Youth Violence Essay

The starting point of violence takes place in communities and at home--not at school. Youth take what they hear and see at home and in their communities to school. The environment in some communities and households are positive and the presences of protective factors outweigh the high risk factors. However, there are communities and households where there is a lack of informal social control and high risk factors exist more than protective factors--, which affect youth in a negative manner.

Youth violence played an important role in my life as it contributed to the person I am today.

Violence begins at a very young age. Even if children are not exposed to an abusive household, they still experience violence in cartoons and toys. Children of abused homes learn that violence is used to resolve conflicts. Boys grow up more likely to be abusers and girls grow up more likely to be victims of abusive relationships.

There are 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 disturbing. Some of these facts 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, 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.” In this essay, I will talk about how youth violence has affected my life, what the causes of youth violence are, and what I and

Young people who are exposed to domestic violence and / or abuse of children participate in the highest levels of violent behavior that young families with less violence. Widom (1989), abused and neglected children were 38% more likely to be arrested for a violent crime than children who had not been abused or neglected. Patterson argues that: aggressive children tend to imitate the aggressive parents and parents of aggressive children tend to reinforce the aggression to respond with attention or approval. Another element model of Patterson is the supervisory role of parents in the development of aggressive behavior among adolescents. Patterson suggests that aggression among adolescents is poor parental

If violence is encouraged at home, a child is much more likely to be violent toward others. Simultaneously, the violent lessons the child is taught at home can be carried over to their developing relationships with

In the time as which my parents grew up the world was very different. They played outside at all hours of the night and they got into more trouble with each other and less with the law. Growing up I had always heard my dad’s stories of wandering around the small town with his friends getting into fights and meeting girls. Somehow now day’s things have changed but remain the same. For instance, we often act like boys fighting at a young age is just stupid or even “childish” but to a boy these fights are often almost something he will need to for the rest of his life it is almost as the fights begin to shape a boy physically and mentally. Fights prepare him for the physical struggles he may later face. If a man

Karl Marx and Emile Durkheim are some of the founding fathers in the Sociological discipline. Each developing the discipline in their respective area, contributed to the social science course becoming what it is today. Durkheim the man who coined the term social facts and some sociological theories on functionalism, division of labour in society, education and social solidarity, methodology, positivism and sociology, primitive classification, religion and suicide. Durkhiem believe that social facts should be considered as things in the same way as the objects and events of the natural world.

These results correlate highly with the social learning theory on aggressive behavior. Those exposed to substantial violence and aggression were likely to imitate it later on in life. However, while an observational study can elicit enlightening results, they do not provide much on practical, empirical evidence. What the researchers did was observe behavior exhibited by the individuals they studied; they did not control the amount of violence the individuals were being exposed nor were they preventing others from being exposed to such programming. Thus, this study can not be deemed as an “experiment”. While they tried eliminating the lurking variables that may plague the results of their findings, it would be impossible to eliminate every possible influence other than the television exposure through an observational study.

As I was growing up from a divorced household, my family was different from the average. My sister, two brothers, and I would go to my mom’s house one week and the next week my dad’s. My brothers weren’t pleased about this, they wouldn’t come home sometimes. When that started happening, they eventually became established with the wrong people and started to hardly come home at all. Bradley was 14 years old when this all started to happen and Chandler was 15. Many teachers tried to help them stay in school and become better people. My parents weren’t home a lot during these times. My mom had to work two jobs to support us and my father’s job gave him crazy hours that made it so he wouldn’t be home until twelve at night. Bradley and Chandler

This suggests why some sociologists may believe that juveniles with parents have little control over violent behavior and who learn violence from aggressive peers, tend to participate in violent crime themselves.

Early child hood experiences can affect many life altering choices we have as adults, from the very minute to very large ones, depending drastically on the kind of experiences the individual had as a child. Several researchers have begun to identify the relation to violence and individuals growing up in an abusive household together. N, Markey, P, Markey, Ericksen, and Tinsley agree that behavioral patterns can be linked to childhood experiences. To better understand what cases an individual to be able to comet vicious and violent crimes or attack another individual without remorse, this kind of research is important and very valuable to the future of our nation.

Hughes states “Children were more likely to imitate the aggression when the model was similar to the child and when the model was rewarded (or not punished) for the aggression.”. There are films that show a person doing crimes, and the person always manages to escape from the punishment. There are also films where the person doing all the crimes are the ones with the money and with the attention. The movies portray the violent lifestyle as if it had the best benefits of all the lifestyles there could be. Another study also showed “Children with high initial levels of aggression remained aggressive following exposure to the violent programming but decreased their aggressive behavior following the neutral film” (Hughes et al.). The aggressive levels increase as they watch the violence.

Violence is a learned behavior and therefore children need to see violence in order to become violent themselves .

Because violence has been linked to antisocial behavior many researchers believed that this can be a single predictor for the behavior associated with juvenile violence. According to Weaver, Borkowski, and Whitman, a lot of youth who witness violence and victimization are urban black adolescents (2008). Being that urban black adolescents are the strongest predictors of witnessing violence, they are also the most likely the ones to use violence in situations like fighting or having weapons. According to Jenkins and Bell (1994) most juveniles who carried weapons do not carried them because of their intention of performing a malicious intent but mainly because they are scared of being a victim themselves ( Weaver, Borkowsi, & Whitman, 2008). Violence can be exposed to youth from home, school, or even their community. With the amount of violence exposed, children have a higher chance of having conduct problems.