic violence, spousal abuse, battering, family violence, and intimate partner violence (IPV), is defined as a pattern of abusive behaviors by one partner against another in an intimate relationship such as marriage, dating,

There are many different types of violence in the world. One of the biggest types of violence is youth violence. According to cdc.gov, “Youth violence is a significant public health problem that affects thousands of young people each day, and in turn, their families, schools, and communities. Youth violence typically involves young people hurting other peers who are unrelated to them and who they may or may not know well. Youth violence can take different forms. Examples include fights, bullying, threats with weapons, and gang-related violence. A young person can be involved with youth violence as a victim, offender, or witness.” The facts about youth violence are very disturbing. Some of the facts about youth violence, according to who.int are, “Worldwide some 200 000 homicides occur among youth 10–29 years of age each year, which is 43% of the total number of homicides globally each year. Homicide is the fourth leading cause of death in people aged 10-29 years, and 83% of these homicides involve male victims. For each young person killed, many more sustain injuries requiring hospital treatment. When it is not fatal, youth violence has a serious, often lifelong, impact on a person's physical, psychological and social functioning. Youth violence greatly increases the costs of health, welfare and criminal justice services; reduces productivity; and decreases the value of property.”

Media: According to the World Health Organization, more than 1.6 million individuals lose their life to violence each year (32). The mass media delivers messages to communicate with individuals and structure the world. The television, a newspaper, the radio, and the computer are just a few ways the media channels daily activity among everyone. The public opinion on youth violence is interrupted and misunderstood. Youth violence is seen as a problem only when it is aired on the news daily. But when it is innocent youth been killed within one community no one seem to notice. For example, the crime stories they chose to cover tend to be more violent than the typical crime (Chriss 65). The media has a powerful impact on how the population would view the world. The news purpose is to thrive on conflict especially if it’s devastating.

Juveniles who are incarcerated due to lack of opportunities should be educated in prison. Many young people enter and leave prison with numerous problems on their backs. A large amount of these juveniles are either literate or numerate, which in most cases, stem from school exclusion, truancy and other forms of disrupted education. Thom Gehring a Criminal Justice major looks at a school in the state of Texas named Witham; a survey he conducted throughout the high school proved that the majority of these students enrolled in Witham had a history of academic failure. Also he observed that the majority of those students eventually dropped out of school, and most of them ended up in prison within three years. I