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Child Maltreatment Causes Delinquency The prevention of juvenile delinquency is important part of crime prevention program in the country. The rage of our youth, which is caused by several reasons, is the main explanation for the development of criminal behavior. In order to prevent the development of antisocial conduct among adolescents, society should make efforts to ensure the harmonious nurturing of children. Child maltreatment is one of the main reasons for aggressive attitudes that are developed by adolescents, especially by males, who tend to display increased anger, delinquency, and abuse. In many cases, children who have been abused and neglected by their parents, friends, and society are losing their sense of faith in the future. Systematic beating, emotional attacks, lack of attention, social and academic problems lead towards the loss of the enthusiasm in life and loss of self-esteem.
Maltreated children tend to become introverted, to distrust other people and to develop suspicious type of behavior that may result into number of psychological disorders. Parental abuse is very common type of maltreatment that greatly influences the development of a childs personality. This involves the lack of attention and understanding that a child is given, violent attacks on the child and constant disrespect. Continuous quarrels between parents make children to hate the family.
Parental abuse leads to the point that a child starts to realize its unworthiness and develops distrust and fear of parents. Maltreated children typically view themselves as worthless and unneeded beings in this world. Besides parental abuse, many social problems that still exist in our society are also important reasons for child maltreatment. The lack of money or social instability often causes the anger of parents, who are not able to solve their financial problems. In the state of emotional stress, they usually start blaming own children without exactly knowing for what. Home that is loaded with aggression, dissatisfaction, and violence becomes the place of antisocial personality development.
The anger is transformed from parents to children. A child, who sees violence in his everyday life, whether at home or on the street, becomes used to it and without observing other type of relationships between people considers it the normal flow of life. All this reflects on childs perception of the world and its ability to communicate and support relationships with other members of the society, as he matures. Negative self-image starts to rise. The more extensive is maltreatment the higher the possibility of an individual to act aggressively. Neighborhood plays a big role in the child development too.
For children, who live in the disorganized areas that are full of crime, violence, and drug abuse, the perception of all the social processes is viewed through the prism of the moods and principles that exist in such an environment. They often start to participate in all kinds of illegal and dangerous activities due to the absence of another view of social adaptation. All this becomes a reason of an antisocial behavior of a juvenile who is raised especially in a low-class culture. Nevertheless, the problem of antisocial behavior exists in white-collar class too. It also rises from maltreatment in childhood, but it is suggested that white-collar criminals are very rational in evaluating risks and rewards. In contrast with lower-class juveniles, youth from a higher class finds it much easier to reach success.
Strain is quite rare for the juveniles of this category and generally is caused by family problems. Therefore, the rates of white-collar crime are much lower. When a juvenile matures, he tries to pursue the American Dream. For many adolescence the accumulation of material goods and wealth, which their parents never had, and which are so common in our country, pushes them to the limit. We should not forget about another drives for pursuing the dream high determination to succeed and high self-image. They are quite typical for many adolescents and force an individual to reach a goal at any price.
High self-image presses on the person to achieve recognition and fame. In a hostile environment, high willpower increases persons aggression and desire to act using all available means in order to achieve something. Therefore, many of juveniles become criminals. Strain usually occurs because of lack of opportunity to achieve success in life using generally accepted and legal methods. The children who grew up in unsuccessful family and in criminal neighborhood usually lack education but the most they are short of the desire to acquire education, because they do not view it as a powerful tool for changing their future. The constant deficiency of parents support and love (which is substituted by punishment and disrespect), money, and harmony leads them to seek for other options in order to become successful in life.
Success for majority of them is considered to depend only on power and money. For them it appears to be as goal in life and as self-actualization. Full of aggression they are starting to look for any ways to gain recognition and power. Many of these ways are not normal, but in the mind of a juvenile obsessed with success, it is a single opportunity to change something. This situation was described by the concept of anomie that was proposed and adopted to the highly competitive American society by Robert Merton. According to his concept, anomie happens when personal goals cannot be achieved by available means.
All this creates a situation when an individual cannot reach harmony and success using the legitimate opportunities and therefore becomes frustrated, hopeless, angry, and aggressive. This theory has been criticized, because it does not explain middle class crime, it only focuses monetary goals. Social class is the only barrier that is considered, and it does not specify why some turn to deviance (Agnew, 1992: 51). According to the General Strain Theory developed by Robert Agnew, there are three major types of strain. They are the failure to achieve positively valued goals, the loss of positive stimuli, and the presentation of negative stimuli.
The persons failure to achieve positively valued goals such as money, status of respect, and autonomy is the first major type in General Strain Theory. Money is a cause of strain when it is not available to the individual through legitimate means (Agnew, forthcoming). Agnew (1994: 425 - 426) found that monetary strain was related to crime in a limited fashion, and that the previous studies may not be accurately measuring all aspects of monetary goal blockage. The findings from this study do seem to confirm that delinquents desire to gain large amounts of money (Agnew, 1994: 425). The second positively valued goal is the status and respect, which is very important for males, who may switch to crime in order to achieve that status. Traits that are associated with masculinity are often displayed through criminal behavior (Agnew, forthcoming).
Another possible source of strain is the difference between expectations and real achievements. Strain is substantially increased when the actual achievements of an individual are less than that which the individual had expected (Agnew 1992: 52). Agnew found that the removal of positive stimuli that could be some valuable object or loved person could also cause strain. According to Agnew, the strain that is felt by the individual due to the loss could lead the individual to delinquency as the individual attempts to prevent its loss, retrieve what was lost, or seek revenge on those who removed the positive stimuli (Agnew, 1992: 57). In addition, the third type of strain is the presentation of negative stimuli.
This type includes child abuse, family and peer conflict, neighborhood conflict and other stressful life events. In a study by Hoffmann and Miller (1998: 106), it was found that negative life events that include such things as parental unemployment, deaths in the family, and illness impose a strong impact by increasing delinquent behavior in adolescents. Strain causes number of negative feelings. Anger is one of them and is the main cause of delinquency.
Agnew stated that individuals become angry when they blame their negative circumstances and relationships on others (Agnew, 1992: 59). Anger was found to incite a person to action, lower inhibitions, and create a desire for revenge (Agnew, 1992: 60). Anger and frustration may also enable the individual to justify crime (Agnew, 1995 b: 390). According to Agnew's theory, there are also two types of behavior, criminal, and non-criminal, which also influence the delinquency. For example, if the person has another resources for survival such as creativity, high self-esteem or any special type of ability, this person is less likely to participate in criminal acts. Another reason for delinquency is the different perception of society fairness among juveniles.
In addition, those individuals with high level of social control and without means to commit crime may be less tending to be delinquent. The society also plays a very important role in a development of a criminal behavior of the individual. All of these factors can determine whether strain will result in delinquent or non-delinquent coping strategies (Agnew, 1992: 71 - 73). Child maltreatment represents the negative stimuli and therefore is the source of strain. The main idea of the General Strain Theory is that increase in strain leads to the increase in anger and aggression, which both lead to the increase of criminal behavior. This means that child maltreatment, which is the negative stimuli, causes strain that is the reason for juvenile delinquency.
Ineffective parenting is the main reason for acquiring deviant and antisocial behavior. Severe physical punishment towards a person in childhood results in a violent behavior of the person in adulthood. The person is modeling all the actions of his / her parents and when becomes adult is being aggressive towards own child or spouse. Such a transition of violent behavior through the generations does not solve the problem of maltreatment and therefore, delinquency. The prevention of delinquency is a very important part of crime prevention in society. The society needs to help young individuals to develop positive emotions instead of fear and anger.
In this way, the number of juveniles with criminal behavior will be substantially lower. What the society is capable to do concerning this issue? First, people should stop punishing a child for the behavior that does not harm others and the development of a child. People should not act in aggressive manner.
Besides, we should provide good educational opportunities in order to meet the needs of young persons in the legal ways of pursuing their strive for success. When adolescence will have an opportunity to use their mental or physical potential not on the streets, but in performing a favorite job, the rate of young criminals will be significantly lower. We should give them a broad selection of opportunities and chances. We also should consider the fact that for some juveniles their conduct, which maybe does not fit in the general social norms, is sometimes a part of growth process. It will disappear in most individuals as they reach adulthood. The society should be aware of the fact that labeling a youngster as delinquent or pre-delinquent often turns the development into pattern of undesirable behavior.
Community programs and services should be organized to prevent juvenile delinquency. Nevertheless, the most important factor in the children development is family. Society should make efforts to ensure physical and mental well-being of children. In some cases a family may fail to raise children properly in a settled and positive environment then the case of adoption might be considered.
A special attention should be given to children who live in financially unstable families, which cannot support normal nurturing process. Education should be accessible to all youngsters. Educational process should involve studying of such subjects as social values, human rights, and freedoms. School should be aimed into development of all positive characteristics, while making an emphasis not on saying what the kid has done wrong, but encouraging even small positive actions.
Finally, one of the most important problems that can be solved by school is providing information about future employment, career goals, and opportunities. Very detailed information should be given to young individuals about the risks of drug and alcohol abuse. Sexual education lectures need to take place. Generally, school should offer all the required information for a harmonic development of a young personality. Thus preventing child maltreatment not only reduces the likelihood of juvenile delinquency but also helps to create a safer and healthier society. Child maltreatment is a problem of a big scale.
It negatively affects the development of a personality and greatly influences social processes. As we know, children are our future. Therefore, everyone should pay attention to this issue and make efforts to prevent negative consequences of child maltreatment. Sources: Juvenile Delinquency Theory Practice and Law (7 th Edition) Larry Signal, Joseph Senna Agnew, R. (2000). Strain theory and school crime. In of Crime and Criminality (Sally Smith Ed. ) Agnew, R. (1994).
Delinquency and the desire for money. Justice quarterly. 11 (4), 411 - 427 Agnew, R. (1997). Vitae [Online] web agnew. html
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Research essay sample on Child Maltreatment Causes Delinquency
