Posted by MisterB on July 14, 2000, at 18:40:08
In reply to Orgins of crime and adolescence , posted by stjames on July 11, 2000, at 23:01:12
Some thoughts on youth, violence, crime, misperceptions and prevention:
* Prisoners do make license plates, at least in some institutions. Not all prisoners make license plates. Most prisoners don't make license plates. Federal prison industries enjoy priority access to federal contracts, resulting in what some consider to be unfair competition against private industry. According to a recent network report, license plate shop workers are among the highest paid of prison shop workers.
* Parents are not consistently liable for juvenile behavior in the US. In no case are parents criminally liable, because US law is built on a doctrine of individuals being responsible for their own criminal behavior. In some court districts, and in some states, parents are held civilly liable for their kids' actions. Not all states and districts hold parents civilly liable, and the range of behaviors for which parents are held civilly liable varies.
In some jurisdictions, authorities are reluctant to seek civil judgments against parents because to do so would take money from families who otherwise need the money to support their children. In other cases, the chances of collecting civil judgements from impoverished families are slim. I am not talking here about the way it should be, I am just relating the way things are. Civil liablity is not consistent from state to state.
* Social science texts published in 1998 and 1999 document a trend toward an increase in juvenile crime worldwide in areas where convergence of international cultures displace traditional authority structures. In these areas, when franchise businesses and access to international credit institutions replace longstanding community economic networks and family businesses, there is a trend toward increased domestic violence, family instability, juvenile crime and other crime.
This does not neccessarily contradict recent studies such as the Baltimore study that documented little increase in crime in the same US metropolitan areas where media reports seemed to indicated an increase in crime. The Boston study revealed some important trends and correlations, but also glossed over some equally disturbing trends. Homicide is rising among young African American males nationwide, though the homicide rate among older African American men has recently declined.
Thought there is an overall decline in violent crime and property crimes there is an increase of crime is some areas. The trend has been a spread high crime areas, so more communities seem to include areas that are disproportionally affected by high crime rates. These communities are more often home to African Americans or other minority ethnic groups, and are universally home to low income individuals. The trend is a growing separation between rich and poor, with the poor affected by higher crime rates and the rich enjoying lower crime rates.
When positing a decrease in crime, it is important to recall that we are talking about prosecuted crimes. Not one person has been jailed in almost 30 years for violation of federal environmental laws and few have been jailed for violation of workplace safety laws, though violations of these laws have resulted in 1,000s of deaths. Federal prosecution dollars are not dedicated to enforcing these health and safety laws, and violations of those laws are more likely to injure or kill low income workers or residnets of low income neighborhoods.
Decreasing crime rates must be considered in light of these patterns, the documented decrease has been most often been attributed to a sustained growth economy for almost two decades, and to in increasing number of people being held in prison for a longer period of time. US prison population, per capita, is the highest of any nation in the world. As prisoners are released, as many will eventually be, many of those incarcerated for non-violent crimes, non-property crimes will return to communities to teach the harsh culture of personal and sexual abuse that is a pervasive element of prison life.
* Where I live and work, an effort has been implemented to fund early intervention into juvenile crime. It is likely to early to measure results of the effort. Elements of apparently successful prevention programs include providing families, schools, police, and juvenile authorities access to family resources and encouraging use of these resources before a juveniles gets into trouble. The program focuses on intervening in the lives of youths when they are identifies as being at risk, rather than after scrapes with the law make thier status obvious.
Other elements of the reformers' prevention program include peer programs, including peer courts and peer teams who work at schools to intervene in potentially violent situations, teaching conflict resolution skills they were taught at retreats and seminars. Other elements of the reforms include diversion programs, that allow juveniles accused of non-violent crimes an opportunity to participate in non-judicial sanctions along with counseling for the individual, and if appropriate, for the family.
* The increase in school shootings is a real phenomenon, and not an illusion resulting from increased media reporting of incidents. The same is apparently true for the increase in workplace shootings. Many of the mass shootings have involved individuals who had recently been prescribed newly developed SSRIs. The increase in school shootings followed the certification of SSRIs for adminsitration to youths.The increase in school and workplace shootings could potentially be seen as a product of copy-cat behavior, fueled by media reporting, but if that is so, other mediums are also providing forums that encourage new behavior patterns. The Internet was particularly implicated in the Columbine shooting, perhaps allowing the perpetrators to develop their idea by posting their intentions on a web site and returning day after day to see their plans. Web use might allow increased social isolation, and to selective socialization among violence prone individuals.
While media sources could be indicted as playing causal roles in violence, others argue that media infiltrates homes to provide new approaches to problem solving, tolerance and acceptance. We could debate whether violent or conflict resolution is the majority product of television, but we would all probably agree that some programming provides social and scientific learing opportunities.
Music could be implicated in youth violence, but when Alice Cooper sang "schools been blow to peices," and the song went to the top of the charts, no parallel increase in school violence was documented. But still, the increase could be related to the pervasiveniss of agressive lyrics, beats, instrumentation, intonation and volume, reproduced over increasingly low cost, transportable and accurate sound equipment.
School violence also could be a product of larger schools, where each individual is less likely to enjoy personal interaction with mature role models, and where larger groups of social outcasts can harbor development of more extreme individual members.
* The correlation of abuse and borderline personality disorder might be, as one writer suggested, flawed. But the correlation of childhood abuse and the practice violent behavior is well recognized by criminologists and law enforcement executives. The psychological classification of personality disorder might not be the best instrument for tracking sociological patterns of learned violent behavior.
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These are just some thoughts. I write as if it is all true, but for this forum, I don't have the time to site sources, so the information is somewhat unreliable. I don't mean to propose all of these things as absolutes, but rather as a collection of trends and suggestions I have seen reported in reliable sources, including popular media, professional journals and electronic networks. Obviously my selection of ideas reflects my opinions, but for the most part, I am relating opions and findings of other reliable sources. I admit, I am a working member of the media, but from a unusually low economic strata among my media peers, and with a healthy background in social advocacy.There is plenty of fear mongering among journalists and editors, but that is not why I hard sell some of my courtroom reports. I push crime news as community news so people will understand the issues involved. I also report economic trends, and enjoy frequent feature assignment that allow me to tell "good news".
poster:MisterB
thread:40135
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20000708/msgs/40459.html