Psychological Theories of Juvenile Delinquency PDF

## JUVENILE DELINQUENCY AND JUVENILE JUSTICE SYSTEM ### Psychological Theories on Juvenile Delinquency * Focus on individual level characteristics that interact with the environment. * Focus on a limited number of characteristics that may help our awareness, treatment, and prevention efforts. * Co...

## JUVENILE DELINQUENCY AND JUVENILE JUSTICE SYSTEM ### Psychological Theories on Juvenile Delinquency * Focus on individual level characteristics that interact with the environment. * Focus on a limited number of characteristics that may help our awareness, treatment, and prevention efforts. * Common features of psychological theories on juvenile delinquency: * Focus on early life experiences to the exclusion of other variables. * Highly individualistic. * Useful in treatment settings ### Psychodynamic Theory * Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) pioneered the psychodynamic approach to understanding human behavior. * Unconscious instinctual factors account for much of the individual's behavior. * Deviancy is the result of unconscious desires being manifested in behavior. * The goal of psychoanalysis is to identify the unconscious, precipitating factors, and then, develop conscious methods for dealing with them. * Freud theorized that personality consists of three parts: * **Id** * Present at birth. * Consists of blind, unreasoning, instinctual desires and motives. * Represents basic biological and psychological drives. * Does not differentiate between fantasy and reality. * May be considered antisocial and knows no boundaries or limitations. * Seeks pleasure and avoids pain. * If left unchecked, may annihilate the individual. * **Ego** * Grows from the Id and represents the problem solving dimension of the personality. * Deals with reality and teaches children to delay gratification. * **Super Ego** * Develops through socialization from the ego. * Serves as the moral code, mores, and values the child has acquired. * Responsible for feelings of guilt and shame. * More closely aligned with the conscience. * ### Freud's Psychosexual Development * According to Freud, humans go through certain psychosexual development stages: * **Oral Stage (Birth to 1 year old)** * Libido is centered in a baby's mouth. * Baby gets much satisfaction from putting things in its mouth to satisfy the libido. * Id demands are oral - sucking, biting, and breastfeeding. * Oral stimulation could lead to an oral fixation in later life. * **Anal Stage (1 year to 3 years old)** * Libido becomes focused on the anus. * Child derives great pleasure from defecating. * The child is now fully aware that they are a person in their own right. * Ego has developed. * Child is stubborn, spiteful, and cruel. * Early or harsh toilet training can lead to the child becoming an anal-retentive or anal-expulsive personality. * **Phallic Stage (3 to 6 years old)** * Libido centers upon their genitalia. * Child becomes aware of anatomical sex differences. * Conflict between erotic attraction, resentment, rivalry, jealousy, and fear. * This is resolved through the process of identification - child adopting characteristics of the same sex parent. * **Latency Stage (6 years to puberty)** * Libido is dormant - no further psychosexual development takes place. * Freud thought that most sexual impulses are repressed during the latent stage. * Sexual energy can be sublimated towards school work, hobbies, and friendships. * **Genital Stage (Puberty to Adulthood)** * The genital stage is the last stage of Freud's psychosexual theory of personality development and begins in puberty. * Time of adolescent sexual experimentation. * Successful resolution of which is settling down in a loving one-to-one relationship with another person in our 20's. * Sexual instinct is directed to heterosexual pleasure. * The proper outlet of the sexual instinct in adults was through heterosexual intercourse. ### Theory of Psychopathy - It is a clinical construct considered as a personality disorder defined by a set of interpersonal, affective, lifestyle, and behavioral characteristics that manifest in wide ranging antisocial behaviors. - The term psychopath is often used in conjunction with terms sociopath and antisocial personality. - They refer to individuals who are also basically unsocialized and whose behavior patterns bring them repeatedly into conflicts with society. - These individuals considered incapable of significant loyalty to others, or groups, and social values. - They are considered selfish, callous, irresponsible, impulsive, unable to feel guilt, or to learn from experience and punishment. - Delinquent behavior is rooted in the personality of the individual. - The concept of juvenile psychopathy correlates strongly with antisocial behavior. ### Behavioral Theory - Behavioral psychologists argue that a person's personality is learned throughout life during interaction with others. - Individuals learn by observing how people react to their behavior. - It concerns solely with measurable events and not the unobservable psychic phenomena described by psychoanalysts. - It follows the assumption that when a human is born, their mind is a tabula rasa or a blank slate. - It emphasizes the role of environmental factors in influencing behavior. - We learn new behavior through classical or operant conditioning. ### Two Types of Conditioning * **Classical or Pavlovian Conditioning** * Learning through association. * Discovered by Ivan Pavlov(1897). * **Operant or Instrumental Conditioning** * Attributed to B. F. Skinner. * A process in which animals learn about the relationship between their behaviors and their consequences. * Occurs when a behavior is associated with the occurrence of a significant event. * Behavior which is reinforced or rewarded will likely be repeated; and behavior which is punished will occur less frequently. * Children learn conformity and deviance from punishment and reinforcement in response to their behavior. ### Social Learning Theory - Theory states that behavior is modeled through observation. - Children will model their behavior according to the reactions they received from others, either positive or negative, the behavior of those adults they are in close contact with, and the behavior they view on television, and movies. ### Differential Association-Reinforcement Theory - Developed by Robert Burgess and Ronald Akers in 1966. - It explains deviance as being produced through "direct association" and "interaction" with others. - "Direct association" - individuals interact with others who engage in certain kinds of behavior. - "Indirect association" - individuals identify with distant reference groups. - Provides the individual the social context. - Individuals are exposed to varying definitions of acceptable and unacceptable behaviors. - Behavioral models may differentially reinforce criminal and non-criminal behavior. - May also serve as a source for imitation. - The greatest effect on a person' s behavior occurs the earlier the association is made, the longer the duration of the association, the more frequently the association occurs, and the closer the association is. - **Differential reinforcement** - the process by which individuals experience and anticipate the consequences of their behaviors. ### Social Cognitive Theory - Started as Social Learning Theory in the 1960s by Albert Bandura. - It developed into the SCT in 1986. - Posits that learning occurs in a social context with a dynamic and reciprocal interaction of the person, environment, and behavior. - The unique feature of SCT is the emphasis on social influence and its emphasis on external and internal social reinforcement. - It emphasizes the importance of observing, modeling, and imitating the behaviors, attitudes, and emotional reactions of others. - The theory takes into account a person's past experiences, which factor into reinforcements, expectations, and expectancies; all of which shape whether a person will engage in a specific behavior and the reasons why a person engages in that behavior. - Learning occurs through a sequence of four processes: * **Attentional processes:** selecting information for observation in the environment. * **Retention processes:** remembering the observed information - can be successfully recalled and reconstructed later. * **Production processes:** reconstructing the observed information - can be applied in appropriate situations. * **Motivational processes:** determines whether or not an observed behavior is performed based on whether that behavior was observed to result in desired or adverse outcomes for the model. ### Social Theories of Delinquency * Focus on the collective behavior rather than on individual behavior. * They believe that criminal behavior is a normal response of biologically and psychologically normal individuals under particular kinds of social circumstances. * View delinquent behavior as learned social behavior. - Social behavior norms, values and so forth, are learned as a result of one's own socialization process. - Socialization refers to the process by which a person learns and internalizes the ways of society. - The mechanism of socialization includes but is not limited to family, friends, peers, and school. - Many types of criminality or deviancy are the result of inadequate or inappropriate socialization experiences during childhood. - Three major sociological traditions, including structural functionalism, symbolic interactionism, and conflict theory. ### Structural Functional Theories * Regard delinquent behavior as the consequence of strains or breakdowns in the social processes that produce conformity. * Claim that crime is a normal response under certain social conditions. * Social problems cluster among structurally disadvantages populations, and among the geographic spaces in which disadvantage is concentrated. * Crime is more likely occur in neighborhoods with structural disadvantage, which includes deteriorated housing, low rates of home ownership, high rates of residential mobility, and low collective efficacy. ### Anomie Theory - The concept of Anomie was introduced by the French sociologist Émile Durkheim in his study of suicide. - It is an absence of social regulation, or normlessness. - It is a condition of instability resulting from a breakdown of standards and values or from a lack of purpose or ideals. - Characterized by a widespread lack of commitment to shared values, standards, and rules needed to regulate the behaviors and aspirations of individuals, is an intermediate condition by which social disorganization impacts individual distress and deviant behavior. ### Merton's Five Modes of Adaptation - Introduced by Robert Merton. - Deviant behavior was caused by conditions in the social structure. - Society created a strain between culturally prescribed goals and the socially structured means to achieve these goals. - Culturally prescribed goals are the values in a society; while socially structured means are the norms in society. - The Five Different Modes of Adaptation to an anomic society: * **Conformity:** accepts both the goals and the means of society. * **Innovation:** accepts the goals but rejects the accepted means for achieving the goals. * **Ritualism:** rejects the goals but accepts the means. * **Retreatism:** rejects both the goals and the means. * **Rebellion:** does not accept the goals and the means of society, and wishes to change the social structure. ### Subcultural Theory * The main proponent of Subcultural Theory is Albert K. Cohen. * Assumes that crime is a consequence of the union of young people into so-called subcultures in which deviant values and moral concepts dominate. * Cohen suggests that children of the underclass and potential members of a delinquent subculture, first experience a failure to achieve when they enter school. * These children are often found lacking. * A growing sense of "status frustration" emerges as they are simply unprepared by their earliest experiences to satisfy middle-class expectations. * The delinquent subculture therefore emerges as an alternative set of criteria or values that underclass adolescents can meet. * These delinquent subcultures are characterized above all by their deviant values and morals, which enable their members to gain prestige and recognition. - Delinquent subcultures include the following: * **Non utilitarian:** deviant actions are not committed on the basis of economic rationality. * **Malicious:** the purpose of delinquent acts is to annoy or even injure others. * **Negativistic:** criminal acts are committed precisely because of their prohibition to consciously reject conventional values. ### General Strain Theory * Robert Agnew formulated a general strain theory of crime, which posits that exposure to strain, especially on a persistent basis, increases the child's risk for delinquency. * A strain is an aversive event involving unfair treatment by others, the inability to achieve desired outcome, or loss of something of value. * These strains increase crime for several reasons; most notably, they lead to a range of negative emotions, which create pressure for corrective action. * Strain leads to delinquency because they foster negative emotions that increase the probability adopting deviant behavior as a method of coping. ### Differential Opportunity Theory - Richard Cloward and Loyd E. Ohlin (1960) argue that to understand the different forms that delinquent and criminal behavior can take, we must consider the different types of illegitimate opportunities available to those who seek a way out of the underclass and where these opportunities lead. - Different types of community settings produce different subcultural responses. - Deviant behavior is a consequence of the stratum-specific pressure to adapt, or more precisely of blocked access to legitimate means. ### Social Disorganization Theory - A theoretical perspective that explains ecological differences in levels of crime based on structural and cultural factors shaping the nature of the social order across communities. - Grew out of research conducted in Chicago by Shaw and McKay. - Using spatial maps to examine the residential locations of juveniles referred to Chicago courts, Shaw and McKay discovered that rates of crime were not evenly dispersed across time and space in thecity. - Crime tended to be concentrated in particular areas of the city, and importantly, remained relatively stable within different areas despite continual changes in the populations who lived in each area. - Entire neighborhoods were seen as being socially disorganized, as lacking the cohesion and constraint that could prevent crime and delinquency. - Delinquency emerges in this context because of the absence of effective parental supervision, lack of resources, and weak community attachment and involvement in local institutions. ### Social Control Theory - Social Control theorist contends that individuals are by nature amoral and will commit deviant acts if they have the chance, but if societal controls are present, then the controls will restrain their unlawful behavior. - The effectiveness of social controls determines whether or not individuals will become criminals. - Social control tends to be more effective in small homogenous communities than in groups of large, heterogeneous communities. - Travis Hirschi (1969) argues that the absence of control is all that really is required to explain much delinquent behavior. - Juveniles will break the law and will only refrain from breaking it if special circumstances exist only when a person's bonds to mainstream society are strong. A person's bonds to mainstream society are based on four elements: * **Attachment:** the person's ability to be sensitive to the thoughts, feelings, and desires of others. * **Commitment:** the rational component in conformity. If a person is committed to society; that person is less likely to commit criminal behavior. * **Involvement:** the more the people are involved in the community and conventional things, the less likely a person is to commit a crime. * **Belief:** When a person's belief in the values of society or a group is strong, the person will be less likely to commit criminal acts. ### Symbolic Interactionism Theories - Concerned less with values than with the way in which social meanings are concerned. - The assumption is that these meanings and definitions and symbolic variations affect behavior. - They rely on the symbolic meaning that people develop and build upon the process of social interaction. - They analyze society by addressing the subjective meanings that people impose on objects, events, and behaviors. - Subjective meanings are given primacy because it is believed that people behave based on what they believe and not just on what is objectively true. ### Differential Association Theory - Proposed by Edwin Sutherland in 1939. - It explains that people learn to become offenders from their environment. - Through interactions with others, individuals learn the values, attitudes, methods, and motives for criminal behavior. - People violate laws only when they define such behavior as acceptable. - There is an explicit connection between people and their ideas. - Delinquent behavior is "learned in association with those who define such behavior favorably and in isolation from those who define it unfavorably;" - This behavior occurs when "the weight of the favorable definitions exceeds the weight of the unfavorable definitions." ### Neutralization Theory - Advanced by American criminologists David Cressey, Gresham Sykes, and David Matza. - It portrays a delinquent as an individual who subscribes generally to the morals of society but who is able to justify his own delinquent behavior through a process of neutralization. - The behavior is redefined to make it morally acceptable. - This allows individuals to drift back and forth between delinquent and conventional behavior. - Neutralization techniques blunt the moral force of dominant cultural norms and neutralize the guilt of delinquent behavior. ### Labeling Theory - It contends that society labels certain people as deviant and that the selected people accept the label, thus becoming deviant. - There is no automatic process when a person commits a criminal act. - Society, by placing labels on juvenile delinquents, stigmatizes them. - This leads to negative labels that youth develop to a negative self-image. - Once a person is identified as deviant, it is extremely difficult to remove that label. - The individual becomes stigmatized as a criminal and is likely to be considered untrustworthy by others. ### Conflict Theories - The most distinctive features of conflict theories include attention to the role of power relations and economic contradictions in generating delinquency and reactions to it. - Conflict theories have focused on the role of dominant societal groups in imposing legal labels on members of subordinate societal groups. - Tensions and conflicts arise when resources, status, and power are unevenly distributed among groups in society and that these conflicts become the engine for social change. ### Class Conflict Theory - According to Richard Quinney and William Chambliss, conflict theory is based on the view that the fundamental causes of crime are the social and economic forces operating within society. - Criminalization is part of the political economy, political power struggle, and bureaucratic organization. - His remarks on power relations refer to the categories of "social class" and "social injustice." - Crimes take place because there are different social classes that the established can control and ward off dangers. - Criminals thus belong to the powerless class over which the powerful class determines and ascribes crime status to them. ### Differential Oppression Theory - The theory of differential oppression suggests that the social order is created by adults for adults. - Children are forced to conform to this order, despite their possible reluctance, because they lack the power to create meaningful social change. - The extended use of power by adults leads to the oppression of children. - Delinquency is one possible reaction to oppression. - Serious juvenile delinquency is a product of the oppression of children by adults, particularly within the context of family. - The maltreatment of children has been found to be highly correlated with both serious and moderate delinquency as well as other problem behaviors.