Assignment Content Resource: Brochure BuilderCreate a 6-panel parenting brochure of between 250 - 350 words. Discuss the following:Risk factors associated with delinquency Behaviors associated wi

Write a 350- to 700-word paper on familial risk factors associated with delinquency. Analyze the impact and strategize how to mitigate these risk factors.

Factor of Divorce--Noel

Factor of Familial mental illness--Brandie

Impact of these factors--Chalyne

Strategies to mitigate--Tara

Conclusion--Kizzy

Families and Delinquency

“The number of abused and neglected children has special significance for the juvenile justice system because many of these children end up in the system.”

—Federal Advisory Committee on Juvenile Justice

 LEARNING SOCIAL ROLES

In what can only be described as strange, a number of videos appeared on YouTube and on various television networks a few years ago showing a two-year-old toddler in Indonesia who is addicted to cigarettes,1 and a three-year old Chinese girl who not only smokes, but is a regular drinker.2 Whereas the father of the Indonesian boy readily admitted to getting his son hooked on smoking, claiming that it did him no harm, the parents of the imbibing Chinese girl said that she indulged in such behavior only behind their backs. Although it is difficult to imagine a three-year-old having the presence of mind to hide her vices, it is important to recognize that in any culture the family is the primary agent for the socialization of children. It is the first social group a child encounters and it is the group with which most children have their most enduring relationships. The family gives a child his or her principal identity (even his or her name); teaches social roles, moral standards, and society’s laws; and disciplines any child who fails to comply with those norms and values. The family either provides for or neglects children’s emotional, intellectual, and social needs; as suggested above, the neglect of these basic needs can have a profound effect on the shaping of a child’s attitudes and values.

A child smoking. How do early life experiences shape a person’s later behavior?

DISCUSS

How does childhood socialization determine what a person later becomes? Why is the family such an important factor in socialization?

This chapter discusses adolescents and family problems; the relationship between the family and delinquency; and the types and impact of child abuse and neglect, both at the time of their occurrence and across the life course.

 Social Context of Delinquency: Impact of Families on Delinquency

The importance of the family in understanding delinquent behavior can be seen in the fact that most theories of delinquency rely heavily on the parent–child relationship and parenting practices to explain delinquency.3 Social disorganization theories, subcultural theories, social control theories, and life-course theories all have this emphasis.4 The theoretical emphasis on family processes, in turn, is supported by findings that family relationships and parenting skills are directly or indirectly related to delinquent behavior.5

LEARNING OUTCOMES 1

Explain how problems in the family can contribute to delinquency.

A structure-versus-function controversy has been one of the important and continuing debates on the relationship between family and delinquency. The structural perspective focuses on factors such as parental absence, family size, and birth order, whereas the functional or quality-of-life view argues for the significance of parent–child interaction, the degree of marital happiness, and the amount and type of discipline.6

There are those who challenge whether parental behavior is related to delinquency among children. A strong proponent of this position is Judith Rick Harris. She claimed that a youth’s conduct, including delinquency, is predominantly influenced by peers or group socialization. She maintained that the relationship between parental socialization and child outcomes is largely due to the genes that are shared between parent and offspring.7 Harris’s research has led to other studies that have questioned the association between family life and child outcomes, and most of these studies are driven by findings from behavioral genetic research.8 This line of research has argued that once the effects that the child has on the family are taken into consideration, the relationship between family factors and child outcomes vanishes.9

Family Factors

Numerous family factors have been identified as having association with delinquency behavior, and these are covered in the following sections.

• • Broken Homes. Early research found a direct relationship between broken homes and delinquency;10later studies, however, questioned the relationship between broken homes and delinquency.11Researchers have shed further light on this debate. It has been reported that the factor of broken homes affects adolescent females more than males,12 that broken homes have a larger impact on delinquency among African Americans than on other racial groups,13 and that the connection between broken homes and delinquency is more evident for status offenses than it is for more serious offenses.14

• • Birth Order. Some evidence supports the significance of birth order in that delinquent behavior is more likely to be exhibited by middle children than by first or last children. The first child, according to this view, receives the undivided attention and affection of parents, and the last child benefits from the parents’ experience in raising children as well as from the presence of other siblings, who serve as role models.15

• • Family Size. Research findings on family size generally reveal that large families have more delinquency than do small families.16

• • Delinquent Siblings and Criminal Parents. Some evidence exists that delinquent siblings learn crime from other family members.17

• • Quality of Home Life. Studies have generally reported that poor quality of home life, measured by marital adjustment and harmony within the home, affects the rate of delinquent behavior among children more than whether or not the family is intact. Nye found the happiness of the marriage to be the key to whether or not children become involved in delinquent behavior.18

• • Family Rejection. Several studies have found a significant relationship between rejection by parentsand delinquent behavior.19

• • Discipline in the Home. Inadequate supervision and discipline in the home have been commonly cited to explain delinquent behavior. John Paul Wright and Francis T. Cullen, in using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, advanced the concept of “parental efficacy” as an adaptation of Robert J. Sampson and colleagues’ “collective efficacy” (see Chapter 4). They found that support and control are intertwined and that parental efficacy exerts substantive effects on reducing children’s inappropriate behaviors.20

Ronald L. Simons and colleagues, using data from a sample of several hundred African-American caregivers and their children, found that increases in collective efficacy within a community over time were associated with increases in authoritative parenting, which is defined as parents combining warmth and support with firm monitoring and control.21

Conclusions

Conflicting findings make drawing conclusions about the relationship between delinquency and the family difficult, but the following seven observations have received wide support:

• 1. Family conflict and poor marital adjustment are more likely to lead to delinquency than is the structural breakup of the family.

Multiple risk factors within the family are associated with a higher probability of juvenile delinquency than are single factors.

• 2. Children who are intermediate in birth order and who are part of large families appear to be involved more frequently in delinquent behavior, but this is probably related more to parents’ inability to provide for the emotional and financial needs of these children than to birth position or family size.

• 3. Children who have delinquent siblings or criminal parents appear to be more prone to delinquent behavior than those who do not.

• 4. Rejected children are more prone to delinquent behavior than those who have not been rejected, and children who have experienced severe rejection are probably more likely to become involved in delinquent behavior than those who have experienced a lesser degree of rejection.

• 5. Consistency of discipline within the family seems to be important in deterring delinquent behavior.

• 6. Lack of mother’s supervision, father’s and mother’s erratic/harsh discipline, parental rejection, and parental attachment appear to be the most important predictors of serious and persistent delinquency.22

• 7. The rate of delinquency appears to increase with the number of unfavorable factors in the home; that is, multiple risk factors within the family are associated with a higher probability of juvenile delinquency than are single factors.23

See Figure 7–1 for a representation of family factors and their relationship to delinquency. Exhibit 7–1provides an overview of Multisystemic Therapy (MST), a community-based treatment strategy that is often employed with chronic and violent juvenile offenders.

Transitions and Delinquency

Divorced and single-parent families, poverty, homelessness, alcohol and drug abuse, and violence are some of the family problems that affect adolescents today. Adolescents experiencing such problems are at a high risk of becoming involved in socially unacceptable behaviors.

The high divorce rate in the United States translates into an increasing number of single-parent families. In 2012, 64 percent of children below the age of 18 years lived with two married parents, 28 percent with one parent, and 4 percent with no biological parents (see Figure 7–2).24 Divorce has affected African-American families more than Caucasian families: As many as 40 percent of Caucasian children and 75 percent of African-American children will experience divorce or separation in their family before they reach 16 years of age. Many of these children will experience multiple family disruptions over the course of their childhood.25

FIGURE 7–1 Family Factors and Relationships to Delinquency.

EXHIBIT 7–1 Evidence-Based Practice: Multisystemic Therapy (MST)

MST provides cost-effective community-based clinical treatment of chronic and violent offenders who are at high risk for out-of-home placement. MST addresses the multiple determinants of serious antisocial behavior in juvenile offenders. It views individual behavior as being determined by a network of interconnected social systems (the family, the peer group, the school, and the neighborhood). To successfully treat the juvenile offender, intervention may be necessary in any one or in a combination of these systems. The over-arching goal of the intervention is to help parents understand and help their children overcome the multiple problems contributing to antisocial behavior. Treatment generally lasts for about four months, which includes about 60 hours of therapist–family contact. Program evaluations have revealed 25 to 70 percent reductions in long-term rates of rearrest and 47 to 54 percent reductions in out-of-home placements. These and other positive results have been shown to last for at least four years after treatment ended.

Sources: Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence at the University of Colorado Boulder, Blueprints: We Know What Works,http://www.colorado.edu/cspv/blueprints/ (accessed May 11, 2014); and Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Model Programs Guide, http://www.ojjdp.gov/mpg (accessed May 11, 2014).

FIGURE 7–2 Percentage of Children Ages 0–17 living in Various Family Arrangements, 2012.

Source: Forum on Child and Family Services, America’s Children: Key National indicators of Well-Being, 2013(Washington, D.C.: Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics, 2014).

FIGURE 7–3 Percentage of Children Ages 0–17 Living in Poverty by Race, Hispanic Origin, and Family.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey, Annual Social and Economic Supplements,http://childstats.gov/americaschildren/eco1a.asp.

Poverty is a serious problem in the lives of children. In 2011, 22 percent of children ages 0 to 17 (16.1 million) lived in poverty. This is up from a low of 16 percent in 2000 and 2001. Consistent with expectations related to the economic downturn, child poverty has increased annually since 2006, when the rate was 17 percent.26 For children living in female-householder families, the poverty rate was 48 percent in 2011, an increase from 45 percent in 2009 (see Figure 7–3). Economic hardship and lack of access to opportunity tend to undermine marital and parental functioning; furthermore, adolescents who experience family transitions may have difficulty managing anger and other negative emotions that may contribute to their involvement with delinquency or drugs.

The majority of divorced parents remarry, and adolescents in these families must learn to adjust to a new parental figure. Blended families place stress on biological parents, stepparents, and children. In a typical blended family, the mother has custody of her children, and the stepfather lives with his wife’s children; his biological children (if any) usually visit the home on an occasional or regular basis. Few adolescents escape the experience of a blended family without feeling resentment, rejection, and confusion. Some stepparents even subject their stepchildren to emotional, physical, or sexual abuse.

Childbearing is a life experience that many American female adolescents have. In some instances, children are wanted and adolescent mothers are married; more often than not, however, pregnancy in adolescence leads to abortion or adoption. The birth rate of unmarried women has risen sharply since 2002, after having been relatively stable between the mid-1980s and 2002.27 The birth rate for unmarried teenagers 15 to 17 years old in 2006 rose from 62 to 92 percent today, and increased from 40 to 81 percent for those ages 18 and 19.28

Homelessness is a phenomenon that shapes the lives of an estimated 500,000 to 1.3 million young people each year. Many homeless youths leave their families after years of physical and sexual abuse, the addiction of a family member, strained interpersonal relations, and parental neglect. Homelessness, regardless of a child’s age, is likely to expose him or her to settings permeated by substance abuse, promiscuity, pornography, prostitution, and crime.29

Unemployment also affects some family units in the United States. In 2011, the number of people 16 years old and older officially designated as unemployed was 8.9 percent. In 2011, the unemployment rate for whites 16 years and older was 7.9 percent. The unemployment rate for African-American men 16 years and older was 16.1 percent; and the unemployment rate for Hispanics 16 years and older was 11.3 percent.30 The bad news for African-American and Hispanic families is that from 11 to 16 percent of the population is still experiencing unemployment and its ill consequences.31

Adolescents whose family members have substance-abuse problems also have their sad stories to tell. Neglect, abuse, and economic hardship are common factors in family settings where alcohol misuse and substance abuse are ordinary behavior. Arrest data in Crime in the United States 2013 reflect the nationwide scope of this problem in the general population. But while the prevalence of substance abuse is unarguable, its actual impact on adolescents is not easily measurable, as it is simply not possible to display the impact on a “one abuse instance = one adverse impact on one or more adolescent(s)” basis.32The impact is clearly visible, however, in the behaviors of the youths it affects.

Violence has long been a major characteristic of the problem family, and it is no stranger to family life today. Marital violence is a pervasive e problem that affects nearly one-third of the married population. Numerous studies also show that some parents act out their aggression on their children,33 and some families use physical violence for disciplinary purposes. Karen Heimer found that coercive discipline strategies teach youths to rely on force and coercion to resolve problems.34

The Foster Family

The foster family; the adopted child; children with lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender parents; and cohabiting parents provide other family contexts for children.

Foster care can be defined as 24-hour substitute care for children outside their own homes. Foster care settings include, but are not limited to, relative foster homes (whether payments are being made or not), nonrelative foster family homes, emergency shelters, residential facilities, and preadoptive homes. The publication Foster Care Statistics 2010 reveals a number of key findings:

• • On September 30, 2010, there were an estimated 408,425 children in foster care.

• • More than a quarter (26 percent) were in the homes of relatives, and nearly half (48 percent) were in nonrelative foster family homes.

• • About half (51 percent) had the goal of reunification with their families.

• • About half (51 percent) of the children left the system to be reunited with their parents or primary caretakers.

• • Close to half of the children (46 percent) who left foster care in fiscal year 2010 were in care for less than one year.35

The 254,114 children who exited foster care during fiscal year 2010 spent time in care as follows:

• • 13 percent in care for less than 1 month

• • 33 percent in care for 1 to 11 months

• • 24 percent in care for 12 to 23 months

• • 12 percent in care for 24 to 35 months

• • 10 percent in care for 3 to 4 years

• • 7 percent in care for 5 or more years.36

One recent study found that children had better outcomes when they remained at home rather than entering foster care. This study found that 44 percent of the children in foster care were arrested, whereas only 14 percent were arrested when staying at home. Fifty-six percent of females became pregnant in foster care, but only 33 percent became pregnant while staying at home.37 This study also suggests that children in foster care have a greater likelihood of difficult adjustments later in life and will require additional intervention if future problems occur.

The Adopted Child

About 120,000 children are adopted each year in the United States. Children with developmental, physical, or emotional handicaps who were once considered unadoptable are now being adopted (“special needs adoptions”). Adoptions provide the opportunity for many of these children to grow up in permanent families instead of in foster homes or institutions.38

An important issue in adoptions is the question of when (or whether) to tell children that they are adopted. Experts agree that children should learn of their adoption from the adoptive parents. If a child learns intentionally or accidentally from someone other than his or her adopted parents, the child may feel anger and mistrust toward the parents and as a result may view the adoption as shameful or bad because it was kept a secret. The struggle with their own identity, which is normal for all adolescents, may be even more intense for those children adopted from other countries or cultures. In addition, the adopted child may have an increased interest in his or her birth parents.39 Some adoptive children may develop emotional or behavioral problems, which may or may not relate to insecurities related to being adopted.40

Children with Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Parents (LGBT)

Millions of children in the United States have gay, lesbian, bisexual, and/or transgender (LGBT) parents. Some of these children were conceived in heterosexual relationships or marriages. An increasing number of LGBT parents have conceived children and/or raised them from birth, either in ongoing committed relationships or as single parents.41

In contrast to what is commonly believed, children of LGBT parents:

• • Are not more likely to be gay than children with heterosexual parents.

• • Do not reveal differences in whether they think of themselves as male or female (gender identity).

• • Are not more likely to be sexually abused.

• • Do not show differences in their male and female behaviors (gender-role behavior).42

Although research shows that children with gay and lesbian parents are often as well adjusted as children who have heterosexual parents, they can still face challenges. Some LGBT families face discrimination in their communities, and children may be teased or bullied by their peers. Parents can help their children cope with such pressures by preparing them to handle questions about their background or family, by helping their children come up with and practice appropriate responses to teasing or mean remarks, and by considering living in a community where diversity is more accepted.43

Cohabitating Parents

The rates of divorce are going down, and the numbers of cohabiting parents are rapidly increasing. Before 12 years of age, children are more likely to live with unmarried parents than to have married parents separate or divorce.44

Some children must deal with a variety of partners, usually mothers’ boyfriends, moving into or out of the home. Over time, the child’s parent may have lived with dozens or even hundreds of partners. Some stay a short period of time, whereas others may be a part of the child’s life for years. Eventually the relationship may lead to marriage.

Another recent study found that a quarter of American women with multiple children conceived them with multiple partners.45 Psychologist John Gottman, a coauthor of the study, says such instability can have a negative impact on kids in various ways. He claims that, on average, children of cohabitating parents tend to be both aggressive and depressed.46 Another study found that cohabitation is associated with children’s simultaneous increases in offending.47

 The Mass Media and Delinquent Behavior

LEARNING OUTCOMES 2

Explain how the mass media can influence adolescent behavior.

Part of the challenge of being a parent today is dealing effectively with the influence that the mass media have on children. For our purposes, the term mass media refers to the Internet, radio, television, commercial motion pictures, videos, CDs, music, and the press (newspapers, journals, and magazines).48

Violent TV Programs and Movies

Most people today watch a lot of television, and many seem to depend on media programming for their understandings of the surrounding world.49 Consequently, criminologists have shown considerable interest in assessing the relationship between delinquent behavior and the exposure to violence viewed on television. Researchers in the area of delinquency generally conclude that TV violence is most likely to negatively impact the behavior of those children who are already predisposed toward violence and that it seems to have much less influence on young people who are not so predisposed.50

The influence of television and motion pictures also extends to the phenomenon of contagion. An example of the contagion effect of motion pictures can be seen in the movie Colors, whose showing in theaters across America led gang members nationwide to begin wearing their groups’ colors; prior to seeing the movie, most gang members had not been wearing their gang colors.51

Some evidence exists to indicate that there is connection between parental responsibility and the access children have to violent media content. Gregory Zimmerman and Greg Pogarsky’s study investigated differences in parent and child estimates of the child’s exposure to violence. Using data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods, most parents (66 percent) underestimated their children’s exposure to violence and its impact on the child’s psychosocial functioning. Parental underestimates of children’s exposure to violence reflected lower levels of family support, which led to more internalizing and externalizing problems and delinquency for the child.52

Violent Video Games

Video games involving violent scenarios, such as “Postal 2,” “MadWorld,” “Gears of War 2,” “God of War 2” and “Asheron Call 2,” are the focus of considerable controversy today. Some people accuse video-game makers of promoting values that support violence. Not surprisingly, the software entertainment industry, with its annual $28 billion in sales paced by a nation’s thirst for action, claims that their games are offered only for entertainment purposes.53

Part of the challenge of being a parent today is dealing effectively with the influence that the mass media have on children.

Think About It…

Adolescents are strongly influenced by today’s media, including Internet-based services such as social networking. How might social networking contribute to delinquency?

In August 2005, members of the American Psychological Association (APA) adopted a resolution calling for less violence in video and computer games marketed to children. One APA panelist, Keven M. Kieffer, reported research showing that playing violent video games tends to make children more aggressive and less prone to helping behaviors.54 Craig A. Anderson, one of the pioneers of research in this area, adds, “There really isn’t any room for doubt that aggressive game playing leads to aggressive behavior”55

In the fall of 2005, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) launched an investigation into the system used for rating video games, particularly what some saw as undeservedly low ratings that made the violent and sexually themed game “Grand Theft Auto” available to teens. Around the same time, a group of bipartisan senators proposed that the National Institutes of Health oversee a comprehensive $90 million study on the effects of violent media, including video games, on children’s development.56

Recently, researchers C. L. Olson and D. W. Warner conducted focus groups with 42 boys ages 12 to 14 to determine how children are influenced by violent interactive games. Boys, they found, typically used games to fantasize about power and fame, to work through angry feelings or relieve stress, and to explore and master what they perceived as exciting and realistic environments. The boys in this study group did not believe that they have been negatively impacted by violent games, although they were concerned that younger children might imitate game behavior, particularly swearing.57

Internet-Initiated Crimes

Internet access is easily available to nearly everyone in the United States today, and the Web has become a new frontier for innovative forms of cybercrime. One source of Internet-initiated crime is the supremacist and hate groups that target young people through the Web. In like manner, youthful perpetrators of violent crimes are sometimes influenced by information collected or contacts made on the Internet, and child sexual abuse in which initial contacts are made through the Web now accounts for up to 4 percent of all arrests for sexual assaults against juveniles.58

Gangsta Rap

Gangsta rap is a form of hip-hop music that some believe negatively influences young people by devaluing human life, the family, religious institutions, schools, and the justice system.59 Gangsta rap, pioneered by Ice-T and other rappers influenced by Schoolly D’s hard-core rap, portrays the lifestyles of inner-city gang members, and its lyrics relate stories of violence-filled lives. Guns play a prominent part in those lyrics and are frequently depicted as a means for attaining manhood and status.

FIGURE 7–4 Mass Media and Delinquent Behavior.

Today’s rap music has its origins in the hip-hop culture of young, urban, working-class African Americans.60 The subject matter of this music, which is available to children via television (especially MTV), the Internet, radio (including satellite radio), and retail CDs and DVDs, has created considerable controversy, with critics charging that the messages it espouses include misogyny, homophobia, racism, and materialism. Gangsta rappers usually defend themselves by pointing out that they are describing the reality of inner-city life and claim that when they are rapping, they are merely playing a character.61

Brown University Professor Tricia Rose’s 2006 book Hip-Hop Wars claims that hip-hop is in crisis, because its lyrics are becoming increasingly saturated with themes involving thugs, pimps, black gangsters, and “hos” (promiscuous women). She raises a number of important questions about hip-hop: Does hip-hop cause violence, or does it merely reflect a violent ghetto culture? Is hip-hop sexist, or are its detractors merely anti-sex? Does the portrayal of black culture in hip-hop undermine black social advancement? Rose calls for a more accurate reflection in the music of a richer cultural space, including anger, politics, and sex, than the current images in sound and video provide.62

In summary, today’s parents must face the reality that their children’s minds are being bombarded with extensive disturbing stimuli. Violence permeates movies and TV screens; video games are no less violent, and the most popular ones among teenagers are probably the most violent. Supremacist and hate groups are targeting young people through their Web sites; the Internet offers opportunities for the sexual abuse of vulnerable adolescent males and females. Finally, gangsta rap is filled with violence, appears to devalue human life, and contains lyrics promoting homophobia, misogyny, racism, and materialism. See Figure 7–4 for the types of media and a brief explanation of how they can influence adolescent behavior.

 Neglect and Child Abuse

LEARNING OUTCOMES 3

Explain how neglect and child abuse contribute to delinquency.

Neglect and child abuse, like the other family problems addressed in this chapter, have a profound influence on shaping the behavior and attitudes of adolescents and adults.63 Various categories of child abuse and neglect, also referred to as child maltreatment, are identified in Table 7–1.64

Cathy Spatz Widom’s initial study of abuse and neglect found that 29 percent of those abused and neglected as children had a nontraffic criminal record as adults, compared with 21 percent of the control group.65 Widom and Michael G. Maxfield’s updated study, which followed 1,575 cases from childhood through adolescence and into young adulthood, was able to examine the long-term consequences of abuse and neglect:66

• 1. Being abused or neglected as a child increased the likelihood of arrest as a juvenile by 59 percent, as an adult by 29 percent, and for a violent crime by 30 percent.

• 2. Maltreated children were younger at the time of their first arrest, committed nearly twice as many offenses, and were arrested more frequently.

• 3. Physically abused and neglected (versus sexually abused) children were the most likely to be arrested later for a violent crime.

• 4. Abused and neglected females also were at increased risk of arrest for violence as juveniles and adults.

• 5. Caucasian abused and neglected children were no more likely to be arrested for a violent crime than their nona-bused and nonneglected Caucasian counterparts; in contrast, African-American abused and neglected children showed significantly increased rates of violent arrests compared with African-American children who were not maltreated.67

Neglect and child abuse have a profound influence on shaping the behavior and attitudes of adolescents and adults.

TABLE 7–1 DEFINITIONS OF CHILD MALTREATMENT AND SEVERITY RATINGS

Source: Adapted from Barbara Tatem Kelley et al., “In the Wake of Childhood Maltreatment,” Juvenile Justice Bulletin(Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, 1997), p. 4. See Figure 7–5 for victimization rates by maltreatment types.

FIGURE 7–5 Child Victimization Rates by Maltreatment Type, 2012.

Source: Children’s Bureau, Child Maltreatment 2012 (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2013), p. 40.

EXHIBIT 7–2 Child Maltreatment Victimization Statistics

Following are some figures from 2012:

• • More than 75 percent of child maltreatment victims suffered neglect.

• • More than 18 percent suffered physical abuse.

• • Less than 10 percent suffered sexual abuse.

• • Less than 10 percent suffered psychological maltreatment.69

Extent and Nature of the Problem

The passage of legislation in all 50 states in the late 1960s requiring mandatory reporting of child abuse and neglect cases focused attention on these problems, as did the passage by Congress of the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act and the establishment of the national Office on Child Abuse and Neglect in 1974. As an indication of the extent of maltreatment of children, an estimated 3.3 million referrals involving the maltreatment of approximately 6 million children were made to child protective services (CPS) during the fiscal year 2008, and of that number an estimated 772,000 children were found to be victims.68 For recent victimization statistics see Exhibit 7–2

Younger children make up the largest percentage of victims. Nearly 33 percent (32.6 percent) of all victims of maltreatment were younger than 4 years of age, an additional 23.6 percent were ages 4 to 7, and 18.9 percent were ages 8 to 11. Victimization was split almost evenly between the sexes: 51.5 percent of the victims were girls and 48.2 percent were boys. Nearly one-half (46.1 percent) of all victims were Caucasian, one-fifth (21.7 percent) were African American, and one-fifth (20.8 percent) were Hispanic. Figure 7–6 shows the age and gender of victims for the year 2008.70

Child fatalities represent the most tragic consequences of maltreatment. In a recent year:

• • An estimated 1,740 children died due to child abuse or neglect.

• • More than 30 percent (31.9 percent) of child fatalities were attributed to neglect only, but physical abuse was also a major contributor to child fatalities.

• • More than three-quarters (79.8 percent) of the children who died because of child abuse and neglect were younger than four years old.

• • Infant boys (younger than one year) had the highest rates of fatalities, 19.31 deaths per 100,000 boys of the same age in the national population.

• • Infant girls less than one year of age had a rate of 17.32 deaths per 100,000 girls of the same age.71

Perpetrators of Maltreatment

Statistics show that nearly 80 percent of child maltreatment victims are abused by their parents, with another 6.5 percent abused by other relatives. Women comprise a larger percentage of perpetrators than men—56.2 percent compared to 42.6 percent. Nearly 75 percent of all perpetrators are younger than age 40.72

Neglect

The word neglect generally refers to disregard for the physical, emotional, or moral needs of children or adolescents. The Children’s Division of the American Humane Association established a comprehensive definition of neglect, stating that physical, emotional, and intellectual growth and welfare are jeopardized when a child can be described in the following terms:

• • Malnourished, ill-clad, dirty, without proper shelter or sleeping arrangements

FIGURE 7–6 Child Maltreatment by Age for 2012.

 Source: Children’s Bureau, Child Maltreatment 2012 (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2013), p. 20.

• • Unsupervised, unattended

• • Ill, lacking essential medical care

• • Denied normal experiences that produce feelings of being loved, wanted, secure, and worthy (emotional neglect)

• • Failing to attend school regularly

• • Exploited, overworked

• • Emotionally disturbed due to constant friction in the home, marital discord, or mentally ill parents

• • Exposed to unwholesome, demoralizing circumstances73

Child Abuse

There are several types of child abuse, including physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. The term physical abuse refers to intentional behavior directed toward a child by the parent or caretaker to cause pain, injury, or death.

Murray A. Straus has been one of the strongest proponents of defining corporal punishment as physical abuse. Straus examined the extent of physical abuse using data from a number of sources, notably the 3,300 children and 6,000 couples in the National Family Violence Survey, and he found that 90 percent of U.S. citizens used physical punishment to correct misbehavior. He claimed that although physical punishment may produce conformity in the immediate situation, its long-run effect is to increase the probability of delinquency in adolescence and violent crime inside and outside the family.74

Emotional abuse is more difficult to define than physical abuse because it involves a disregard for the psychological needs of a child or adolescent. Emotional abuse encompasses a lack of expressed love and affection as well as deliberate withholding of contact and approval and may include a steady diet of put-downs, humiliation, labeling, name-calling, scapegoating, lying, demands for excessive responsibility, seductive behavior, ignoring, fear-inducing techniques, unrealistic expectations, and extreme inconsistency.75 Randy, a 16-year-old boy, tells about the emotional abuse he suffered:

•  My father bought me a baby raccoon. I was really close to it, and it was really close to me. I could sleep with it, and it would snug up beside me. The raccoon wouldn’t leave or nothing. A friend of mine got shots for it. My father got mad one night because I didn’t vacuum the rug, and there were seven or eight dishes in the sink. He said, “Go get me your raccoon.” I said, “Dad, if you hurt my raccoon I’ll hate you forever.” He made me go get my raccoon, and he took a hammer and killed it. He hit it twice on the head and crushed its brains. I took it out and buried it.76

Nature of Child Abuse

Stephanie Amedeo and John Gartrell’s study of 218 abused children found that the characteristics of parents, including being mentally ill and having been abused themselves, have the greatest explanatory power of predicting abuse; this study also revealed that triggers or stressors, such as alcohol and drug use, perform as factors that precipitate abuse.77

Research findings disagree concerning the age at which a child is most vulnerable to parental abuse. The National Incidence and Prevalence of Child Abuse and Neglect study found that the incidence of physical abuse increased with age.78 Gil found that half the confirmed cases of abuse involved children over six years of age and that nearly one-fifth were teenagers.79 Yet although many adolescents may experience child abuse, the more serious cases still occur with infants and young children. Child abuse also seems to be more prevalent in urban areas than in suburban or rural settings. The fact that urban areas have better resources to detect child abuse does not entirely explain why so many more cases are reported to urban police. Obviously, the congested populations and poverty of the city, which lead to other social problems, partly account for abuse being predominantly an urban problem.

The abusive situation is often characterized by one parent who is aggressive and one who is passive. The passive parent commonly defends the aggressive one, denies the realities of the family situation, and clings to the intact family and to the abusive partner. The passive parent behaves as though he or she is a prisoner in the relationship, condemned to a life sentence, and usually does not consider the option of separating from the aggressive partner because he or she is committed to the relationship, no matter how miserable the home situation may be.80

Children and adolescents may be victimized by either non-familial sexual abuse or incestuous sexual abuse. Sexual abuse of a child is intentional and wrongful physical contact with a child that entails a sexual purpose or component. Oral–genital relations, fondling of erogenous areas of the body, mutual masturbation, and intercourse are typical sexually abusive acts.81

Incest, according to the Office on Child Abuse and Neglect, is “intrafamily sexual abuse which is perpetrated on a child by a member of that child’s family group and includes not only sexual intercourse, but also any act designed to stimulate a child sexually or to use a child for sexual stimulation, either of the perpetrator or of another person.”82 Incestuous sexual abusers may include a parent, grandparent, stepparent, sibling, aunt, uncle, or other member of the child’s extended family. Nonfamilial sexual abusers may include any unrelated adult the child encounters outside the home (for example, at school, church, recreational venues, and so on).

Recently, the number of sexual abuse cases substantiated by CPS agencies in the United States underwent a dramatic 62 percent reduction between 1992 and 2012, with opinion being divided as to why the estimated annual incidence dropped from 150,000 to 56,500 cases (see Figure 7–7).

Incest reportedly occurs most frequently between a biological father or stepfather and a daughter but also may involve brother and sister, mother and son, and father and son.83 Although stepfathers sexually victimize stepdaughters, biological fathers appear to be involved in more cases of sexual abuse than are stepfathers.84 The average incestuous relationship lasts about three and one-half to four years.85 The completed act of intercourse is more likely to take place with adolescents than with younger children.

Helen, a 16-year-old, was sexually victimized by her father for three years, and she had great difficulty getting anyone to believe that her father was committing incest. When the father was finally prosecuted, she made this statement:

•  When I was thirteen, my father started coming into my room at night. He usually did it when he was drinking. He would force me to have sex with him. I told my mother. I told my teachers at school. But nobody would believe me.86

FIGURE 7–7 Estimated Number of Substantiated Cases of Child Sexual Abuse in the United States.

Source: David Finkelhor and Lisa M. Jones, Explanations for the Decline in Child Sexual Abuse Cases (Washington, DC: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, 2004) citing data from 1990–2000 National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS) reports (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1992–2002); and Children’s Bureau, Child Maltreatment 2012 (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2013), p.20.

Some evidence exists that brother–sister incest takes place more frequently than father–daughter incest, but its long-term consequences are usually less damaging because it does not cross generational boundaries and often occurs as an extension of sex play.87 But brother–sister incest can have damaging consequences for the sister if the act is discovered and she is blamed for being sexually involved with her brother. If the girl feels she has been seduced or exploited, then the damage may be even greater.

Mother–son incest is less common and only rarely reported, largely because of the strong stigmas and taboos attached to the idea of sex between boys and their mothers.88 Mother–son incest usually begins with excessive physical contact, which eventually becomes sexually stimulating. “Don’t leave me” or “Don’t grow up” messages are communicated to the son as the mother seeks ways to prolong physical contact with him by sleeping with him, bathing him, or dressing him.89

Father–son incest also is rarely reported, largely because it violates both the moral code against incest and the taboo against homosexuality. The stress of an incestuous relationship, as well as the threat to masculinity, often results in serious consequences for the boy when father–son incest does occur. Sons who are involved in father–son incest usually experience acute anxiety because they feel damaged, dirty, and worthless, and they may cope by retreating into their own world and losing contact with reality.90

Think About It…

Child abuse and delinquency appear to be closely correlated. Why might abuse lead to delinquency?

The National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect has identified five factors that are usually present when father–daughter incest takes place: (1) the daughter’s voluntary or forced assumption of the mother’s role, (2) the parents’ sexual incompatibility, (3) the father’s reluctance to seek a partner outside the family unit, (4) the family’s fear of disintegration, and (5) the unconscious sanctioning by the mother.91

Neglect, Child Abuse, and Delinquency

Research findings have revealed that a neglected or abused child is more likely to become involved in delinquency or status offenses. Neglect or abuse may have a negative impact on the emotional development of the child; it may lead to truancy and disruptive behavior in school or running away from home, or it may generate so much pain that alcohol and drugs are sometimes viewed as a needed escape. Neglect or abuse may cause so much self-rejection, especially in victims of incest, that these youths may vent the need for self-destructive activities through prostitution or may even commit suicide. Neglect or abuse may also create so much anger that abused youngsters later commit aggressive acts against others.

TABLE 7–2 THE CONNECTION BETWEEN CHILD NEGLECT AND ABUSE AND DELINQUENCY

There is some evidence that childhood maltreatment that does not persist into adolescence has minimal correlation with adolescent delinquency.92 The negative influence of severe maltreatment, such as sexual abuse by parents or caretakers, is commonly seen as carrying into adulthood and perhaps even throughout the life course. However, Peggy Giordano, Stephen A. Cernkovich, and Jennifer L. Rudolph’s study of women across the life course is a reminder that female offenders who suffered extremely abusive childhoods can still have cognitive transformations as adults and can desist from criminal behaviors.93 See Table 7–2 for the possible consequences of neglect and child abuse on delinquency.

 Child Abuse and the Juvenile Justice System

LEARNING OUTCOMES 4

Summarize the sequence of events that occurs as the community responds to child maltreatment.

The term child protective services (CPS) usually refers to services that are provided by an agency authorized to act on behalf of a child when parents are unwilling or unable to do so. In all states, these agencies are required by law to conduct assessments or investigations of reports of child abuse and neglect and to offer treatment services to families where maltreatment has taken place or is likely to occur.94

Sexual abuse victims themselves often become involved in deviant sexual behavior.

Although the primary responsibility for responding to reports of abuse and neglect rests with state and local CPS agencies, the prevention and treatment of child maltreatment can involve professionals from many organizations and disciplines. Jurisdictions do differ in their procedures, but community responses to child maltreatment generally include the following sequence of events.

Identification

• • Individuals who are likely to identify abuse are often those in a position to observe families and children on a regular basis. These include educators, medical professionals, police officers, social services personnel, probation officers, day-care workers, and the clergy. Family members, friends, and neighbors also may be able to identify abuse.

Reporting

• • Some individuals—educators, child-care providers, medical and mental health professionals, social services providers, police officers, and clergy—often are required by law to report suspicions of abuse and neglect.

• • CPS or law enforcement agencies generally receive the initial report of alleged abuse or neglect.

Intake and Investigation

• • Protective services staff members are required to determine whether the report constitutes an allegation of abuse or neglect and how urgently a response is needed.

• • In some jurisdictions, a police officer always accompanies the social worker on the child abuse or neglect investigation to protect the social worker, to help if the parents become assaultive, to use legal authority to take the child out of an abusive home if necessary, to gather evidence and take pictures if admissible evidence is present, and to permit the social worker to focus on the family rather than being preoccupied with the legal investigation.

• • Caseworkers usually respond to reports of abuse and neglect within two to three days. An immediate response is required if it is determined that the child is at imminent risk of injury or impairment.

• • If the decision is made to take the child out of the home, the juvenile court judge must be called for approval as soon as the social worker and police officer leave the house.

• • Following the initial investigation, the protective services agency usually draws one of the following conclusions: (1) There is sufficient evidence to support or substantiate the allegation of maltreatment or risk of maltreatment; (2) there is insufficient evidence to support maltreatment; or (3) maltreatment or the risk of maltreatment appears to be present, although there is insufficient evidence to conclude or substantiate the allegation.

Assessment

• • Protective services staff members are responsible for identifying the factors that contributed to the maltreatment and for addressing the most critical treatment needs.

Case Planning

• • Case plans are developed by protective services, other treatment providers, and the family to alter the conditions and/or behaviors that result in child abuse or neglect.

Treatment

• • Protective services and other treatment providers have the responsibility to implement a treatment plan for the family.

Evaluation of Family Progress

• • After implementing the treatment plan, protective services and other treatment providers evaluate and measure changes in family behaviors and conditions that led to child maltreatment.

Case Closure

• • Some cases are closed because the family resists intervention efforts and the child is seen as being at low risk of harm. Other cases are closed when it has been determined that the risk of abuse or neglect has been eliminated or reduced to the point that the family can protect the child from maltreatment without additional intervention.

• • If the determination is made that the family will not protect the child, the child may be removed from the home and placed in foster care. If the decision is made that a child cannot be returned home within a reasonable time, parental rights may be terminated so that permanent alternatives can be found for the child.

Involvement of Juvenile or Family Court

• • An adjudication (fact-finding) hearing is held if a petition of abuse or neglect has been filed by the department of social services.

• • States vary in the standard of proof needed to substantiate allegations of child abuse and neglect: 6 states rely on the caseworker’s judgment, 18 states on some credible evidence, 11 states on credible evidence, and 12 states on the preponderance of evidence; and 3 states have no official reporting means. About 30 percent of all child abuse and neglect reports in the country are substantiated, which varies somewhat by type of maltreatment and by state.95

Self-control theory argues that the principal cause of individuals’ low self-control is ineffective parenting.

Termination of Parental Rights

• • In the most serious cases of child maltreatment, the state moves to terminate parental rights and to place a child for adoption.

Prosecution of Parents

• • The prosecution of parents in criminal court depends largely on the seriousness of the injury to the child and on the attitude of the district, county, or state attorney’s office toward child abuse. The cases most likely to be prosecuted are those in which a child has been seriously injured or killed and those in which a father or stepfather has sexually abused a daughter or stepdaughter. The most common charges in prosecutions are simple assault, assault with intent to commit serious injury, and manslaughter or murder. See Figure 7–8 for the sequence of events from child abuse to court processing.

 Delinquency Across the Life Course: Family-Related Risk Factors for Delinquency

LEARNING OUTCOMES 5

Recall the family-related risk factors for delinquency.

With the emergence of the life-course perspective, there has been increased empirical and theoretical interest in the role played by family relations both in fostering and in protecting against delinquency and drug involvement. Studies have documented the family-related risk factors that increase delinquency propensity. Some of those risk factors and linked outcomes are ineffective parenting and low self-control; links between corporal punishment and delinquent behavior; family structure at the time of adolescence, such as single-parent families; physical abuse early in life cycle; and links between being married and reduction in delinquency.96

 Prevention of Delinquency and Social Policy: Child Maltreatment

LEARNING OUTCOMES 6

Recall interventions that can help prevent and reduce the extent of child abuse and neglect.

Child maltreatment is a serious issue in the United States. This maltreatment can be inflicted from a variety of contexts: abusive or neglectful parents or caretakers, the Internet (in terms of child pornography), teachers or classmates, or even religious leadership.

FIGURE 7–8 The Sequence of Events from Child Abuse to Court Processing.

We know that child maltreatment can be an influential factor leading to such undesirable outcomes as emotional trauma, running away, disruptive and truant behavior in school, drug and alcohol abuse, sexual behavior, and violence and abuse. The more serious the maltreatment of a child, the more likely it is that he or she will become involved in these behaviors, which can have extremely negative consequences for his or her life course. The abused child, if seriously abused, can even become involved in taking a parent’s life.

To reduce the extent of child abuse and neglect in the United States, numerous strategies or interventions are needed. Widom recommended the following six principles:

• 1. “The earlier the intervention, the better.”

• 2. “Don’t (continue to) neglect neglected children.”

• 3. “One size does not fit all,” which means that “what works for one child in one context may not work for a different child in the same setting, the same child in another setting, or the same child in another period in his or her development.”

• 4. “Surveillance is a double-edged sword,” meaning that intervention agents must be sensitive to the possibilities of differential treatment on the basis of race or ethnic background and take steps to avoid such practices.

• 5. “Interventions are not one-time efforts.”

• 6. “Resources should be accessible.”97

There is emerging evidence of the effectiveness of early family-based programs designed to address some the familial risk factors for delinquency.98 For example, Piquero and colleagues conducted a meta-analysis of the effects of early family/parent training programs for young children and found that early family/parent training is an effective intervention for reducing antisocial behavior.99

THE CASE: The Life Course of Amy Watters, Age 13

After she left home, Amy spent almost a year on the run. During that time she didn’t attend school and had no contact with her father. She lived under a highway overpass in a city about an hour away from her home with new “friends” that she had made. They were other kids who, like herself, had left home for one reason or another. During that time she became especially close to Damon, a 15-year-old boy who had left a Mormon family in Utah and spent his days earning a small income doing odd jobs for people who didn’t ask about his background. Physical closeness had been natural, as staying warm at night meant snuggling up with Damon. After only a couple of nights, Amy found herself having sex. It quickly turned into a regular occurrence and Amy, who had begun menstruating a year earlier, became concerned that she would get pregnant. At the same time, she didn’t want to disappoint Damon, who seemed to greatly enjoy their encounters, and she soon learned to find pleasure in their nightly activities. Not long after they had pledged themselves to one another, however, Amy learned that Damon had begun to sell sexual services to men whom he met by hanging around bars in the city’s seedy downtown district. One of the men, Damon told her, wanted to take naked pictures of him and sell them on the Internet. The money was sure to be good, Damon said.

DISCUSS

• 1. What is the likely relationship between Amy’s early sexual activity and other forms of delinquency? Generally speaking, why might early sex and delinquency be associated with one another?

Learn more on the Web:

• • Some studies have shown that early sexual activity may lead teens into delinquency. See, for example:

• • Developmental Patterns in Exposure to Violence: http://justicestudies.com/developmental.pdf.

Follow the continuing Amy Watters saga in the next chapter.

CHAPTER 7 Families and Delinquency

LEARNING OUTCOMES 1

Explain how problems in the family can contribute to delinquency.

Studies of the relationship between the family and delinquency have generally concluded that the quality of life within the home is a more significant deterrent of delinquent behavior than the presence of both parents; that parental rejection is associated with delinquent behavior; and that inconsistent, lax, or severe discipline is associated with increased delinquency. Similar research concludes that delinquent behavior among children increases proportionately with the number of problems within the family. Divorced and single-parent families, blended families, births to unmarried women, alcohol and drug abuse, poverty, and violence are problems that some families encounter. The failure of a family to provide for the needs of its children can have an effect on the attitudes and behaviors of those children that can last into their adult years—and even for the rest of their lives.

• 1. How is the family the primary agent for the socialization of children?

• 2. What are the most serious problems facing the American family today? What are their effects on children?

• 3. What conditions within the family are more likely to result in delinquent behavior?

socialization The process by which individuals come to internalize their culture; through this process, an individual learns the norms, sanctions, and expectations of being a member of a particular society.

broken home A family in which parents are divorced or are no longer living together.

birth order The sequence of births in a family and a child’s position in it, whether the firstborn, middle, or youngest child.

family size The number of children in a family—a possible risk factor for delinquency.

delinquent sibling A brother or sister who is engaged in delinquent behaviors—an apparent factor in youngsters’ involvement in delinquency.

rejection by parents The disapproval, repudiation, or other uncaring behavior directed by parents toward children.

supervision and discipline The parental monitoring, guidance, and control of children’s activities and behavior.

LEARNING OUTCOMES 2

Explain how the mass media can influence adolescent behavior.

The mass media can influence delinquent behavior as adolescents are exposed to a variety of seemingly negative media influences, including violent movies, TV shows, and video games; Internet pornography; and gangsta rap and other forms of music carrying violent themes.

• 1. Why do the mass media impact the behavior of juveniles so powerfully?

• 2. What can parents do to counterbalance the negative effects of the mass media?

• 3. What social programs and policies might be based on an understanding of how the mass media influence adolescent behavior?

LEARNING OUTCOMES 3

Explain how neglect and child abuse contribute to delinquency.

Children who have been neglected and abused may experience psychological problems, run away from home, become involved in truancy and disruptive behavior in school, and turn to drug and alcohol abuse. Some neglected and abused youngsters become involved in deviant sexual behavior and assume an aggressive stance toward others. Moreover, research findings show at least a partial link between child abuse and neglect and delinquent behavior and status offenses.

• 1. What is neglect? What are some examples of neglect within the home?

• 2. What are physical and emotional abuse? What are some examples of physical and emotional abuse within the home?

• 3. What is incest? What different kinds of incest exist? What type of father is most likely to become involved in incest?

• 4. How are child abuse and neglect related to status offenses and delinquent behavior?

neglect A disregard for the physical, emotional, or moral needs of children. Child neglect involves the failure of the parent or caregiver to provide nutritious food, adequate clothing and sleeping arrangements, essential medical care, sufficient supervision, access to education, and normal experiences that produce feelings of being loved, wanted, secure, and worthy.

child abuse The mistreatment of children by parents or caregivers. Physical abuse is intentional behavior directed toward a child by the parent or caregiver to cause pain, injury, or death. Emotional abuse involves a disregard of a child’s psychological needs. Sexual abuse is any intentional and wrongful physical contact with a child that entails a sexual purpose or component, and such sexual abuse is termed incest when the perpetrator is a member of the child’s family.

emotional abuse A disregard for the psychological needs of a child, including lack of expressed love, withholding of contact or approval, verbal abuse, unrealistic demands, threats, and psychological cruelty.

sexual abuse The intentional and wrongful physical contact with a person, with or without his or her consent, that entails a sexual purpose or component.

incest Any intrafamily sexual abuse that is perpetrated on a child by a member of that child’s family group that includes not only sexual intercourse but also any act designed to stimulate a child sexually or to use a child for sexual stimulation, either of the perpetrator or of another person.

brother–sister incest Sexual activity that occurs between brother and sister.

father–daughter incest Sexual activity that occurs between a father and his daughter. Also refers to incest by stepfathers or the boyfriend(s) of the mother.

mother–son incest Sexual activity that occurs between a mother and her son. Also refers to incest by stepmothers or the girlfriend(s) of the father.

father–son incest Sexual activity between father and son. Also refers to incest by stepfathers or the boyfriend(s) of the mother.

running away The act of leaving the custody and home of parents or guardians without permission and failing to return within a reasonable length of time; a status offense.

LEARNING OUTCOMES 4

Summarize the sequence of events that occurs as the community responds to child maltreatment.

Community responses to child maltreatment generally include the following sequence of events: identification, reporting, intake and investigation, assessment, case planning, treatment, evaluation of family progress, case closure. The response might also extend to the involvement of juvenile or family court, the termination of parental rights, and the prosecution of parents.

• 1. What are typical types of community responses to child maltreatment?

• 2. How do child protective service agencies work with juvenile court officials?

LEARNING OUTCOMES 5

Recall the family-related risk factors for delinquency.

Family-related risk factors associated with an increase in the propensity for delinquency include the following: (1) ineffective parenting and low self-control, (2) the use of corporal punishment, (3) family structure, (4) early physical abuse, and (5) marital status.

• 1. What are the family-related risk factors associated with an increase in the propensity for delinquency?

• 2. What implications for social policy and for the prevention and control of delinquency would a realistic assessment of family-related risk factors for delinquency have?

LEARNING OUTCOMES 6

Recall interventions that can help prevent and reduce the extent of child abuse and neglect.

Strategic interventions that can help prevent and reduce the extent of child maltreatment include early intervention, available community resources, and individualized programs.

• 1. What kinds of early intervention can be employed in order to prevent and/or reduce the extent of child abuse and neglect that might otherwise occur?

• 2. What community resources can be used to prevent and/or reduce the extent of child abuse and neglect?

8 Schools and Delinquency

“If we want to deal with youth crime, adult crime, and street gangs, we must go back to the family unit, must improve our schools, and must make our neighborhoods more desirable.”

—John Walker

 SCHOOL DELINQUENCY

A recent national study of delinquency prevention in schools found that minor forms of problem behavior are common in schools.1 The study discovered, for example, that 27 percent of teachers reported that student problem behavior kept them from teaching effectively “a fair amount or a great deal.” In a quarter of all schools participating in the study, 42 percent or more of teachers reported that student problem behavior kept them from teaching “at least a fair amount.”

A Third-Grade Classroom. What is the Relationship between Schools and Child Misbehavior?

The study also found that more serious forms of problem behavior, such as physical attacks or fights involving a weapon, robberies, or threats involving a knife or a gun, occur much less frequently than the relatively pervasive kinds of minor student misconduct. But these events happen often enough that they pose major problems for schools. Almost 7 percent of schools participating in the study reported at least one incident of physical attack or fight involving a weapon to law enforcement officials. In the case of middle schools and junior high schools the percentage was 21 percent.

From the student perspective, the study found that being threatened or attacked in school is a relatively common experience. Nineteen percent of students participating in the study reported being threatened and 14 percent reported having been attacked. Study authors wrote that “a startling 5% of students” reported having been threatened with a knife or a gun.

Teachers, on the other hand, rarely experience being attacked and are not often threatened. Although 20 percent of secondary school teachers (and 31 percent of urban middle school teachers) reported to researchers that they had been threatened by remarks made by a student, only 0.5 percent reported having had a weapon pulled on them. Of all teachers in the study, only 0.07 percent reported having been attacked and having to see a doctor as a result of the attack.

There is no question that an examination of delinquency in the United States must take a long look at the school experience. J. Feldhusen, J. Thurston, and J. Benning’s longitudinal study found school relationships and experiences to be the third most predictive factor in delinquency, exceeded only by family and peer-group relationships.2

Delbert S. Elliott and Harwin L. Voss stated, “the school is the critical social context for the generation of delinquent behavior.”3 Arthur L. Stinchcombe believed that failure in school leads to rebelliousness, which leads to more failure and negative behaviors.4 More recently, Eugene Maguin and Rolf Loeber’s meta-analysis found that “children with lower academic performance offended more frequently, committed more serious and violent offenses, and persisted in their offending.”5

In sum, there is considerable evidence that the school has become an arena for learning delinquent behavior. This chapter will look at the history of education in the United States, at the nature of crime in the schools, at different aspects of the relationship between the school setting and delinquent behavior, at the issue of students’ rights, and at interventions used by some schools to prevent and control delinquency within school settings.

DISCUSS

How does problem behavior in schools impact students’ educational opportunities? How should such behavior be handled?

 A Brief History of American Education

The U.S. Constitution says nothing about public schools, but by 1850 nearly all the northern states had enacted laws mandating free education. By 1918, education was both free and compulsory in nearly every state in the union. The commitment to public education arose largely from the growing need for a uniform approach to socialization of the diverse groups immigrating to this country. Joel H. Spring, a historian, writes of this movement:

LEARNING OUTCOMES 1

Summarize the major issues American schools have faced over time.

•  Education during the nineteenth century has been increasingly viewed as an instrument of social control to be used to solve the social problems of crime, poverty, and Americanization of the immigrant. The activities of public schools tended to replace the social training of other institutions, such as the family and church. One reason for the extension of school activities was the concern for the education of the great numbers of immigrants arriving from eastern and southern Europe. It was feared that without some form of Americanization immigrants would cause a rapid decay of American institutions.6

The need to establish a safe learning atmosphere is a serious issue in public education today.

During most of the nineteenth century, U.S. schools were chaotic and violent places where teachers unsuccessfully attempted to maintain control over unmotivated, unruly, and unmanageable children through novel and sometimes brutal disciplinary methods.7 For example, Horace Mann reported in the 1840s that in one school with 250 pupils, he saw 328 separate floggings in one week of five school days, an average of over 65 floggings a day.8

Widespread dissatisfaction with the schools at the turn of the twentieth century was one of the factors leading to the Progressive education movement. Its founder, John Dewey, advocated reform in classroom methods and curricula so students would become more questioning, creative, and involved in the process of their own education. Dewey was much more concerned about individualism and personal growth than rigid socialization.9

The 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision that ruled racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional was a pivotal event in the history of American education—it obligated the federal government to make certain that integration in schools was achieved “within a reasonable time limit.”10 The busing of children to distant schools, which arose out of the Supreme Court decision and has resulted in the shift from neighborhood schools, remains a hotly debated issue.

During the 1960s, open classrooms, in which the teacher served as a “resource person” who offered students many activities from which to choose, were instituted as an alternative to the earlier teacher-oriented classrooms. As was the case with the Progressive education movement, the concept of the open classroom was accepted more widely in private schools than in public schools.

The baby boom of the 1950s resulted in increased enrollments and more formalized student–teacher contacts in public schools in the 1960s and early 1970s. Public education also became more expensive in the 1970s, because the increasing numbers of children in the classroom meant that more equipment (including expensive items such as computers, scientific equipment, and audiovisual aids) had to be purchased. At the same time, teachers’ unions took a firmer stance during contract talks, and many larger cities experienced teachers’ strikes during this decade.

Think About It…

School relationships and experiences tend to be one of the most highly predictive factors in delinquency. What aspects of the school experience are most likely to influence a young person’s social development?

Since at least the mid-1980s, instead of optimism, dire warnings have been issued by all sides concerning the state of education. An expert on schools put it this way in 1984:

•  American schools are in trouble. In fact, the problems of schooling are of such crippling proportions that many schools may not survive. It is possible that our entire public education system is nearing collapse. We will continue to have schools, no doubt, but the basis of their support and their relationship to families, communities and states could be quite different from what we have known.11

See the accompanying timeline.

 School Crime

LEARNING OUTCOMES 2

Summarize the extent of vandalism, violence, and bullying in schools.

Crime in the schools, especially public schools, is a serious problem now facing junior and senior high schools across the nation. This high crime rate expresses itself through vandalism, violence, drug trafficking, and gangs. Vandalism and violence are examined in this section, and Chapters 9 and 10 will explore the challenges that youth gangs and drugs bring to the school setting.

 Major Issues American Schools Have Faced during Various Time Periods

Vandalism and Violence

The need to establish a safe learning atmosphere is a serious issue in public education today, but the added security features of many public schools make them appear even more like prisons. Uniformed police are stationed in many schools; other schools have their own security staff. Students must submit to a metal detector search to enter some schools, electronically locked doors are becoming more common, and locker searches for drugs and weapons are everyday occurrences in many schools. Identification tags or photo ID badges for students and silent panic buttons for teachers are other means schools are using to regain control of the environment. Until it was ruled unconstitutional by the courts, a school in Boston even gave a drug test (urinalysis) to every student during the physical examination performed by the school physician at the start of each academic year.12

In 2013, the National Center for Education Statistics published its 15th annual report on school crime, Indicators of School Crime and Safety: 2012, which profiled school crime and safety and described the characteristics of the victims of these crimes (see the following discussion for the report’s basic findings). It can be argued that schools are safer for children than other areas because children experience higher rates of violence away from school than they experience when they are at school (as well as coming to or leaving school).

School Bullying

Bullying in school is a worldwide problem. Even though most of the research on bullying has taken place in Great Britain, Japan, and Scandinavian countries, it is a topic of concern in schools everywhere. Bullying consists of such direct behaviors as teasing, threatening, taunting, hitting, and stealing that have been initiated by one or more aggressive students against a weaker victim. In addition to such direct attacks, bullying may also be more indirect, causing a student to be socially isolated through intentional exclusion. Boys typically are involved in more direct bullying methods, whereas girls utilize more subtle strategies, such as spreading rumors and enforcing social isolation. Whether the bullying is direct or indirect, its key component is repeated physical or psychological intimidation that creates an ongoing pattern of harassment and abuse.13

According to bullying statistics, about 2.7 million students are bullied each year by about 2.11 million other students taking on the role of the bully. Bullying statistics further reveal that about one in every seven students in grades kindergarten through 12th grade is either a bully or has been a victim of bullying. A teen or child who has been bullied may in turn become the bully in retaliation. Physical bullying increases in elementary school, peaks in middle school, and declines in high school; verbal abuse, on the other hand, tends to remain constant.14

Bullying in schools can create a climate of fear and discomfort.

Cyberbullying

Cyberbullying is a form of teen violence that can do lasting harm to young people. Cyberbullying involves using technology, such as cell phones and the Internet, to bully or harass another person. Cyberbullying can take many forms:

• • Spreading rumors online or through texts

• • Sending mean messages or threats to a person’s email account or cell phone

• • Stealing a person’s account information to break into his or her account and send damaging messages

• • Posting hurtful or threatening messages on social networking sites or Web messages

• • Pretending to be someone else online to hurt another person

• • Sexting, or circulating sexually suggestive pictures or messages about a person

• • Taking unflattering pictures of a person and spreading them via cell phone on the Internet15

Cyberbullying can lead to depression, anxiety, or suicide. Also, once things have circulated on the Internet, they may never disappear, and hence can resurface at later times to renew the path of cyberbullying.

How Bullying Impacts the School Environment

Numerous studies have documented how bullying in schools can create a climate of fear and discomfort:

• • One study first summarized the literature, stating that bullying can be understood as both a dyadic and a peer-group phenomenon, primarily situated in the heads (thinking) of those involved, in a lack of skill or experience, or in the delinquency of a bully who needs to be reformed. This study added that, unfortunately, typical anti-bullying strategies often simply train bullies to be better at bullying (meaning that they learn to bully more covertly and more expertly so as to inflict the same devastation without adult detection).16

  1960s		1970s	1980s	2010s
  Open classroomsin which teachers served as resource persons were instituted as an alternative to the teacher-oriented classrooms.	Increased enrollments and more formalized student–teacher contacts grew out of the baby boom.	Public educationbecame more expensive.	Dire warningsbegan to be issued concerning the state of education.	American schoolsin trouble is an increasingly articulated position.

• TABLE 8–1 FINDINGS FROM INDICATORS OF SCHOOL CRIME AND SAFETY: 2012

  Violent Deaths at School • Of the 31students, staff, and nonstudent school associated violent deaths occurring between July 1, 20 2010 through June 30, 2011, there were 11 homicides and 3 suicides of school-aged youth (5–18) at school. • During the school year 2010–2011, there were 1,396 homicides among school-age youth ages 5–18. During the 20117 calendar year, there were 1,456 suicides of youth ages 5–18.

  Nonfatal Student Victimization • In 2011, students ages 12–18 were victims of 1,246,000 million nonfatal crimes at school, including thefts and violet crimes. • In 2011, more students ages 12–18 were victims of theft at school than away from school.

  Nonfatal Teacher Victimization • A greater percentage of secondary school teachers (8%) reported being threatened with injury by a student than elementary school teachers (7%). However, a greater percentage of elementary school teachers (6%) reported having been physically attacked than secondary school teachers (2%).

  School Environment • In 2009–2010, 85% of public schools reported that one or more incident of crime had taken place at public school, amounting to an estimated 1.9 million crimes. • During the 2009–2010 school year, 16% of public schools reported that bullying occurred among students on a daily or weekly basis. In 2009, 23 percent of students ages 12–18 reported having been bullied at school during the academic year. • In 2011, 18% of students ages 12–18 reported that street gangs were operating in their school. In 2011, 23 percent of urban schools, 16 percent of suburban schools, and 12 percent or rural schools reported gang presence in their schools. During 2011, 19 percent of public schools and only 2 percent of private schools reported the presence of gangs. • In 2011, 26% of students in grades 9–12 reported that someone had offered, sold, or given them an illegal drug on school property in the past 12 months. This had decreased from 32 percent in 1995. • In 2011, 9% of students ages 12–18 reported that someone at school had used hate-related words against them, and more than one-third (28%) reported seeing hate-related graffiti at school. This had decreased from 12 percent in 2001, and was far lower than the 36 percent who reported seeing hate-related graffiti at school in 1999. • In 2011, about 26 percent of males reported carrying a weapon anywhere compared to 7 percent of females, and 8 percent of males carried a weapon on school property compared to 2 percent females. • In 2011, 33 percent of students reported that they had been involved in a physical fight over the previous 12 months, and 12 percent were involved in a fight on school property.

  DISCUSS

  If violence in public schools is declining, why do so many teachers feel unsafe in the school setting? What can be done to make public schools safer?

•  Source: Simone Roberts, Jijun Zhang, and Jennifer Truman, Indicators of School Crime and Safety: 2012 (Washington, DC: U.S. Departments of Education and Justice, U.S. Government Printing Office, 2013).

• • Another study performed a meta-analysis and posited that an association existed between bullying and psychosomatic problems.17

• • Still another study found that students with mild disabilities were more likely to be perceived as bullies by both teachers and peers; in addition, teachers rated students with mild disabilities as being bullied by their peers significantly more often. Academically gifted students were seen by teachers as having the lowest rates of both bullying and being bullied.18

• • The data from a survey of 24,345 youths on the evidence of racial/ethnic differences in children’s self-report of being a victim of bullying revealed that African-American youths who were victimized tended to underreport being a victim of bullying.19

• • According to recent bullying statistics, gay and lesbian teens who are bullied are two to three times more likely to commit suicide than other youths facing similar circumstances. About 30 percent of all completed suicides have been related to gay identity crises. Students who fall into the gay, bisexual, lesbian, or transgendered identity group report being five times more likely to miss school because they feel unsafe after being bullied due to their sexual orientation. About 28 percent of these students claim that this is a major contributor to school dropout.20

Think About It…

Kate Middleton, who married England’s Prince William in 2011, admitted that she had once been a victim of school bullying, and asked her royal wedding guests to donate to an anti-bullying charity. What are the roots of bullying? What can be done to prevent it?

See Exhibit 8–1 for a description of bullying problems and for information on intervention strategies that can reduce bullying in schools.

 Delinquency and School Failure

LEARNING OUTCOMES 3

Explain how delinquency is linked to school failure.

Lack of academic achievement, low social status at school, and dropping out are factors frequently cited as being related to involvement in delinquency. This section will look at the first two factors, and dropping out is considered later in the chapter.

Achievement

EXHIBIT 8–1 Bullying Fact Sheet

Facts About Bullying

• • Bullying is often blamed as an important factor in school-related deaths.

• • Membership in either bullying or victim groups is associated with dropping out of school, psychosocial adjustment problems, delinquent activity, and other long-term consequences.

• • Physical bullying increases in elementary school, peaks in middle school, and declines in high school; verbal abuse, on the other hand, tends to remain constant.

• • Over two-thirds of students believe that schools respond poorly to bullying.

• • Only 25 percent of teachers see nothing wrong with bullying or put-downs and, as a result, intervene in only 4 percent of bullying incidents.

What Can Schools Do?

• • Early intervention. Researchers advocate intervening in elementary or middle school or even as early as preschool. Social skills training is highly recommended, as are counseling and systematic aggression interventions for students demonstrating bullying and victim behaviors.

• • Parent training. Parents must learn to reinforce their children’s positive behavior patterns and must demonstrate appropriate interpersonal interactions.

• • Teacher training. Training can help teachers identify and respond to potentially damaging victimization as well as implement positive feedback and modeling to address inappropriate social interactions. Support services personnel who work with administrators can be helpful in designing effective teacher training modules.

• • Attitude change. Researchers maintain that society must stop defending bullying behavior as part of growing up or by assuming the attitude that “kids will be kids.” School personnel should never ignore bullying behaviors.

• • Positive school environment. Schools with easily understood rules of conduct, smaller class sizes, and fair discipline practices report less violence and bullying behaviors.

What Can Parents Do?

• • Parents should contact the school social worker, counselor, or school psychologist and ask for help with bullying or victimization concerns.

• • Parents can provide positive feedback to their children for appropriate social behaviors that do not include aggression or bullying.

• • Parents should use alternatives to physical punishment, such as the removal of privileges, as consequences for bullying behavior.

• • Parents should stop bullying behavior when it takes place and help their children develop more appropriate social skills.

Source: Adapted from Andrea Cohn and Andrea Canter, Bullying: Factors for Schools and Parents,http://www.naspcenter.org/factsheets/bullying_fs.html. Copyright 2003 by the National Association of School Psychologists, Bethesda, Md. Reprinted with permission of the publisher.

Considerable evidence indicates that, whether measured by self-report or by official police data, both male and female delinquency is associated with poor academic performance at school.21 Travis Hirschi claimed that the causal chain shown in Figure 8–1 may eventually lead to delinquent behavior.22Numerous researchers have pointed out that delinquents’ lack of achievement in school is related to other factors besides academic skills. For example, several studies have found that delinquents are more rejecting of the student role than are nondelinquents.23 Delinquents’ performance in school may be further affected by their relationships with classmates and teachers; several studies have concluded that the relationship between school performance and delinquency is mediated by peer influence.24

FIGURE 8–1 Hirschi’s Causal Chain.

Source: Adapted from Travis Hirschi, Causes of Delinquency (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), pp. 131–132, 156.

Low Social Status

Albert K. Cohen’s influential study of delinquent boys was one of the most comprehensive analyses ever undertaken of the role of the school in the development of delinquent subcultures. According to Cohen’s theory, working-class boys (as discussed in Chapter 4) feel status deprivation when they become aware that they are unable to compete with middle-class youths in the school. Although avoiding contact with middle-class youths might solve the problem, working-class boys cannot do this because they are forced to attend middle-class schools established on middle-class values; consequently, they reject middle-class values and attitudes and form delinquent subcultures that provide them with the status denied in school and elsewhere in society.25 John C. Phillips proposed steps by which low status in school can lead to deviant behavior (see Figure 8–2).26 However, the proposed relationship between social class and delinquency in the school has been challenged. For example, one study found that any adolescent male who does poorly in school, regardless of class background, is more likely to become involved in delinquent behavior than one who performs well in school.27

In short, most of the evidence points to three conclusions: Lack of achievement in school is directly related to delinquent behavior, most delinquents want to succeed in school, and the explanations for poor academic achievement are more complex than lack of general aptitude or intelligence. Although the existence of a relationship between social class and delinquency in the school has mixed support, a relationship between school achievement and delinquency is much clearer.

School Failure

A number of observations can be made about the relationship between school failure and delinquency. First, it can be claimed that school failure is directly related to delinquency. Those students who fail in school seek out peers who also are not succeeding in school. School failure brings disapproval from family, teachers, and the community. Second, school failure can create psychological problems for youth, and these negative self-feelings can lead to delinquent acts. Third, school failure and delinquency, it can be argued, share a common cause, such as poverty, drugs, family disruption, or gangs. Fourth, the school has a role in school failure. The school can contribute to students’ alienation, and many have charged that school tracking—which is dividing students into groups according to achievement level and ability—has been a contributing cause of delinquent behavior.

FIGURE 8–2 Phillips’s Steps Leading to Deviant Behavior.

Both male and female delinquency is associated with poor academic performance.

School failure is one of the contributing causes to dropping out of school, and the high rate of dropouts is one of the most serious issues facing schools in the United States. School dropouts, as discussed later in this chapter, contribute to high rates of unlawful behavior and delinquency across the life course.

 Theoretical Perspectives on School and Delinquency

LEARNING OUTCOMES 4

Summarize how various delinquency theories view the school’s role.

Most major theories of delinquency see the school as a factor contributing to delinquent behavior. Blocked opportunity theory, strain theory, cultural deviance theory, social control theory, labeling theory, radical criminology, general theory of crime, and interactionist theories all make contributions to understanding delinquency in schools.

The majority of studies focusing on blocked opportunity have found that those most likely to commit delinquent acts are young people who do poorly in school or who believe that they have little chance of graduation. Observers say that when youthful offenders are unable to perform satisfactorily in school, they become disruptive, decide to drop out, or are suspended—all of which further reinforces involvement in deviant behavior.28 Strain theorists contend that youngsters from certain social classes are denied legitimate access to culturally determined goals and opportunities and that the resulting frustration leads to either the use of illegitimate means to obtain society’s goals or the rejection of those goals. Strain theory views the school as a middle-class institution in which lower-class children are frequently unable to perform successfully; these youths then turn to delinquency to compensate for feelings of status frustration, failure, and low self-esteem.29

Cultural deviance theorists argue that children learn delinquent behavior through being exposed to others and by mimicking or modeling others’ actions—children may come to view delinquency as acceptable because of their exposure to others whose definitions of such behavior are positive. Because schools tend to reflect the characteristics of the community of which they are a part, attending school in high-crime areas increases the likelihood of association with delinquent peers.30

Social control theorists believe that delinquency varies according to the strength of a juvenile’s bond to the social order. Social control theorists also posit that the school is one of the major socializing institutions, providing youths with structure, incentives, expectations, and opportunities for social bonding, and that delinquency is likely to result when a strong bond to school does not develop.31

Labeling theorists argue that once students are defined as deviant, they adopt a deviant role in response to their lowered status. Early on, schools attach labels on the basis of achievement and behavior, and these labels may influence the subsequent treatment of youths. For example, when students are labeled as aggressive, difficult to manage, or slow learners at an early stage, they may be put in a slow track for the remainder of their schooling. According to labeling theorists, this differential treatment contributes to delinquent identities and behaviors.32

Some radical criminologists view the school as a means by which the privileged classes maintain power over the lower classes. Subjected to the controlling forces of the state, lower-class children are exploited as they experience powerlessness and alienation, and they are more likely than middle- and upper-class children to be placed in the lowest tracks, to receive poor grades, to be suspended for disciplinary reasons, and to drop out of school. According to radical theorists, lower-class children are essentially being trained to accept menial roles in the social order.33

In the general theory of crime, once self-control has formed in childhood, it affects adolescents in the choices they make in peer relations, school conduct and achievement, drug and alcohol use, and delinquent activities. Thus, students with self-control will be able to abstain from activities in school that would affect teachers’ negative evaluations; from unwholesome peer relations in and out of school that would affect their desire to succeed, including gang participation; and from behaviors that would garner the attention of the police and juvenile justice system officials.34

Interactional theory, as developed by Thornberry and colleagues, is an integrated theory that can be applied to the school. It originally stated that attachment to parents and commitment to school are important buffers against delinquency, so adolescents who are emotionally bonded to parents and who succeed at school are unlikely candidates for serious delinquency. Later versions of this theory have found that while weakened bonds to family and school do cause delinquency, delinquent behavior further reduces the strength of the bonds to family and school, thereby establishing a behavioral trajectory toward increasing delinquency.35

Another integrated theory related to the school is one developed by Wayne N. Welsh, Jack R. Greene, and Patricia H. Jenkins that draws on control theory, school climate theory, and social disorganization theory to examine the influence of individual, institutional, and community factors on misconduct in Philadelphia middle schools. One of the strong conclusions reached by these researchers is that the simplistic assumption that bad communities typically produce “bad children” or “bad schools” is unwarranted.36 See Table 8–2 for the theoretical perspectives on school and delinquency.

TABLE 8–2 THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES ON SCHOOL AND DELINQUENCY

 Students’ Rights

LEARNING OUTCOMES 5

Summarize school students’ rights.

The school’s authority over students comes from two principal sources: the concept of in loco parentis and state-enabling statutes.37 E. Edmund Reutter, Jr., summarized in loco parentis as follows:

•  The common law measure of the rights and duties of school authorities relative to pupils attending school is the in loco parentis concept. This doctrine holds that school authorities stand in the place of the parent while the child is at school. Thus, school personnel may establish rules for the educational welfare of the child and may inflict punishments for disobedience. The legal test is whether a reasonably knowledgeable and careful parent might so act. The doctrine is used not only to support rights of school authorities but also to establish their responsibilities concerning such matters as injuries that may befall students.38

State-enabling statutes authorize local school boards to establish reasonable rules and regulations, which do not necessarily have to be in written form, for operating and keeping order in schools.39

The courts have become involved with schools in a number of important areas: procedural due process, freedom of expression, hair and dress codes, school searches, and safety.40

Procedural Due Process

Dixon v. Alabama State Board of Education (1961) was a major breakthrough for students’ rights because the appeals court held for the first time that due process requires a student to receive notice and some opportunity for a hearing before being expelled for misconduct.41 In 1969, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its far-reaching decision in Tinker v. Des Moines Independent School District, declaring that students do not shed their constitutional right of freedom of speech at the schoolhouse door. The issue that was involved in this case was whether students had the right to wear black armbands to protest the Vietnam War, and the Court ruled that school authorities did not have the right to deny free speech, even the expression of an unpopular view, unless they had reason to believe that it would interfere with the school operations.42 In the 1986 Bethel School District No. 403 v. Fraser case, the Court upheld a school system’s right to suspend or discipline a student who uses profane or obscene language or gestures, reasoning that the use of lewd and offensive speech undermined the basic educational mission of the school.43 In a 1988 decision, Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier, the Court ruled that the principal could censor articles having to do with pregnancy and parental divorce in a student publication; the Court’s majority justified this censorship because such publications were perceived to be part of the educational curriculum of the school.44

In January 1975, the U.S. Supreme Court took up the problem of due process rights in the schools, stating in Goss v. Lopez that schools may not summarily suspend students, for even one day, without following fundamentally fair fact-finding procedures.45 In suspensions of ten days or less, a student is entitled to oral or written notice of the charges, an explanation of the evidence, and an opportunity to be heard. The Wood v. Strickland ruling, issued a month after the Goss decision, found that school officials may be subject to suit and held financially liable for damages if they deliberately deprive a student of his or her clearly established constitutional rights.46

The issue of corporal punishment came before the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1975 Baker v. Owen and Ingraham v. Wright cases.47 Although Baker v. Owen merely affirmed a lower-court ruling, Ingraham v. Wright held that reasonable corporal punishment is not cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.48

Freedom of Expression

Several court cases have defined students’ rights to freedom of religion and expression in schools. In West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, the Supreme Court held that students could not be compelled to salute the flag if that action violated their religious rights.49 In Tinker, the wearing of black armbands was declared symbolic speech and therefore within the protection of the First Amendment.50

Hair and Dress Codes

Court cases testing the power of school administrators to suspend students for violations of hair and dress codes were widespread in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In Yoo v.Moynihan, a student’s right to style his or her hair was held to be under the definition of the constitutional right to privacy;51 then, in Richards v. Thurston, the Court ruled that a student’s right to wear long hair derived from his or her interest in personal liberty.52 In Crossen v. Fatsi, a dress code prohibiting “extreme style and fashion” was ruled unconstitutionally vague and unenforceable as well as an invasion of the student’s right to privacy.53Other decisions have held that schools cannot prohibit the wearing of slacks,54 dungarees,55 or hair “falling loosely about the shoulders.”56

School Searches

Court cases testing the power of school administrators to suspend students for violations of hair and dress codes were widespread in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

The use of drugs and weapons is changing the nature of police–student relations in schools. In the 1990s, the police began to enforce the 1990 federal Gun-Free School Zones Act and increasingly, in communities across the nation, began to enforce drug-free school zone laws. Drug-free zones usually include the school property along with the territory within a 1,000-foot radius of its perimeter. Alabama has the most aggressive law in this nation: Territory within three miles of a school is declared drug free.57

The use of drug-sniffing dogs, Breathalyzers™, hidden video cameras, and routine school searches of students’ pockets, purses, school lockers, desks, and vehicles on school grounds appears to be increasing as school officials struggle to regain control over their schools. In some cases, school officials conduct their own searches; in other cases, the police are brought in to conduct the searches.

In the New Jersey v. T.L.O. decision (1985), the U.S. Supreme Court examined the issue of whether Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches and seizures apply to the school setting.58 On March 7, 1980, a teacher at Piscataway High School in Middlesex County, New Jersey, discovered two adolescent females smoking in a bathroom. He reported this violation of school rules to the principal’s office, and the two females were summoned to meet with the assistant vice principal. When one of the females, T.L.O., claimed that she had done no wrong, the assistant principal demanded to see her purse; on examining it, he found a pack of cigarettes and cigarette rolling papers, some marijuana, a pipe, a large amount of money, a list of students who owed T.L.O. money, and letters that implicated her in marijuana dealing. T.L.O. confessed later at the police station to dealing drugs on school grounds.59

The juvenile court found T.L.O. delinquent and sentenced her to a year’s probation, but she appealed her case to the New Jersey Supreme Court on the grounds that the search of her purse was not justified under the circumstances of the case. When the New Jersey Supreme Court upheld her appeal, the state appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that school personnel have the right to search lockers, desks, and students as long as they believe that either the law or school rules have been violated. The legality of a search, the Court stated, need not be based on obtaining a warrant or on having probable cause that a crime has taken place; rather, the legality of the search depends on its reasonableness, considering the scope of the search, the student’s gender and age, and the student’s behavior at the time.60

The significance of this decision is that the Supreme Court opened the door for greater security measures because it gave school officials and the police the right to search students who are suspected of violating school rules.61 Of 18 cases in the years 1985–1991 that were decided by state appellate decisions applying the T.L.O. decision, school officials’ intervention was upheld in 15 of them.62

In its 1995 Vernonia School District 47J v. Acton decision, the U.S. Supreme Court extended schools’ authority to search by legalizing a random drug-testing policy for student athletes. This decision suggests that schools may employ safe-school programs, such as drug-testing procedures, as long as the policy satisfies the reasonableness test.63

In the 2002 Board of Education of Independent School District No. 92 of Pottawatomie County v. Earlsdecision, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the judgment of the court of appeals and upheld the right of the school district to test students who participated in extracurricular activities; the Court found this to be a “reasonably effective means of addressing the School District’s legitimate concerns in preventing, deterring, and detecting drug use by students.”64 The Court in Pottawatomie expanded the Vernoniadecision by extending the drug testing of student athletes to the testing of students involved in extracurricular activities, which is an especially important issue, given the recent concern over steroid use on the part of professional, college, and high school athletes.

Safety

Court-imposed limitations on schools concerning the rules under which youths can be disciplined (Tinker) and the requirements for procedural due process relating to school administrators taking disciplinary action (Goss, Ingraham, and others) have made local school authorities increasingly wary of using tough methods to discipline students. Principals have become reluctant, for example, to suspend youths for acts such as acting insubordinately, wearing outlandish clothing, loitering in halls, and creating classroom disturbances; only a few decades earlier, such conduct would have drawn a quick notice of suspension. Increased judicial intervention in the academic area has contributed to (but not caused) an increase in unruly behavior, thereby reducing the safety of students in the public schools.65 See Table 8–3 for a summary of the landmark cases that have had significant impact on students’ rights.

In sum, judicial intervention in schools over the past three decades has had both positive and negative impacts. Students’ rights are less likely to be abused than in the past because the courts have made it clear that students retain specific constitutional rights in school settings. However, school administrators who perceive themselves as handcuffed by court decisions have become reluctant to take firm and forceful action against disruptive students, and violence and delinquency in the schools have increased.

School Discipline

Both public and private schools have a responsibility to provide a safe environment for students and teachers, and to promote an environment conducive to learning. Consequently, it is sometimes necessary to discipline students who endanger others or create a negative learning environment.

Security Measures

Schools typically have a number of security measures to address things such as fights on campus, vandalism, thefts, drugs, alcohol, weapons, bomb threats, teacher safety, parking lot problems, fire alarms, and outsiders on campus. Each of these situations usually has a number of associated sub-security measures.

Corporal Punishment

An important security issue concerns whether a teacher or school official can legitimately inflict corporal punishment on a misbehaving child. By law, more than half of the states do not permit corporal punishment. Even so, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the use of corporal punishment in public schools as a legitimate disciplinary measure.66 Still, in those states that permit corporal punishment, school officials are understandably concerned about its use.

TABLE 8–3 SUMMARY OF LANDMARK CASES AND STUDENTS RIGHTS

FIGURE 8–3 The Role of the School Resource Officer.

Out-of-School Suspensions

Between 79 and 94 percent of schools have policies known as “zero-tolerance”—a term that is given to a school or district policy that mandates certain punishment for various student offenses.67 In 2009–2010, for example, California schools issued 400,000 out-of-school suspensions based on things like zero-tolerance for bullying, weapons possession, and drugs.68

Expulsion from School

The main difference between a suspension and expulsion from school is the amount of time that a student must stay out of school. A suspension may only last a few days but an expulsion can extend up to a year. The local board of education makes expulsion decisions and will usually appoint an impartial hearing officer when expulsion is being considered. Typical charges leading to expulsion are:

• 1. Possessing a gun or other deadly weapon on school grounds or at a school activity.

• 2. Using a firearm or other deadly weapon to commit a crime off school grounds.

• 3. Selling or attempting to sell illegal drugs, on or off school grounds.69

 Delinquency Across the Life Course: Factors Involved in Dropping Out of School

LEARNING OUTCOMES 6

Explain the correlation between dropping out of high school and crime.

High school dropout rates have become a major crisis in the United States, with one student in five dropping out of school. Nearly 5 million 18- to 24-year-olds lack a high school diploma. In addition, the United States currently ranks 20 out of 28 among industrialized democracies on high school graduation rates.70 Students tend to drop out of school for four reasons, which are frequently interrelated: (1) academic failure, which involves failing courses; (2) disinterest in school, which often results in poor attendance; (3) problematic behavior inside or outside of the school setting that interferes with learning; and (4) life events, such as getting a job, becoming pregnant, or caring for an ill family member.71

One study that related the school to a life-course perspective was undertaken by Zeng-yin Chen and Howard B. Kaplan. Using a longitudinal panel data set collected at three developmental stages (early adolescence, young adulthood, and middle adulthood), Chen and Kaplan investigated how early school failure influenced status attainment at midlife, concluding that “early negative experiences set in motion a cascade of later disadvantages in the transition to adulthood, which, in turn, influences SES [socioeconomic status] attainment later in the life course.”72

Wendy Schwartz analyzed information from the Educational Resource Information Center and determined the following:

• • In the last 20 years, the earnings level of dropouts doubled, whereas it nearly tripled for college graduates.

• • Recent dropouts will earn $200,000 less than high school graduates and over $800,000 less than college graduates over the course of their lives.

• • Dropouts comprise nearly half of all heads of households on welfare.

• • Dropouts comprise nearly half of the nation’s prison population.73

John Sampson and John Laub have demonstrated that high school can be a turning point in an individual’s life course (see Chapter 2).74 Richard Arum and Irenee R. Beattie assessed the effects of high school educational experiences on the likelihood of adult incarceration.75 Using event history analysis and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth data, they found that high school educational experiences have a lasting effect on an individual’s risk of incarceration. This study offered specifications of the high school context to identify how high school experiences can serve as a defining moment in an adolescent’s life trajectory.76

 Delinquency and Social Policy: Promising Interventions

LEARNING OUTCOMES 7

Summarize the school interventions that hold promise for reducing delinquency.

Several intervention strategies promise to benefit schools in the United States: improved quality of the school experience; increased use of mentors for students who are encountering difficulties or experiencing problems; greater use of alternative schools for students who cannot adapt to the traditional education setting; reduction of the crime control and punitiveness in public schools; development of a comprehensive approach to school success that includes home, school, church/synagogue, parents, and other institutions and persons who participate in school processes affecting students’ lives; effective school-based violence-prevention programs; and more effective programs to prevent dropping out of school. See Figure 8–4 for a summary of this information.

Improving the Quality of the School Experience

For students, a good school experience begins with good teaching. Good teachers can make students feel wanted and accepted and can encourage students to have more positive and successful experiences in the classroom. Safety is another of the important prerequisites of effective involvement in the educational process; unless students feel safe, they are unlikely to involve themselves very deeply in the school experience.

Mentoring Relationships

FIGURE 8–4 Intervention Strategies to Improve Schools.

In 2005, 3 million adults had formal one-to-one mentoring relationships with young people, an increase of 19 percent since 2002.77 Youth development experts generally agree that mentoring is a critical component in a child’s social, emotional, and cognitive development and that it has the potential to build a sense of industry and competency, boost academic performance, and broaden horizons.78 School-based mentoring is one of the most promising types of youth mentoring taking place today and is experiencing rapid growth.

Alternative Schools

Disruptive behavior is a very serious problem in many of this nation’s classrooms. School administrators often suspend or expel students who cause trouble;79 however, this policy of swift suspension stigmatizes troublemakers as failures and reinforces their negative behaviors. Alternative schools are deemed a much more satisfactory way of dealing with young people whom public schools cannot control or who are doing unsatisfactory work in a public school setting. The juvenile court sometimes requires disruptive students to attend an alternative school, but more frequently, students are referred by the public school system. In 2000–2001, 39 percent of public school districts had alternative schools and programs and served approximately 613,000 at-risk students in about 10,900 alternative schools and programs in the United States. In addition to dealing more effectively with disruptive students than the public school system does, alternative schools tend to reduce absenteeism and dropout rates.80

Positive School–Community Relationships

In contrast to efforts at reducing delinquency in the school by investing in hardware and preventive technology, an alternative intervention strategy is the development of a comprehensive, or multicomponent, approach that includes home, school, and other persons and institutions that participate in the social processes affecting the students’ lives. Delinquency and the quality of the public school experience, then, must be analyzed within the larger context of school–community relationships.81

Disruptive behavior is a very serious problem in many of our nation’s classrooms.

Reduce High School Dropouts

The 2009 National Governors Association publication Achieving Graduation for All offers a number of action steps to establish a more effective prevention and recovery agenda for school dropout. The action steps are (1) promoting high school graduation for all; (2) targeting youth at risk of dropping out; (3) reengaging youth who have dropped out of school; and (4) providing rigorous, relevant options for earning a high school diploma.82 Together, says the report, “these strategies form a comprehensive approach to dropout prevention and recovery.”

Reduction of the Crime-Control Model in Public Schools

Despite decreases in student delinquency, student drug use, violent school victimization, and school-related deaths, formal social control has intensified in public schools during the past two decades. Examples of harsher forms of student discipline and punishment include more teacher referrals to the principal, more in-school and out-of-school detentions, and more expulsions. In addition, schools are becoming more and more prison-like. Many schools hire uniformed security guards or uniformed and armed security resources officers (SROs); some schools also perform regular locker searches, install security cameras, and use drug-sniffing dogs (Figure 8–3).83 Furthermore, as part of the crime-control model in public schools, there are increased research findings that schools with a larger proportion of African-American students are likely to implement harsh disciplinary practices toward these students.84

THE CASE: The Life Course of Amy Watters, Age 14

Amy’s life as a runaway came to an abrupt end on a cold February night, when Damon didn’t come back to her as he normally did. Earlier, he had told her that he was going out on a “photo shoot,” as he liked to call the time he spent posing for photographers pandering to portions of the gay community’s desire for images of underage boys. Desperately cold and hungry, Amy made her way to a homeless shelter, where workers quickly identified her as a runaway and called social services workers. A lady with the Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF) interviewed Amy, determined her identity, and made a few phone calls to some of Amy’s relatives. Following a hot meal and a one-night stay at the shelter, Amy was put on a bus for the two-hour trip to her Aunt Ellen’s place. When she got there, Ellen was waiting at the bus station for her, and took her under-wing with many kind and loving words. Ellen was Amy’s father’s sister, and after a few days spent with Ellen, Amy’s father arrived to take her home.

Amy and her father never spoke about why Amy had run away, nor did the topic of the camera hidden in the mirror ever come up. Amy was thankful to get back to her own home and, after a night spent in her own bed, did a thorough search of her room for hidden viewing devices. Satisfied that there were none, she settled back into a somewhat normal routine and resumed her schooling.

Amy was now in junior high school, however, and the atmosphere at the school was far different from what it had been at the school she had left. Many of the students seemed haughty and boastful, whereas others were outright troublemakers. Very few students seemed concerned about their grades, and all of them hung in small gangs that didn’t accept outsiders. Amy wasn’t a member of any particular group, and she soon found herself being picked on by girls her own age who made fun of her on any pretext. One day they taunted Amy because of the clothes she wore, saying that they were “Walmart’s finest.” On another day, they criticized her looks, telling her that she was ugly and that it was a waste of renewable resources (a topic that was under study in class) having her on the planet. Amy felt socially isolated and soon became distraught. Although she wanted to, she was unable to concentrate on her studies until she remembered her experience of three years earlier when she had had to join a tough crowd in order to end the bullying to which she had been subjected. Given the sexual experience she had gained as a runaway, Amy found it easy to gain favor among the school’s most admired athletes. With surprisingly little effort, Amy soon became the girlfriend of the football team’s star running back, who people called CJ. CJ, who had failed his freshman year and was 17 years old, had a rough-and-tumble personality that attracted Amy. “I was never the kind of person to play by the rules,” he told her one day. “The more someone tells me not to do something the more I want to do it.” The word soon went out on campus, “Don’t nobody touch this girl; she belongs to CJ.” In no time, the girls who had taunted Amy were seeking her attention.

Discuss

• 1. How could the school environment have been better structured so as to protect Amy from bullying? Generally speaking, are there aspects of the high school environment that inadvertently contribute to (or support) delinquent activity?

Learn more on the Web:

• • Toward Safe and Orderly Schools—The National Study of Delinquency Prevention in Schools:http://justicestudies.com//delinquency_in_schools.pdf.

Follow the continuing Amy Watters saga in the next chapter.

CHAPTER 8 Schools and Delinquency

LEARNING OUTCOMES 1

Summarize the major issues American schools have faced over time.

The major issues American schools have faced over time include whether or not to require mandatory free education, how teachers could maintain control in the classrooms without resorting to brutal measures, the overcoming of racial discrimination, how to handle increased enrollments, and how to deal with the rising costs of education.

• 1. What are some of the major issues that American schools have faced over time?

• 2. Of the issues American schools have faced over time, which have been the most challenging?

• 3. How have those issues been addressed?

LEARNING OUTCOMES 2

Summarize the extent of vandalism, violence, and bullying in schools.

American schools experience a small number of homicides each year, but over 1.7 million nonviolent crimes occur at school. A greater percentage of secondary school teachers than elementary school teachers reported being threatened with injury by a student, 85 percent of public schools reported one or more violent incidents of crime during the 2007–2008 school year, one-fourth of public schools reported that students were bullied on a daily or weekly basis during the 2007–2008 school year, and about one-fourth of students reported gangs in their school or that someone had offered them drugs during the 2007–2008 school year.

• 1. Why is violence a more serious problem in urban schools than in nonurban schools?

• 2. What can be done to lower the incidence of bullying in schools?

• 3. How do gangs influence schools?

vandalism The act of destroying or damaging, or attempting to destroy or damage, the property of another without the owner’s consent or destroying or damaging public property (except by burning).

violence A forceful physical assault with or without weapons. It includes many kinds of fighting, rape, other attacks, gang warfare, and so on.

bullying The hurtful, frightening, or menacing actions undertaken by one person to intimidate another (generally weaker) person to gain that person’s unwilling compliance, and/or to put him or her in fear.

cyberbullying Bullying that involves using technology, such as cell phones and the Internet, to bully or harass another person.

LEARNING OUTCOMES 3

Explain how delinquency is linked to school failure.

Delinquency is linked to school failure through the lack of academic achievement, low social status at school, and dropping out of school.

• 1. Which factors related to school failure do you think are most common?

• 2. How can such factors be effectively addressed and curtailed or eliminated?

academic performance Achievement in schoolwork as rated by grades and other assessment measures. Poor academic performance is a factor in delinquency.

LEARNING OUTCOMES 4

Summarize how various delinquency theories view the school’s role.

Blocked opportunity theory, strain theory, cultural deviance theory, social control theory, labeling theory, radical criminology, general theory of crime, and interactional theory constitute the various delinquency theories that have examined the relationship between delinquency and the school.

• 1. Which delinquency theory is most helpful in understanding school failure? Explain your reasoning.

• 2. How might delinquency theories shape social policies designed to prevent delinquency in schools?

LEARNING OUTCOMES 5

Summarize school students’ rights.

Several landmark cases that have examined students’ rights have ensured that students receive due process rights, unless it would interfere with school operations.

• 1. What legal rights do public school students have?

• 2. Do you believe students in public schools have the rights they need or do they need greater protection? Explain your position.

in loco parentis The principle according to which a guardian or an agency is given the rights, duties, and responsibilities of a parent in relation to a particular child or children.

due process rights The constitutional rights that are guaranteed to citizens—whether adult or juvenile—during their contacts with the police, their proceedings in court, and their interactions with the public schools.

school search The process of searching students and their lockers to determine whether drugs, weapons, or other contraband is present.

LEARNING OUTCOMES 6

Explain the correlation between dropping out of high school and crime.

Dropping out of school influences later success in life by reducing income, making jobs harder to attain, making it more likely to have to rely on welfare, and setting in motion later disadvantages in the transition to adulthood.

• 1. There are a number of reasons why students drop out of school. Which factor do you believe contributes to more students dropping out?

• 2. How can high school dropout rates be reduced?

• 3. Why is it important to reduce dropout rates?

dropout A young person of school age who, of his or her own volition, no longer attends school.

LEARNING OUTCOMES 7

Summarize the school interventions that hold promise for reducing delinquency.

Research has identified school interventions that hold promise for reducing delinquency. These include improved school experiences, mentoring relationships, alternative schools, positive school–community relationships, school-based violence-prevention programs, and interventions to reduce school dropout.

• 1. Which school intervention strategies do you consider most fruitful for reducing delinquency in public schools?

• 2. What is an alternative school? How might alternative schools help reduce delinquency?

disruptive behavior Unacceptable conduct at school. It may include defiance of authority, manipulation of teachers, inability or refusal to follow rules, fights with peers, destruction of property, use of drugs in school, and/or physical or verbal altercations with teachers.

alternative school A facility that provides an alternative educational experience, usually in a different location, for youths who are not doing satisfactory work in the public school se

9 Gangs and Delinquency

“Gang members’ mutual support of criminal activities, and possession of a value system which condones such behavior, distinguishes gang members and gangs from all other offenders and groups.”

—Michael K. Carlie, Into the Abyss

 FLASH MOBS

In what has become an Easter tradition, flocks of gang-bangers filled New York City’s Time Square in April—harassing pedestrians and bursting into stores, where they grabbed merchandise off of shelves and ran away.1 Whereas New York’s City’s experience appears to be related to rites of gang initiation, Philadelphia has recently experienced the same kind of phenomenon. Using text messages and email postings, teenagers organize themselves into what Philadelphia’s police commission calls flash mobs—groups of violent and marauding young people that form at a moment’s notice, seeming to come out of nowhere.2

A flash mob of pillow fighters in London. The event was organized by social media. How can flash mobs serve criminal purposes?

DISCUSS

Why do young people join gangs? What does the gang provide its members that other social institutions don’t?

 Street Gangs and Organized Crime

LEARNING OUTCOMES 1

Summarize what is known about the nature and extent of gang activity in the United States.

Over the past 30 years, urban street gangs—armed with Israeli-made Uzis, Soviet AK-47s, diverted U.S. military M-16s, and other automatic weapons—have evolved into small criminal empires fighting for control of thriving narcotics, auto theft, prostitution, gun running, and extortion operations. Illegal drugs form the backbone of most gang money-making criminal operations, with the manufacture and sale of crack, or rock cocaine, providing the bulk of the business. The crack trade, more than anything else, transformed street gangs into ghetto-based for-profit criminal organizations. Although most such gangs are led by adults, juveniles often play a central role in their day-to-day activities.3

As street gangs have become more business-like, they have formed associations with other organized crime groups, including Mexican drug cartels, Asian criminal groups, and Russian organized crime families. Gangs and their members are also becoming more sophisticated in their use of technology, including computers, cell phones, and the Internet. These new high-tech tools are frequently used to facilitate criminal activity and avoid detection by the police. Although some sources say that the number of gang members is in decline across the United States, some Hispanic gangs, such as Mara Salvatrucha(MS-13) are experiencing an influx of new members.4

This chapter focuses on youths who are involved in gangs. Youth gangs have become a problem in many nations and are widespread in the United States in urban, suburban, and rural areas.

 Nature and Extent of Gang Activity

LEARNING OUTCOMES 2

Summarize theories of how gangs form.

For a brief overview of the development of gangs in the twentieth and early twenty-first century, see the accompanying timeline, which reveals how gangs have emerged from highly transitory social groups to supergangs and violent and drug-trafficking gangs.

According to the 2011 National Youth Gang Survey, an estimated 782,500 gang members and 29,900 gangs were active in the United States. As revealed in Figure 9–1, nearly one-third of all responding law enforcement agencies reported gang activity in 2011. Overall, an estimated 3,300 jurisdictions served by city (population of 2,500 or more) and county law enforcement agencies experienced gang problems in 2011.5

Knowledge of the gang world requires an examination of the definition of gangs and the profile of gang members as well as an understanding of gangs’ intimidation of the school environment, of the structure and leadership of urban street gangs, of emerging gangs in small communities across the nation, of the racial and ethnic backgrounds of gangs, and of female delinquent gangs.

 Development of Gangs in the Twentieth and Early Twenty-First Century

FIGURE 9–1 Law Enforcement Agency Reports of Gang Problems 1996–2011.

Source: Robert L. Listenbee, OJJDP Fact Sheet: Highlights of the 2011 National Youth Gang Survey (Washington, D.C.: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, 2013), p. 2.

Definitions of Gangs

Thrasher’s 1927 gang study was one of the first attempts to define a youth gang:

•  A gang is an interstitial group originally formed spontaneously and then integrated through conflict. It is characterized by the following types of behavior: meeting face-to-face, milling, movement through space as a unit, conflict, and planning. The result of this collective behavior is the development of tradition, unreflective internal structure, esprit de corps, solidarity, morale, group awareness, and attachment to local territory.6

Thrasher does not specify that a gang’s definition must include illegal activity, but Finn-Aage Esbensen and most other gang researchers do. Whereas Thrasher’s definition focused on group interaction, Esbensen was interested in clarifying group demographics (age range, sense of identity, and permanence within a specific area). Combining all three definitions could provide a useful and comprehensive definition of a youth gang.

Profiles of Gang Members

Gang profiles have at least four important dimensions: age of gang membership, size of the gang, commitment to the gang, and attraction of the gang.

Age of Gang Membership

The smaller the community, the more likely it is that its gang members will be juveniles.

Esbensen and colleagues, in their examination of gang members in 11 locations, found that youth make up the following percentage of gang members: Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 15 percent; Phoenix, Arizona, 12.6 percent; Omaha, Nebraska, 11.4 percent; Las Cruces, New Mexico, 11.0 percent; Kansas City, Missouri, 10.1 percent; Orlando, Florida, 9.6 percent; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 7.7 percent; Terrance, California, 6.3 percent; Providence, Rhode Island, 6 percent; Porcello, Idaho, 5.6 percent; and Will County, Oregon, 3.8 percent.7

Juveniles become involved in gangs at as young as eight years of age, running errands and carrying weapons or messages. They are recruited as lookouts and street vendors and join an age-appropriate junior division of the gang. Gangs use younger and smaller members to deal cocaine out of cramped “rock houses,” which are steel-reinforced fortresses. Gangs have long known that youngsters are invaluable because their age protects them against the harsher realities of the adult criminal justice system.8

The smaller the community, the more likely it is that its gang members will be juveniles.

Think About It…

Gang life is a significant part of the adolescent experience for many. What attracts some young people to gangs?

Size of the Gang

Gangs vary in size depending on whether they are traditional or specialty gangs in urban areas or emerging gangs in smaller cities or communities. Large and enduring traditional (territorial) gangs in urban areas average about 180 members, whereas drug-trafficking gangs average only about 25 members. Some urban gangs (for example, the supergangs of Chicago) have thousands of members, but gangs in emerging areas usually number less than 25 or so members.9

Commitment to the Gang

Gang members have varying degrees of commitment to the gang. A typology of gang commitment is contributed by Ira Reiner, who identified five different levels of commitment to the gang: at risk youth, wanabes, associates, hard-core, and original gangsters.10

Youth gang members in a dark alley. Why do young people join gangs?

Attraction of the Gang

Why do young people join gangs? Willie Lloyd, legendary leader of a gang called the Almighty Unknown Vice Lords, explained why he became involved with gangs:

•  I grew up on the streets of Chicago. When I was growing up, the Lords had a big impact on me. I never saw it as a gang but a cohesive and unified principle on which a person could organize his life. Even as a kid of nine, I was intrigued by the Lords when I first saw them outside of the Central Park Theater. It was the first time I had ever witnessed so many black people moving so harmoniously together. They were motored by the same sense of purpose and they all wore similar dress and insignia. There were over a hundred guys, all in black, with capes and umbrellas. To my young eyes, it was the most beautiful expression I had ever seen. They all seemed so fearless, so proud, so much in control of their lives. Though I didn’t know one of them at the time, I fell in love with all of them. In retrospect, I made up my mind the very first time I saw the Vice Lords to be a Vice Lord.11

Mike Carlie, in his national overview of youth gangs, expanded on the question of why youths join gangs, asking why gangs form and what gangs offer to those who join them (see Table 9–1).

Gangs in Schools

Schools have become fertile soil for violent youth gangs. The violence perpetrated by gangs across the nation tends to vary from one school to the next, depending on the economic and social structures of the community, the gang tradition within that school, the gang’s stage of development, and the extent of drug trafficking taking place. See Figure 9–2 for the percentages of students ages 12 through 18 years of age who reported that street gangs were present at school in 2011.

Gangs perpetrate school violence in a number of ways. For example, George W. Knox, David Laske, and Edward Troman-hauser reported that high school students who are gang members are significantly more likely than nongang members to carry a firearm to school for purposes of protection.12 Joseph F. Sheley and James D. Wright also found higher rates of ownership and carrying of firearms among gang members than among nongang members.13 Furthermore, Charles M. Callahan and Ira Rivara determined that gang members are nearly three times as likely as nongang members to say firearm access is “easy.”14

TABLE 9–1 ATTRACTION OF GANGS

Source: Adapted from Mike Carlie, Into the Abyss: A Personal Journey into the World of Street Gangs,http://people.missouristate.edu/MichaelCarlie. Reprinted with permission from Michael K. Carlie.

FIGURE 9–2 Percentage of Students Ages 12–18 Who Reported That Gangs Were Present at School During the School Year, 2009 and 2011.

Source: Simone Robers, Jana Kemp, Jennifer Truman, and Thomas D. Snyder, Indicators of School Crime and Safety: 2012 (Washington, D.C.: National Center for Education Statistics, 2013).

Gangs are also constantly recruiting new members, and nongang members are likely to be physically assaulted if they refuse to join. An African-American male who grew up in Chicago, went to college on a football scholarship, and graduated from law school told how he avoided gang membership: “They were always on me to join a gang. The only way I kept from getting beaten up all the time was to run home from football practice and to run to school every morning. I kept moving all the time, but I kept out of the gangs.”15

Moreover, because more than one gang is typically present in a high school, conflict among gangs takes place on a regular basis. This conflict may be based on competition over the drug market, or it may relate to individual gangs within the school that are seeking to expand their turf. Fights may erupt in the school hallways, in the cafeteria, or during dances. Warring gang youths sometimes start a mass riot, with stabbings and shootings occurring during these altercations. The use of deadly weapons, of course, increases the likelihood of injuries or fatalities.

Finally, conflict among rival gangs in different schools also leads to violence. Fights commonly take place during athletic contests between competing schools. A drive-by shooting is one of the most serious types of violence that can erupt among rival gangs in the school setting. What usually happens is that a gang youth is killed, and the victim’s gang deems it necessary to retaliate; so before school, during lunch recess, or following school, a car speeds by—its occupants spraying bullets.16

Gangs, Schools, and Drugs

Gangs in schools today have an economic base (drug dealing), which was not true in earlier years. Gangs have a number of techniques for selling drugs in schools. In some schools, gang members prop doors open with cigarette packs and then signal from windows to nonstudents waiting to enter the building.17 Some gang members sell drugs in the bathrooms, in the lunchrooms, or in parking lots. Gangs also use younger children in their drug trafficking: The children first serve as lookouts, but as they get older, they can become couriers (runners), who work as conduits between dealers and buyers.18

Gang Recruitment and Initiation Rites

Gangs regularly go on recruiting parties, using three basic recruitment strategies (Figure 9–3).

The recruitment of younger members is generally easy, because the life of a gang member looks very glamorous. Recruitment begins early in the grade school years; adolescent males are most vulnerable in the junior high years.19 But even if a youth has enough support systems at home to resist joining a gang, it is very difficult to live in a neighborhood that is controlled by a street gang and not join. A gang leader explained, “You had two choices in the neighborhood I grew up in—you could either be a gang member or [be] a mama’s boy. A mama’s boy would come straight home from school, go up to his room and study, and that was it.”20

Urban gangs have several methods of initiation:

• • A new member may be “blessed-in” to a gang. Those who are blessed-in to a gang usually have older brothers, fathers, mothers, or other relatives who are already in the gang.

• • A new male member more typically must be “jumped-in,” that is, he must fight other members. He may have to fight a specified number of gang members for a set period of time and demonstrate that he is able to take a beating and fight back, he may have to stand in the middle of a circle and fight his way out, or he may have to run between lines of gang members as they administer a beating (under the latter circumstances, he is expected to stay on his feet from one end of the line to the other).

• • A female is usually initiated into male-dominated gangs by providing sexual services for one or more gang members.

• • A new member is often expected to participate in illegal acts, such as committing thefts or larcenies.

FIGURE 9–3 Three Gang Recruitment Strategies.

 Source: Martin Jankowski, Islands in the Street (Oakland: University of California Press, 1991).

• • A new member is frequently expected to assist in trafficking drugs.

• • A new member in some gangs is expected to participate in “walk-up” or “drive-by” shootings.

• • A new member is sometimes expected to commit a gang-assigned murder. Completing the procedure has sometimes been called a “blood-in,” but is rarely part of initiation rites today.21

Law-Violating Behaviors and Gang Activities

Despite the fluidity and diversity of gang roles and affiliations, it is commonly agreed that core gang members are involved in more serious delinquent acts than are situational or fringe members.22 The 2011 National Youth Gang Survey shows seven main factors contributing to local gang violence.23 The two highest rated factors across survey years are drug-related factors and intergang conflict (see Figure 9–4).

Core gang members are involved in more serious acts of delinquency than are fringe members.

FIGURE 9–4 Factors Influencing Local Gang Violence.

Source: Robert L. Listenbee, OJJDP Fact Sheet: Highlights of the 2011 National Youth Gang Survey (Washington, D.C.: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, 2013), p. 2.

Gangs are increasingly using technology in the commission of crime. The most frequently reported use of technology involves cell phones with walkie-talkie or push-to-talk functions. Walkie-talkie cell phones enable gang members to alert one another to the presence of law enforcement officers or rival gang members. Gang members also use pay-as-you-go cell phones and call forwarding to insulate themselves from police; in addition, gang members make use of police scanners, surveillance equipment, and equipment for detecting microphones or bugs to insulate their criminal activity and to impede police investigations.24

Gangs are also making increased use of computers and the Internet. According to the 2011 National Gang Threat Assessment, gangs use personal computers, laptops, handhelds, and other devices to produce ledgers and maintain records of their criminal enterprises.25 In addition, some evidence exists that gangs are using the Internet to track court proceedings and to identify witnesses; armed with publicly available records of legal proceedings, gangs can then identify and victimize witnesses. The Internet is sometimes used for soliciting sexual acts (a form of Internet-supported prostitution), and it provides a venue for the sale of gang-related clothing, music, and other paraphernalia; gangs are also using the Internet to become more involved in the pirating of movies and music.26

Studies of large urban samples found that gang members are responsible for a large proportion of violent offenses. In Rochester, New York, gang members made up 30 percent of the sample but self-reported committing 68 percent of all adolescent violent offenses, which is about seven times as many serious and violent acts as nongang youths.27 A study in Columbus, Ohio, analyzed the arrest records of 83 gang leaders in the years 1980–1994; during these 15 years, the 83 gang leaders accumulated 834 arrests, 37 percent of which were for violent crimes (ranging from domestic violence to murder). The researchers theorized that violent crimes tended to increase as the gangs began engaging in drug activity and may have been connected to the establishment of a drug market.28

A final dimension of law-violating behaviors of urban street gangs is the extent to which they are becoming organized crime groups. Scott Decker, Tim Bynum, and Deborah Weisel interviewed members of African-American and Hispanic gangs in San Diego and Chicago and found that only the GDs in Chicago are assuming the attributes of organized crime groups.29 It can be argued that aspects of organized crime groups are found in such drug-trafficking gangs as the Bloods and Crips in Los Angeles, the Miami Boys of southern Florida, and the Jamaican Posses of New York and Florida. Beginning in the mid-1980s, these street gangs appeared to become criminal entrepreneurs, supplying illicit drugs, and in a brief period of several years, many of these street gangs developed intrastate and interstate networks for the purpose of expanding their illegal drug-market sales.

Gangs in Small Communities

Since the early 1990s, nearly every city, many suburban areas, and even some rural areas across the nation have experienced the reality of youths who consider themselves gang members. Thrasher’s finding that no gangs he studied were alike appears to be true for these emerging gangs as well.30 Curry and colleagues’ 1992 national survey found that cities with emerging gangs reported that 90 percent of the gangs were made up of juveniles.31

This nationwide expansion began in the late 1980s and appeared to be fueled by four different situations. First, in some communities it took place when ghetto-based drug-trafficking gangs sent ranking gang members to a community to persuade local youths to sell crack cocaine; second, gang-related individuals operating on their own established drug-trafficking networks among community youths. Third, urban gang members whose families had moved to these communities were instrumental in developing local chapters of urban gangs; and fourth, youths in communities with little or no intervention from outsiders developed their own versions of gangs. The latter two types were less likely to become involved in drug trafficking than were the first two types.

FIGURE 9–5 Stages of Gang Development.

Behind the first wave of nationwide gang expansion was urban gang leaders’ knowledge that a lot of new markets were ripe for exploitation and that crack cocaine would command a high price in these new areas. To introduce the drug in these new markets, the representatives of most urban gangs promised the possibility of a gang satellite—that is, the emerging local gang would be connected by both name and organizational ties to the parent gang. However, urban gangs had neither the intent nor the resources to develop extensions in the emerging gang community, and the promise of being a gang satellite was only a carrot to persuade local youths to sell crack cocaine for the urban gang. The development of emerging gangs involved in drug trafficking throughout the nation has seven possible stages, and the degree and seriousness of gang activity in a community depend on the gang’s stage of development (Figure 9–5):32

• 1. Implementation. The first stage begins when an adult gang member, usually a high-ranking officer, comes to a city that has no gangs. On arriving, this gang member goes to a low-income minority neighborhood where he recruits several juveniles to sell crack and be members of the new gang. The recruited juveniles are assured of a percentage of the money they make from the sale of crack; although the exact percentage seems to vary from gang to gang, it is typically about 10 percent.33 The representative from the urban gang returns on a regular basis to supply drugs and pick up the money.

• 2. Expansion and conflict. In the second stage, the adult who came to the community tells the recruited juveniles enough about his gang that they are able to identify with it. They start to wear the proper clothing, learn gang signs, and experience a sense of camaraderie, yet their primary motivation is still to make money from selling drugs. One midwestern youth claimed that he was making $40,000 a month selling crack for the Unknown Vice Lords when he was arrested and institutionalized.34Conflict inevitably arises as drug-trafficking gangs attempt to expand their markets, usually in the same neighborhoods. Fights may break out during school functions, at athletic events and shopping centers, and in parks and other common gathering places. Weapons may be used at this time, and the number of weapons increases dramatically in the community.

• 3. Organization and consolidation. In stage 3, youths identifying with a certain gang attempt to develop a group culture. The leadership is assumed by one or more members of the core group as well as by young adult males from the community. The increased visibility of the gang attracts a sizable number of “wannabes.” The gang may be larger but is still relatively unorganized, consisting primarily of a group of males hanging around together. Recruitment is emphasized, and considerable pressure is put on young minority males to join the gang. One of these males noted, “If you are black, age 12 or so, they really put pressure on you to join. It’s hard not to.”35

• 4. Gang intimidation and community reaction. Several events typically take place during stage 4. Some whites join the minority gangs, and other whites form gangs of their own. One youth represented the spirit of this white reaction when he said, “The blacks ain’t going to push us around.”36 Minority gangs are still more likely to wear their colors and to demonstrate gang affiliation. Drugs are also increasingly sold in the school environment, and gang control becomes a serious problem in the school. A high school teacher expressed her concern: “I’ve never had any trouble teaching in this school. Now, with these gang kids, I’m half afraid to come to school. It’s becoming a very serious situation.”37 Gangs become more visible in shopping centers, and older people begin to experience some fear of shopping when gang youths are present. Equally disturbing—and much more serious in the long run—is that gangs become popular among children in middle school, with some allegiance being given to gangs among young children in first and second grades.

• 5. Expansion of drug markets. Drugs are openly sold in junior and senior high schools, on street corners, and in shopping centers during the fifth stage. Crack houses are present in some minority neighborhoods. Extortion of students and victimization of both teachers and students takes place frequently in the public schools. The gangs are led by adults who remain in the community, the organizational structure is more highly developed, and the number of gang members shows a significant increase. Outsiders have been present all along, but during this stage they seem to be continually coming into and going out of the community. Men in their mid-20s roll into the community driving high-status automobiles, wearing expensive clothes and jewelry, and flashing impressive rolls of money.

• 6. Gang takeover. Communities that permit the gangs to develop to stage 6 discover that gangs are clearly in control in minority neighborhoods, in the schools, at school events, and in shopping centers. The criminal operations of gangs also become more varied and now include robberies, burglaries, aggravated assaults, and rapes. Drive-by shootings begin to occur on a regular basis, and citizens’ fear of gangs increases dramatically. The police, whose gang units usually number several officers, typically express an inability to control drug trafficking and violence.

• 7. Community deterioration. The final stage is characterized by the deterioration of social institutions and the community itself because of gang control. Citizens move out of the city, stay away from shopping centers, and find safer schools for their children. When an emerging gang community arrives at this stage of deterioration, it is fully experiencing the gang problems of urban communities.

In sum, although a community’s reaction greatly affects the seriousness of the problem, nongang and sometimes low-crime communities across the nation in the late 1980s and early 1990s began to experience the development of gangs. These emerging gangs developed along different trajectories, but the most toxic to a community was the process, described earlier, that would take hold when ghetto-based drug-trafficking gang members were able to persuade minority youths to sell crack cocaine for them, and these youths, in turn, developed what they thought would be a satellite to the parent gang.

Racial and Ethnic Gangs

Hispanic/Latino, African-American, Asian, Caucasian, and Native American gangs constitute the basic types of racial and ethnic gangs in the United States. Hispanic/Latino and African-American gangs are generally more numerous and have more members than other racial/ethnic gangs. Almost 50 percent of all gang members are of Hispanic/Latino origin (see Figure 9–6).

Hispanic/Latino Gangs

Hispanic/Latino gangs are divided into Mexican-American (or Chicano), Cuban, Puerto Rican, Dominican, Jamaican, and Central American members. According to the 2005 National Gang Threat Assessment, law enforcement agencies across the nation reported that the most prominent Hispanic/Latino gangs in their jurisdictions were the Los Surenos (Sur 13), Latin Kings, MS-13, 18th Street, Nortenos, and La Raza, with more than 50 percent of reporting agencies indicating that Sur 13 was present in their jurisdiction and nearly 40 percent reporting moderate to high Sur 13 gang activity (Sur 13 was found to be present in 35 states).38 Hispanic/Latino gang members frequently dress distinctively, display colors, communicate through graffiti, use monikers, and bear tattoos.39

African-American Gangs

African-American gangs have received more attention in this chapter than any other racial or ethnic group because most of the ghetto-based drug-trafficking gangs that have established networks across the nation are African American. For example, the Bloods and Crips from Los Angeles, the People and Folks from Chicago, and the Detroit gangs are all mostly African American. African-American gangs usually identify themselves by adopting certain colors in addition to other identifiers, such as the common hand signs shown in Figure 9–7.

Asian Gangs

FIGURE 9–6 Race/Ethnicity of Gang Members, 1996–2011.

Source: National Youth Gang Center, “National Youth Gang Survey Analysis,”http://www.nationalgangcenter.gov/Survey-Analysis/Demographics#anchorregm (accessed September 4, 2014).

There are varieties of Asian gangs in California, including Chinese, Vietnamese, Filipino, Japanese, and Korean groups. The Chinese gangs, especially, have spread to other major cities in the nation, and some of the other gangs also are active outside California. Asian gangs tend to be more organized and to have more of an identifiable leadership than is true of other street gangs. Ko-Lin Chin’s examination of Chinese gangs found them to be involved in some of the nation’s worst gang-related violence as well as heroin trafficking, but unlike other ethnic gangs, Chinese gangs are closely tied to the social and economic life of their rapidly developing and economically robust communities.40 A study of Vietnamese youth gangs in southern California found that these youths experienced much marginality but attained the American dream by robbing Vietnamese families of large amounts of cash that such families keep at home.41

FIGURE 9–7 Common Gang Hand Signs.

Source: Information gathered from Durham (NC) Police Department, Gang Awareness Booklet,http://www.durhampolice.com/pdf/gang_awareness_booklet.pdf.

Caucasian Gangs

Until the closing decades of the twentieth century, most gangs were made up of Caucasian youths. Today, according to Reiner, Caucasian youths make up about 10 percent of the gang population in the United States.42 However, student surveys generally reveal a much larger representation of Caucasian adolescents among gang members.43 For example, a survey of nearly 6,000 eighth graders in 11 sites showed that 25 percent of the Caucasians said they were gang members.44 In the 1990s, the West Coast saw the solidification of lower- and middle-class Caucasian youths into groups who referred to themselves as stoners. These groups frequently abused drugs and alcohol and listened to heavy metal rock music, and some members practiced Satanism, which included grave robbing, desecration of human remains, and sacrifice of animals.45 Stoner groups can be identified by their mode of dress: colored T-shirts with decals of their rock music heroes or bands, Levis, and tennis shoes. They may also wear metal-spiked wrist cuffs, collars, and belts as well as satanic jewelry. The emerging Caucasian gangs across the nation have used many of the symbols of the stoner gangs, especially the heavy metal rock music and the satanic rituals, but they are not as likely to call attention to themselves with their dress, may refer to themselves as neo-Nazi skinheads, and are involved in a variety of hate crimes in addition to drug trafficking.46

Native American Gangs

Attention also has been given to Navajo youth gangs.47 In 1997, the Navajo Nation estimated that about 60 youth gangs existed in Navajo country. Gang values have encouraged such risky behaviors as heavy drinking and drug use, frequently leading to mortality from injuries and alcohol. A small percentage of Navajo male youths were involved in these groups, and at most 15 percent were peripherally affiliated with gangs. Many gang activities involved hanging around, drinking, and vandalizing, but gang members also robbed people, bootlegged alcohol, and sold marijuana.48

Female Delinquent Gangs

Traditional sociologists once considered female gangs to be almost a contradiction in terms. Recent decades, however, have brought increased awareness of adolescent girls who join gangs.

• • A few studies have identified female gangs in Philadelphia and New York, with some of the gangs being extremely violent.49

• • Some studies have found that adolescent females are connected to adolescent male gangs. The planning is done by the males, who usually exclude the females, but the female gang members participate in violent crimes and drug-related gang activities.50

• • Loyalty to the gang rivaled loyalty to the family, and most friends came from within the gang. The gang, according to Quicker, offered warmth, friends, loyalty, and socialization as it insulated its members from the harsh environment of the barrio.51

• • Finn-Aage Esbensen, Elizabeth Piper Deschenes, and L. Thomas Winfree, Jr., found from their analysis of the Denver Youth Survey that girl gang participants committed a wide variety of offenses at only a slightly lower frequency than boys involved in gangs,52 and Carl S. Taylor found that women were frequently represented in drug-trafficking gangs in Detroit.53

• • Beth Bjerregaard and Carolyn Smith determined that involvement in gangs for both females and males was associated with increased levels of delinquency and substance abuse.54 Joan Moore and John Hagedorn’s 2001 summary of the research on female gangs reported that delinquency rates of female gang members are lower than those of male gang members but higher than those of nongang females and males.55

TABLE 9–2 CHARACTERISTICS OF VARIOUS TYPES OF GANGS

• • Esbensen and colleagues’ findings also failed to support the notion that girls involved in gangs were mere sex objects and ancillary members, and they also showed that girls aged out of gangs before boys and that girls received more emotional fulfillment from their involvement with gang activity.56

• • From research conducted in St. Louis, Missouri, and Columbus, Ohio, Jody Miller found that a female in a mixed-gender gang—an environment that supports gender hierarchies and the exploitation of young women—must learn to negotiate to survive in the gang milieu.57

In sum, most studies found that female gangs still serve as adjuncts to male gangs, yet an increasing number of important studies show that female gangs provide girls with the necessary skills to survive in their harsh communities while allowing them a temporary escape from the dismal future awaiting them.58 What these studies revealed is that females join gangs for the same basic reasons that males do—and share with males in their neighborhood the hopelessness and powerlessness of the urban underclass.59 See Table 9–2 for the characteristics of various types of gangs.

 Theories of Gang Formation

The classical theories about the origins of juvenile gangs and gang delinquency date from research done in the 1950s and were formulated by Herbert A. Bloch and Arthur Niederhoffer; Richard Cloward and Lloyd Ohlin; and Albert Cohen, Walter B. Miller, and Lewis Yablonsky.

• • Bloch and Niederhoffer’s theory was based on the idea that joining a gang is part of the experience male adolescents need to grow up to adulthood, so the basic function of the gang is to provide a substitute for the formalized puberty rites that are found in other societies.60

• • Cloward and Ohlin’s theory used the notion that lower-class boys interact with and gain support from other alienated individuals and that these youngsters pursue illegitimate means to achieve the success they cannot gain through legitimate means.61

• • Cohen’s theory stated that gang delinquency represents a subcultural and collective solution to the problem that faces lower-class boys of acquiring status when they find themselves evaluated according to middle-class values in the schools.62

• • Miller held that there is a definite lower-class culture and that gang behavior is an expression of that culture; he saw gang leadership as based mainly on smartness and toughness and viewed the gang as very cohesive and highly conforming to delinquent norms.63

• • Finally, Yablonsky suggested that violent delinquent gangs arise out of certain conditions, which are found in urban slums, that encourage the development of the sociopathic personality in adolescents, and such sociopathic individuals become the core leadership of these gangs.64

These classical theories of gangs focused on sociological variables such as strain (Cloward and Ohlin), subcultural affiliation (Miller and Cohen), and social disorganization (Yablonsky). Cohen, Cloward and Ohlin, and Miller also stressed the importance of the peer group for gang membership.65 Each of the five theories of gang formation has received both support and criticism, but research into current expressions of gang activity is needed, because the existing theories were based primarily on 1950s gangs.66

Other theories of gangs are associated with social disorganization theory.67 This theory is based on the assumptions that poor economic conditions cause social disorganization, that there is a deficiency of social control, and that this lack of social control leads to gang formation and involvement because youths in low-income neighborhoods seek the social order and security that gangs offer.68

More recently, underclass theory has been widely used to explain the origins of gangs.69 In the midst of big-city ghettos and barrios filled with poverty and deprivation, it is argued, gangs are a normal response to an abnormal social setting.70 Part of the underclass’s plight, according to Fagan, is being permanently excluded from participating in mainstream labor market occupations, so members of the underclass are forced to rely on other economic alternatives, such as low-paying temporary jobs, part-time jobs, some form of welfare, or involvement in drug trafficking, prostitution, muggings, and extortion.71 Jankowski contended that gang violence and the defiant attitude of young men are connected with the competitive struggle in poor communities and that being a product of their environment, they adopt a “Hobbesian view of life in which violence is an integral part of the state of nature.”72

TABLE 9–3 THEORIES OF WHY JUVENILES JOIN GANGS

Moreover, Decker and Van Winkle stated that an explanation of why youths join gangs must be seen in the larger context of pulls and pushes.73 Pulls relate to the attractiveness and benefits that the gang is perceived to offer a youth, and the benefits frequently cited are enhanced prestige or status among friends, excitement, and monetary profits from drugs. The pushes of gang membership come from the social, economic, and cultural forces of the larger society. See Table 9–3 for a summary of the theories of why juveniles join gangs.

 Delinquency Across the Life Course: Gang Membership

LEARNING OUTCOMES 3

Describe how the life-course perspective views gang membership.

The life-course perspective offers a number of insights regarding the study of gangs and their members. The most basic is that gang membership can be thought of as a trajectory, with some youngsters entering it and others avoiding it. Those who do enter it stay for varying lengths of time and become more or less involved in gang activities and behaviors. If gang membership is conceived as a trajectory with behavioral consequences, why some people enter it and some do not is an important consideration. The life-course perspective is a reminder that the origins of gang membership are found in several domains; are multidimensional; and include childhood risk factors, the social structural position of the family, family relationships, and unfolding influences of adolescence. Moreover, the life-course orientation suggests that for many people gang membership may act as a turning point with the potential to alter or redirect basic life-course pathways. Finally, the life-course perspective suggests that the duration of gang membership should intensify its consequences.74

Thornberry and colleagues contributed an important life-course orientation in their analysis of the gang behavior of Rochester youths as they aged into their young adult years. Following the sample in the Rochester Youth Development Study from ages 13 to 22, these researchers were able to separate selection effects (the extent to which delinquents seek out the gang) from facilitation effects (the extent to which the gang fosters delinquent behavior in its members). They have done this analysis for a variety of illegal behaviors related to gang activity, delinquency, drug use, drug selling, violence, and gun carrying and use, and have found that gang membership seems to have a pronounced impact on facilitating all of these behaviors.75

Gang membership exhibits a trajectory, with some youngsters entering it and others avoiding it.

Thornberry and colleagues also explored the longer-term consequences of joining a street gang. Does involvement in this strongly deviant form of adolescent social network exact a toll in the later life of the person, or is gang membership merely a transitory adolescent phenomenon with few (if any) long-term consequences?

 Delinquency and Social Policy: Prevention and Control of Youth Gangs

LEARNING OUTCOMES 4

Summarize strategies for preventing and controlling gangs.

Irving Spergel and colleagues’ report on 45 cities with gang problems identified five strategies of intervention: (1) community organization, mobilization, and networking; (2) social intervention, focusing on individual behavioral and value change; (3) opportunities provision, emphasizing the improvement of basic education, training, and job openings for youths; (4) suppression, focusing on arrest, incarceration, monitoring, and supervision of gang members; and (5) organizational development and change, or the creation of special units and procedures.76

In examining the implementation of these strategies, Spergel and colleagues found that suppression was most frequently used (44 percent), followed by social intervention (31.5 percent), organizational development (10.9 percent), community organization (8.9 percent), and opportunities provision (4.8 percent).77 Community organization was more likely to be used by programs in emerging gang cities, whereas social intervention and opportunity provision tended to be the favored strategic approaches in cities with chronic gang problems, but only 17 of the 45 cities saw any evidence of improvement in their gang situation.78

Spergel and colleagues, in developing a model for predicting general effectiveness in intervention strategies, stated the following:

•  A final set of analyses across all cities [indicates] that the primary strategies of community organization and provision of opportunity along with maximum participation by key community actors [are] predictive of successful efforts at reducing the gang problem.79

Spergel and colleagues expanded their approach into the Comprehensive Community-Wide Approach to Gang Prevention, Intervention, and Suppression Program. This model contains several program components for the design and mobilization of community efforts by school officials, employers, street outreach workers, police, judges, prosecutors, probation and parole officers, and corrections officers.80The Gang Violence Reduction Program, an early pilot of this model, was implemented in Chicago, and after three years of program operations, the areas assessed in the preliminary evaluation of this project—lower levels of gang violence, few arrests for serious gang crimes, and hastened departures of youths from gang activities—were positive among the targeted group.81

The program was later implemented in five jurisdictions: Mesa, Arizona; Tucson, Arizona; Riverside, California; Bloomington, Illinois; and San Antonio, Texas.82 These sites initially undertook the process of community mobilization as they identified or assessed the nature and extent of the gang problem; they then planned for program development and implementation in a problem-solving framework. It was not long thereafter that they began to implement appropriate interrelated strategies to target gang violence and its causes while they continued to reassess the changing nature and extent of the gang problem. Their strategies consisted of a combination of community mobilization, social intervention and outreach, provision of social and economic opportunities for youths, suppression or social control, and organizational change and development.83

Think About It…

Membership in youth gangs can affect people long after they have grown up. What are some of the possible longterm consequences of membership in street gangs?

What these efforts by Spergel and colleagues demonstrate is that only an integrated, multidimensional community-oriented effort is likely to have any long-term effect in preventing and controlling gangs in the United States. Such gang prevention, intervention, and control models must have several components: (1) The community must take responsibility for developing and implementing the model; (2) the model must take very seriously the structural hopelessness arising from the unmet needs of underclass children; (3) prevention programs, especially in the first six years of school, must be emphasized; (4) supporters must coordinate all the gang intervention efforts taking place in a community; and (5) sufficient financial resources must be available to implement the model. One of the exciting intervention efforts with gangs is found in Homewood Industries and the work of Father Greg Boyle; see Exhibit 9–1.

EXHIBIT 9–1 Father Greg Boyle, S. J., A Man with a Vision

One of the most remarkable and influential people who has ever worked in gang intervention is Father Greg, as he is known. He was born in Los Angeles, one of eight children, and after graduating from high school in Los Angeles, he decided to become a priest and was ordained.

When he was a priest in a small congregation in Dolores Mission Church, Father Greg and the local community developed positive alternatives to gang membership, including establishing a day-care program and an elementary school and finding legitimate employment for youth.

In 1982, as a response to civil unrest in Los Angeles, Father Greg launched the first business, Homeboy Bakery. One of its purposes was to enable gang members to work side by side. The success of the bakery laid the groundwork for other businesses that followed.

Father Greg is a nationally known speaker, and in 2005 was a featured speaker at the White House Conference on Youth at the personal invitation of Mrs. George Bush. In addition to all the committees he serves on, he has received much recognition and many awards, including the California Peace Prize, on behalf of Homeboy Industries and for his work with former gang members. In 2008, he received the Civic Metal of Honor from the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce. In 2010, he published Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion, recalling his 20 years in the barrio of Los Angeles.

Father Greg, like others across the nation, is attempting to make a difference by giving gang youth hope and providing a means of support for them to leave the gang.

Source: Carol Ann Morrow, “Jesuit Greg Boyle, Gang Priest,” St. Anthony Messenger, August, 1999, http//www.americancatj;oc.org/Messenger/Aug1999/feature1.asn (accessed July 18, 2014).

THE CASE: The Life Course of Amy Watters, Age 14

Amy soon learned that her new boyfriend, CJ, was a member of a street gang whose influence extended throughout the school. The gang was called the Splitter Boyz, and rumor had it that the Boyz made a lot of money by selling marijuana and other drugs to students throughout the city. Most sales took place during the school day and handoffs of money and drugs were concealed in exchanges of backpacks, lunches, and homework folders—and even secreted into laptops, iPads, and the like.

Amy soon learned that the Boyz were led by a man called Jake. Jake, whom CJ had never actually met, was said to be in his 30s and to be wealthy beyond belief. “He can buy anything—or ANYONE—he wants,” CJ told her. “I’m going to be like that some day,” he said. Right now, however, CJ was pretty low in the gang’s hierarchy, and was striving to work his way up. CJ’s assignment, said to have been handed down directly from Jake, was to turn as many of the school’s football team players into regular customers as he could. Thanks to CJ, marijuana was soon the recreational drug of choice at team parties and pep rallies, although one golden rule remained: “No smoking before games,” CJ told her. “Sex,” he told her, “well, now that’s a different story.”

Other than marijuana, some team members were anxious to purchase steroids, which CJ made available to them at what he called “discount prices.” Amy once asked CJ if he ever used steroids. “Hell no,” he answered. “Who knows what’s in that sh*t!”

Discuss

• 1. Why is CJ affiliated with a gang? Generally speaking, what is the attraction of street gangs for young people? How do gangs contribute to delinquency?

Learn more on the Web:

• • National Gang Center: http://www.nationalgangcenter.gov Follow the continuing Amy Watters saga in the next chapter.

CHAPTER 9 Gangs and Delinquency

LEARNING OUTCOMES 1

Summarize what is known about the nature and extent of gang activity in the United States.

The extent of gang activity, according to the 2011 National Youth Gang Survey, was an estimated 782,500 gang members and 29,900 gangs throughout the United States. In cities with populations larger than 50,000, gangs have remained about the same in size, but gangs have decreased in numbers in smaller communities.

• 1. Why do so many adolescents find gang membership attractive?

• 2. Why has the appeal of gangs apparently declined in small communities?

• 3. Why are so many gangs involved in illegal activities?

• 4. How might a member of a gang from one community interest youths in an area without gangs to become involved in gang activity?

crack A less expensive but more potent form of cocaine.

gang A group of youths who are bound together by mutual interests, have identifiable leadership, and act in concert to achieve a specific purpose that generally includes the conduct of illegal activity.

emerging gang Any youth gang that formed in the late 1980s and early 1990s in communities across the nation and that is continuing to evolve.

LEARNING OUTCOMES 2

Summarize theories of how gangs form.

The classical theories of why youths join gangs, which focus on sociological variables, have been joined by more recently developed social disorganization application, underclass theory, competitive struggle in poor communities, and the context of pulls and pushes. Gangs are extending their influence in smaller communities, and generally move through the following stages of development: implementation, expansion conflict, organization and consolidation, gang intimidation and community reaction, expansion of drug markets, gang takeover, and community deterioration.

• 1. Which of the theories discussed in this section do you think offers the best explanation as to why youths become involved in gangs?

• 2. What are the stages of gang formation that have been identified?

LEARNING OUTCOMES 3

Describe how the life-course perspective views gang membership.

The life-course perspective offers a number of insights regarding the study of gangs and their members. The most basic is that gang membership can be thought of as a trajectory, with some youngsters entering it and others avoiding it. Those who do enter stay for varying lengths of time and become more or less involved in gang activities and behaviors. The life-course perspective is a reminder that the origins of gang membership are multidimensional and include childhood risk factors, the social structural position of the family, family relationships, and the unfolding influences of adolescence.

• 1. How does the life-course perspective on delinquency differ from other perspectives?

• 2. Why do some people enter a trajectory that includes delinquency, whereas others do not?

• 3. How might life-course trajectories that involve delinquency be avoided?

LEARNING OUTCOMES 4

Summarize strategies for preventing and controlling gangs.

Irving Spergel and colleagues identified five strategies of intervention from the 45 cities they studied: (1) community organization, mobilization, and networking; (2) social intervention; (3) opportunities provision; (4) suppression; and (5) organizational development and change. They found that suppression was most frequently used.

• 1. Why have communities relied on suppression as a major strategy for controlling gangs, especially emerging gangs?

• 2. How can social intervention be used to prevent gang development?

• 3. How can community mobilization be used to prevent gang development?

“For the foreseeable future, American youngsters will be aware of the psychoactive potential of many drugs and, in general, will have relatively easy access to them.”

—Monitoring the Future Survey

A recent report by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) drew attention to the fact that research has consistently found that substance abuse among adolescents is linked to serious juvenile offending.1 That finding was further supported by research from the ongoing OJJDP-sponsored Pathways to Desistance study. The “pathways” study is a large collaborative, multidisciplinary project that is currently following 1,354 serious juvenile offenders (both male and female) ages 14 to 18 for seven years after their adjudication as delinquent. The study is exploring factors that lead youths who have committed serious offenses to continue offending, or to desist from offending. Some of those factors include individual maturation, drug involvement, life changes, and involvement with the criminal justice system. A significant major finding of the study to date is that substance-abuse treatment reduces both the use of illegal substances and criminal offending.

The adolescent offenders profiled in the Pathways to Desistance study initially self-reported very high levels of substance use and substance-use problems. The use of illegal substances was linked to other illegal activities that were also engaged in by the study participants. As such, substance abuse was found to be “a strong, prevalent predictor of offending.” The presence of a drug or alcohol disorder and the level of substance use were both shown to be strongly and independently related to the level of self-reported offending and the number of arrests. “The good news,” say researchers involved in the study, “is that treatment appears to reduce both substance use and offending.” According to those authors, “Youth whose treatment lasted for at least 90 days and included significant family involvement showed significant reductions in alcohol use, marijuana use, and offending over the following 6 months.”

A teenager smoking marijuana. Studies have consistently shown that drug use among adolescents is linked to more serious juvenile offending. What is the link between the two?

DISCUSS

What is the likely connection between the use of illicit substances by adolescents and their involvement in delinquency? What can be done to break that connection?

Substance abuse among adolescents has dropped dramatically since the late 1970s.2 The bad news is that drug use has significantly increased among high-risk youths and is becoming commonly linked to juvenile lawbreaking.3 More juveniles are also selling drugs than ever before in the history of the United States. Furthermore, the spread of AIDS within populations of intravenous drug users and their sex partners adds to the gravity of the substance-abuse problem.4

Summarize recent trends in adolescent drug use.

Adolescent drug use becomes abuse only when the user becomes dysfunctional (for example, is unable to attend or perform in school or to maintain social and family relationships; exhibits dangerous, reckless, or aggressive behavior; or endangers his or her health). The drug-dependent compulsive user’s life usually revolves around obtaining, maintaining, and using a supply of drugs.5 And as this chapter will show, drug use not only causes harm in itself but also is closely linked to delinquency.

Society tends to focus on youths’ use of harder drugs, although alcohol remains the drug of choice for most adolescents. Drug use among adolescents was extremely high during the late 1960s and into the 1970s, reaching epidemic proportions. Overall rates of illicit drug use appeared to peak sometime around 1979 and then leveled off, but even with the leveling off that took place, rates of illicit drug use among youths remained high for some time. Then, in 2001, there was a significant downturn in drug-use levels.6According to the most recent 2013 Monitoring the Future study, overall illicit drug use by youths continued to decline until 2009, after which increased use of some drugs began to occur.7

Alcohol remains the drug of choice for most adolescents.

Illicit drugs include marijuana/hashish, cocaine (including crack), heroin, hallucinogens, inhalants, and prescription-type psychotherapeutic drugs used for nonmedical purposes. In 2012, an estimated 23.9 million Americans aged 12 or older were current illicit drug users, meaning they had used an illicit drug during the month prior to the survey interview. This estimate represents 9.2 percent of the population aged 12 or older. The overall rate of current illicit drug use among persons aged 12 or older in 2012 (9.2 percent) was similar to the rates in 2009 to 2011 (ranging from 8.7 to 8.9 percent), but it was higher than the rates in the years from 2002 to 2008. In 2012, marijuana was the most commonly used illicit drug, with 18.9 million users. It was used by 79.0 percent of current illicit drug users. About two-thirds (62.8 percent) of illicit drug users used only marijuana in the past month. Also, in 2012, 8.9 million persons aged 12 or older were current users of illicit drugs other than marijuana (or 37.2 percent of illicit drug users aged 12 or older).8

The National Survey on Drug Use and Health documented increases in the specific categories of prescription drugs, marijuana, MDMA (Ecstasy), and methamphetamine. The increase in the use of illicit drugs was driven by a significant increase in current use of marijuana. See Figure 10–1, which gives details on users of an illicit drug in 2012.

In 2012, males had higher rates of illicit drug use among persons aged 12 or older than females (11.6 percent versus 6.9 percent). Males were more likely than females in the past month to use marijuana (9.6 percent versus 5.0 percent), but males and females had similar rates for stimulants, methamphetamine, and sedatives.9

Note:1 Illicit Drugs include marijuana/hashish, cocaine (including crack), heroin, hallucinogens, inhalants, or prescription type psychotherapeutics used nonmedically.

Source: Results from the 2012 National Survey on Drug Use and Health: National Findings (Rockville: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, September 2013), p. 14.

Studies tell us that although fewer adolescents appear to be experimenting with drugs today than in years past, those who use them tend to do so more frequently. What attracts some young people to drugs?

Current drug use among persons age 12 years or varied by race/ethnicity in 2012. The lowest rate was among Asians (3.7 percent). Rates were 14.8 percent for persons reporting two or more races, 12.7 percent among American Indians or Alaska Natives, 7.8 percent among Native Hawaiians or Other Pacific Islanders, 11.3 percent among African Americans, 9.2 percent among whites, and 8.3 percent among Hispanics.10

Source: Adapted from Lloyd D. Johnston, Patrick M. O’Malley, Jerald G. Bachman, and John E. Schulenberg, Monitoring the Future: National Results on Adolescent Drug Use (Washington, D.C.: National Institutes of Health, 2014), Tables 1, 3.

Adolescents vary, of course, in terms of how frequently they use drugs and the type of drugs they use (Table 10–1). The variables of age, gender, urban or rural setting, social class, and availability strongly affect the types of drugs used and have some effect on the frequency of drug use. Some users take drugs only at parties and on special occasions, some reserve them for weekends, and some use drugs every day.Table 10–2 lists the percentages of students reporting drug use in the past month, in the past year, and over their lifetime.

Source: Adapted from Lloyd D. Johnston, Patrick M. O’Malley, Jerald G. Bachman, and John E. Schulenberg, Monitoring the Future: National Results on Adolescent Drug Use (Washington, D.C.: National Institutes of Health, 2014), Tables 5, 6 and 7.

Rates of illicit drug use in this nation remain high, especially among high-risk youths.

Studies indicate that although fewer adolescents appear to be experimenting with drugs, those who use them tend to do so more frequently. Heavy users tend to be those who are male and white as well as youths who do not plan to attend college; and in schools, low achievers abuse drugs more than do high achievers.11 Substance abuse is more common on the East and West Coasts than in the middle of the country.

In sum, although drug use among adolescents peaked during the late 1970s, rates of illicit drug use in this nation remain high, especially among high-risk youths.

Recall the main types of drugs used by adolescents.

The licit and illicit drugs used by adolescents, in decreasing order of frequency, are alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamine, inhalants, sedatives, stimulants (amphetamines and hallucinogens), steroids, prescription drugs, and heroin. The licit drugs are those permitted for users who are of age (age 18 and older for tobacco and aged 21 and older for alcohol); the illicit drugs are those forbidden by law (exceptions being drugs prescribed by a physician and marijuana in jurisdictions that permit the use of this drug). A number of illicit drugs can take control of adolescents’ lives when they become addicted. Drug addiction, according to noted drug-abuse researcher James A. Inciardi, is “a craving for a particular drug, accompanied by physical dependence, which motivates continuing usage, resulting in tolerance to the drug’s effects and a complex of identifiable symptoms appearing when it is suddenly withdrawn.”12

The seriousness of alcohol use among adolescents can be seen in the data from the 2014 Monitoring the Future rsearch. According to this study, binge drinking (five or more drinks in a row during the prior two-week interval) has been a problem since the collection of data on adolescence and the use of alcohol.13

The use of cigarettes by adolescents is also a national public health concern. Due largely to efforts designed to steer young people away from the use of tobacco, cigarette smoking has declined sharply among American adolescents. From 2002 to 2012, the rate of current cigarette smoking among youths decreased for both males and females (Figure 10–2).14

Marijuana, made from dried hemp leaves and buds, is the most frequently used illicit drug. An interesting indicator of the popularity of marijuana is the number of street terms that have been used to designate the substance: a-bomb, Acapulco gold, African black, ashes, aunt mary, baby, bammy, birdwood, California red, Colombian gold, dope, giggleweed, golden leaf, grass, hay, joints, Mexican brown, Mexican green, Panama gold, pot, reefer, reefer weed, seaweed, shit, stinkweed, Texas tea, and weed.15

Source: Results from the 2012 National Survey on Drug Use and Health: National Findings (Rockville: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, September 2013), p. 46.

Cocaine, the powder derivative of the South American coca plant, is replacing other illegal drugs in popularity. Snorting (inhaling) is the most common method of using cocaine, but freebasing (smoking) cocaine became popular in the 1980s. Freebase cocaine is derived from a chemical process in which the purified cocaine is crystallized; the crystals are crushed and smoked in a special heated glass pipe. Smoking freebase cocaine provides a quicker, more potent rush and a more powerful high than regular cocaine gives. Intravenous cocaine use also occurs, producing a powerful high, usually within 15 to 20 seconds. The method of speedballing (the intravenous use of cocaine in combination with another drug) intensifies the euphoric effect but can be quite dangerous.16

Dried marijuana flowers and stems. What are the effects of marijuana? Should it be classified as a “dangerous drug?”

Crack cocaine. Efforts have recently been made to legalize certain controlled substances. Would you be in favor of allowing recreational use of cocaine or crack cocaine in private?

Crystal methamphetamine. Why are some people drawn to illicit drug use?

Methamphetamine is a synthetic drug otherwise known by its street names: chalk, crank, crystal meth, glass, ice, and meth (to name just a few). It is a highly addictive stimulant that can be injected, smoked, or snorted, whose effects last up to eight hours (with an initial rush at the beginning and a less intense high for the duration). This drug makes a user feel awake, aware, and happy but also agitated and paranoid. Methamphetamine is one of many of the so-called club drugs. See Table 10–3 for the percentages of students reporting the use of methamphetamine in 2004 and 2013.

Many types of inhalants are used by adolescents, but what these drugs have in common is that youths have to inhale the vapors to receive the high that they seek. One frequently used inhalant is butyl nitrite, commonly called RUSH, which is packaged in small bottles and can often be found in adult bookstores as well as on the street.

The use of these drugs brings about a feeling of excitement that is often followed by disorientation accompanied by slurred speech and a feeling of sleepiness. The use of inhalants can also be followed by mild to severe headaches and/or nosebleeds. Chronic use of some inhalants is associated with neurological damage and injury to the liver and kidneys.17

Like inhalants, many different sedatives, or barbiturates, are used by young people. The common factors among all sedatives are that they are taken orally and that they affect the user by depressing the nervous system and inducing a drowsy condition.

Adolescents often abuse prescription drugs. Benzodiazepines (minor tranquilizers or sedatives) are among the most widely prescribed of all drugs. Valium, Librium, and Equanil are commonly prescribed for anxiety or sleep disorders, so to obtain them, some adolescents simply raid their parents’ medicine cabinets. Adolescents can also get these prescription drugs from older teens or young adults or purchase them from Internet-based sources. The National Association of Boards of Pharmacy has identified about 200 websites that dispense prescription drugs but do not offer online prescribing services.

Amphetamines, or “uppers.” Who’s most likely to use non-prescribed amphetamines?

Source: Adapted from Lloyd D. Johnston, Patrick M. O’Malley, Jerald G. Bachman, and John E. Schulenberg, Monitoring the Future: National Survey Results on Drug Use, 1975–2013, Volume I (Washington, D.C.: National Institutes of Health, 2014), Tables 5, 6, and 7.

Amphetamines were first made in Germany in the 1880s, but it was not until World War II that they were used by Americans. In the 1990s, Ecstasy, the common name for MDMA, became popular on college campuses and with adolescents and was widely used at parties. Ecstasy is usually ingested orally in tablet or capsule form, is sometimes snorted, and is occasionally smoked; it is reported to produce profound pleasurable effects, such as acute euphoria and positive changes in attitude and self-confidence.18 Ecstasy and various other substances are sometimes called club drugs.

A parade of hallucinogens has been available over the years to adolescents interested in embracing mind-expanding experiences. Phencyclidine (PCP), a nervous system excitant that has analgesic, anesthetic, and hallucinogenic properties, was introduced in the late 1960s and became popular during the 1970s. First marketed as the PeaCe Pill, PCP was also known as angel dust, animal tank, aurora borealis, buzz, devil dust, DOA, dummy dust, elephant, elephant juice, goon, rocket fuel, and THC. Concern over PCP mounted during the 1970s,19 as its dangerousness became apparent.20 Use of PCP declined during the 1980s, with national samples of high school seniors who had used PCP at least once dropping from 13 percent in 1979 to less than 3 percent by 1990.21

Currently, 100 different types of anabolic steroids have been developed, and each requires a prescription to be used legally in the United States. Street terms include Arnolds, gym candy, juice, pampers, stackers,and weight trainers. Anabolic steroids can be taken orally, injected intramuscularly, or rubbed on the skin in the form of creams or gels. Steroids are often used in patterns called cycling, which involves taking multiple doses of the drugs over a period of time, stopping for a period, and then starting again; users also often combine several different types of steroids in a process known as stacking. A further method of steroid use is called pyramiding, a process in which users slowly escalate steroid use, reaching a peak amount at mid-cycle and gradually lowering the dose toward the end of the cycle.22

Results from the 2013Monitoring the Future study, which surveyed students in 8th, 10th, and 12th grades, showed that 1.1 percent of 8th graders, 1.3 percent of 10th graders, and 2.1 percent of 12th graders reported using steroids at least once in their lifetime (see Table 10–4).

Pharmaceutical grade testosterone. Anabolic steroids, often used illegally in body building and to enhance athletic performance, have a number of legitimate medical uses. What are the dangers of unsupervised use?

Opium, which is derived from certain poppy species, is the source of heroin, morphine, paregoric, and codeine, some of which are still used medically today. Heroin, a refined form of morphine, was introduced about the turn of the twentieth century, and its street names include black tar, boy, brown, H, harry, henry, horse, shit, and smack.23

Chronic heroin use, unlike the use of most other drugs, appears to produce relatively minor direct or permanent physiological damage. Nevertheless, street heroin users typically neglect themselves and, as a result, report such disorders as heart and lung abnormalities, scarred veins, weight loss, malnutrition, endocarditis (a disease of the heart valves), stroke, gynecological problems, hepatitis, local skin infections, and abscesses.24

Source: Adapted from Lloyd D. Johnston, Patrick M. O’Malley, Jerald G. Bachman, and John E. Schulenberg, Monitoring the Future: National Results on Adolescent Drug Use (Washington, D.C.: National Institutes of Health, 2014), Tables 3, 5, and 7.

Table 10–5 lists types of drugs along with a description of each.

Explain the relationship between drug abuse and delinquency.

An issue that has long been debated is whether drugs cause delinquency or delinquency leads to drug use, or whether some other factors precede both delinquency and the onset of drug use.25 Considerable research has found that delinquency tends to precede the use of drugs.26 Other research suggests that what might appear to be a causal association is in fact a product of shared antecedents.27 It is possible that a common factor, or syndrome, exists that underlies both delinquent behavior and drug use; this common factor may explain the frequency and type of drug use.28

An important question is whether drugs cause delinquency or delinquency leads to drug use, or whether some other factors precede both delinquency and the onset of drug use.

Since the early 1990s, consensus has been increasing on the findings that explain the onset and continuing use of illicit drugs:

• • There is widespread agreement that a sequential pattern of involvement in drug use during adolescence exists.29 Denise B. Kandel and colleagues, using cross-sectional research and longitudinal data, proposed a developmental model for drug-use involvement: Alcohol use follows a pattern of minor delinquency and exposure to friends and parents who drink; the use of marijuana follows participation in minor delinquency and adoption of beliefs and values that are consistent with those held by peers but opposed by parents’ standards; and adolescents’ drug use proceeds to other illicit drugs if relationships with parents are poor and there is increased exposure to peers who use a variety of illegal drugs.30

• • In examining drug use, it is important to identify in which of three major groups users belong. In the first group, youths or adults experiment once or twice and then discontinue drug use, whereas members of the second group continue drug use into young adulthood but do not allow drug use to interfere with their lives in any major ways; those in the third group become addicted or dependent on drugs, their entire lifestyle is likely to be designed around acquiring drugs daily, and they frequently commit crimes to maintain their drug supply.

• • Numerous risk factors appear to be related to delinquency and drug use. Early factors consist of perinatal difficulties, minor physical abnormalities, and brain damage, and later developmental risk factors are found in the family environment, including a family history of alcoholism, poor family management practices, and family conflict; other risk factors are early antisocial behavior and academic failure. Community risk factors include living in economically deprived areas and disorganized neighborhoods. According to J. David Hawkins, Richard F. Catalano, and Devon D. Brewer, the more of these risk factors a child has, the more likely it is that he or she will become involved in drug abuse.31

• • There is little debate that youths who use hard drugs are more likely to engage in chronic delinquent behavior.32 Elliott and Huizinga found that nearly 50 percent of serious juvenile offenders were also multiple drug users, that 82 percent of these offenders reported use (beyond experimentation) of at least one illicit drug, that rates of alcohol use among serious offenders were 4 to 9 times those of nonoffenders, and that rates of marijuana use among serious offenders were 14 times those of nonoffenders.33 Jeffrey Fagan and colleagues’ survey of inner-city youths also determined that heavy substance use was more prevalent and frequent among serious delinquents but that the type of substance used was more strongly associated with delinquency than was the frequency of drug use.34

Summarize the explanations for the onset of drug abuse.

Some adolescents never use drugs, others use drugs from time to time on an experimental or recreational basis, and still others go through a period of experimentation with substance use and become committed to continuous use. This latter group is physically and/or emotionally addicted to the continued use of drugs.

Youths who use hard drugs are more likely to engage in chronic delinquent behavior than those who don’t. Do drugs cause delinquency or does delinquency lead to drug use? Or do some other factors precede both delinquency and the onset of drug use?

There are at least two issues that can help us understand juveniles who use drugs. The first is determining whether it is the onset of drug use, the escalation of drug use, the addiction to drug use, or the cessation of drug use that is being addressed. We might ask: Why do some juveniles never try drugs? Why do some juveniles experiment with drugs from time to time but do not become addicted? Why do other adolescents go from the beginning stages of drug use to more serious stages? Why do still other juveniles become addicted to drugs? Why are some of those who become addicted able to quit, whereas other addicts seem unable or unwilling to terminate drug use?

The second issue is that there is no single comprehensive picture of what causes adolescents’ use of drugs. Simons, Conger, and Whitbeck made this point when they said that “while research has established a number of correlates of drug use, no theoretical model has been developed which specifies the causal ordering of these associations and explicates their relationship to each other.”35 To express this another way, we might be aware of many of the reasons why juveniles become involved in drug use, but we do not know how all of the pieces of the puzzle fit together.36

The following sections specifically address adolescents’ initial use of drugs by focusing on theories that attempt to explain substance use among adolescents.

Some theories have focused on how perceptions about the costs and benefits of drug use contribute to adolescents’ decisions to experiment with these substances. Such models share two assumptions: (1) The decision to use substances rests in substance-specific expectations and perceptions held by adolescents, and (2) the effects of all other variables (for example, adolescents’ personality traits or their involvement with peers who use substances) are mediated through substance-specific cognitions, evaluations, and decisions.37 The theory of reasoned action, which holds that the most important determinant of a person’s behavior is behavioral intent, is the most encompassing of these cost-benefit/decision-making models.38

Another explanation for the onset and continued use of drugs says that the typical addict has an addiction-prone personality and suffers from some deep-rooted personality disorder or emotional problem.

The desire to get high, which is seen as a way to relieve stress, depression, or the boredom of everyday life, is common in adolescent peer culture. The desire to drink alcohol and get high is very much related to the desire to feel good, to be comfortable in social situations, and to gain acceptance in peer culture. This explanation for the appeal of substance abuse says that stress relief provides a sought-after high or peak experience.

Social learning theory posits that an adolescent’s involvement in substance abuse has three sequential effects: It begins with the observation and imitation of substance-specific behaviors; it continues with social reinforcement, such as encouragement and support for drug use; and it culminates in a juvenile’s expectation of positive social and physiological consequences from continued drug use. These anticipated consequences might be primarily social in nature, such as acceptance or rejection by peers during experimental use and then become largely physiological in nature, such as positive or negative physiological reactions to the substances themselves during subsequent stages. Social learning theory essentially says that an adolescent who anticipates that using substances will produce more personal benefits than costs will be at risk for continued use.39

Travis Hirschi’s social control theory and Hawkins and Weis’s social development model both assume that emotional attachments to peers who use substances is a primary cause of substance abuse. Unlike social learning theories, however, these two approaches pay specific attention to weak conventional bonds to society and to the institutions and individuals who might otherwise discourage deviant behavior.40Hirschi asserted that the deviant impulses that most adolescents share are held in check or controlled by strong bonds to conventional society, families, schools, and religions; however, adolescents who do not have such controlling influences will not feel compelled to adhere to convention or to engage in socially acceptable behaviors.41

The social development model proposes that adolescents become attached to substance-using peers if they feel uncommitted either to conventional society or to positive role models. Unlike Hirschi’s social control theory that focuses largely on social systems, the social development model focuses more on individuals, their social development and their social interactions. This focus shifts developmentally, with parents dominating the preschool years, teachers dominating the preadolescent phase, and peers dominating the adolescent stage.42

Types of Explanation Description

Cognitive-Affective Theories —These theories relate to how the perceptions about the costs and benefits of drug use contribute to adolescents’ decision to experiment with these substances.

Addictive-Personality Theory —The typical addict has an addiction-prone personality and suffers from some deep-rooted personality disorder or emotional problems.

Stress Relief Theory —The desire to get high—as a means to relieve stress, depression, or the boredom of everyday life—is common in adolescent culture.

Social Learning Theory —This theory postulates that an adolescent’s involvement in substance abuse begins with observation and imitation of substance-specific behaviors, continues with social reinforcement, and cultivates in a juvenile’s expectation of positive social and physiological consequences from continued drug use.

Social Control Theories —Emotional attachment to peers who use substances is a primary cause of substance abuse.

Social Disorganization Theory —The bleak economic environment has resulted in those situated in these settings to experience doubt, hopelessness, and uncertainty, and, as a result, they seek relief in drugs.

Integrated Theories —Elliott and colleagues use strain, social control, and social learning theories to form a perspective that accounts for delinquent behavior and drug use.

Adolescents become attached to substance-using peers if they feel uncommitted either to conventional society or to positive role models.

Social disorganization theory explains the onset and escalation of adolescents’ drug use by claiming that a bleak economic environment for certain disenfranchised groups has created a generation of young adults in urban inner cities who regularly experience doubt, hopelessness, and uncertainty. According to this perspective, the hopelessness of the poor leads them to seek relief. Hence, drug use and alcohol abuse provide an immediate fix for hopelessness but, in the long run, create other problems.43

Delbert S. Elliott and colleagues offer a model that expands traditional strain, social control, and social learning theories into a single perspective that accounts for delinquent behavior and drug use.44 They described the mechanisms by which neighborhood disorganization, attachment to families, and social values contribute to involvement with drugs.45 This model was initially created to explain the causes of delinquency, but it was later more fully developed to explain adolescents’ drug-using behavior.46 SeeExhibit 10–1, “Explanations for the Onset of Drug Abuse.”

Explain the impact drug use can have on a person’s life.

Two basic pathways are possible for substance-abusing youths. They may restrict themselves to substance abuse and not become involved in other delinquent activities; these offenders may desist from substance abuse after their adolescent years or continue to use drugs as adults. Alternatively, substance-abusing youths who also participate in other delinquent activities may desist from one or both types of activity during adolescence or continue to be involved in one or both as adults.

There is some evidence showing that about two-thirds of substance-abusing youths continue to use drugs after reaching adulthood but that about half desist from other forms of criminality. Researchers in the 1980s found that drug abusers who persisted in both crime and substance abuse as adults typically came from poor families, did poorly in school, used multiple types of drugs, were chronic offenders, and had an early onset of both drug use and delinquent behavior.47

Marvin D. Krohn, Alan J. Lizotte, and Cynthia M. Perez, in their 1997 analysis of the Rochester data, found that the use of alcohol and drugs in early adolescence increases a youngster’s risk of becoming pregnant or impregnating someone, becoming a teenage parent, dropping out of school, and prematurely living independently from parents or guardians; in turn, the process of experiencing these early transitions increases the chances that individuals will use alcohol and drugs when they become young adults.48Krohn and colleagues suggested that the cumulative impact of experiencing various early transitions may be detrimental to the successful movement, or transition, to adult status and adult roles.49 It is not surprising that an early or unsuccessful transition in one area will have implications for other trajectories.50 Off-time and out-of-order transitions can be especially disruptive because the individual may not be prepared for the added responsibilities and obligations that frequently accompany these transitions, and precocious transitions can further lead to problematic consequences because of the increased economic burdens and reduced economic prospects facing those who experience them. For example, teenage parenthood can disrupt the order of transitions by leading youths to enter full-time employment before completing high school, which can derail career development. The person who leaves school before graduation may not have any choice but a low-paying unskilled job, which in turn produces job instability and ongoing economic disadvantages.51

Gary M. McClelland, Linda A. Teplin, and Karen M. Abram highlighted several generalizations about drug use and adolescent development that are widely recognized and accepted:

• • Substance use commonly follows a sequence from tobacco and alcohol to marijuana and then to more dangerous substances.

• • Substance use and abuse that begin in early adolescence are associated with more serious delinquency and longer deviant careers, antisocial personality disorders in later life, and more numerous risky behaviors.

• • Substance abuse is associated with poor academic performance.

• • More severe substance abuse and dependence are associated with serious criminal offenses in general.

• • Substance use and abuse are associated with higher rates of psychiatric disorders and with disorders of greater severity.52

Kandel and colleagues reported that significant status changes, including marriage and parenthood, were correlated with the cessation of marijuana smoking among users in their middle to late 20s.53 L. A. Goodman and W. H. Kruskal found that reasons for cessation involved the imposition of both internal controls and external controls.54 L. Thomas Winfree, Jr.; Christine S. Sellers; and Dennis L. Clason examined the reasons for adolescents’ cessation of and abstention from substance use and determined that social learning variables clearly distinguished abstainers from current users, but they were less able to distinguish former users from current users or former users from abstainers.55 Ryan D. Schroeder, Peggy C. Giordano, and Stephen A. Cernkovich investigated the impact of drug use on desistance processes using a sample of previously institutionalized youth and found that social network effects, particularly partner criminality, explain some of the negative impacts of drug use on life-course patterns of criminal offending.56

Evaluate various efforts to prevent and control adolescent drug use.

Prevention programs, treatment interventions, strict enforcement (Figure 10–3), and harm reduction are all possible means of controlling drug use among adolescents. Prevention and treatment appear to be the most effective means of controlling drug abuse, but there is abundant evidence showing that deterrence tactics, such as the federal “war on drugs” (involving mostly strict enforcement), have been largely ineffective with both juveniles and adults.

The 1990s saw dramatic developments in drug-prevention programs. The Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence at the University of Colorado began an initiative called Blueprints for Violence Prevention, in which researchers evaluated 600 programs designed to prevent violence and drug abuse and to treat youths with problem behaviors.57 The investigators were able to identify 11 model programs and 21 promising programs. Following are some of the more noteworthy: Life Skills Training (LST), which is designed to prevent or reduce the use of “gateway” drugs such as tobacco, alcohol, and marijuana;58 (2) Midwestern Prevention Project (MPP), which is a comprehensive three- to five-year community-based prevention program targeting gateway use of alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana;59 and (3) Project Toward No Drug Abuse (PROJECT TND), which targets high school youths who are at risk for drug abuse.60Significantly, Blueprints for Violence Prevention reported that both model programs and promising programs had positive outcome assessments when evaluated over a period of several years.61

Police departments across the country conduct at least three substance-abuse-prevention programs in schools: Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.), School Program to Educate and Control Drug Abuse (SPECDA), and Project Alert. The D.A.R.E. program is a widely replicated effort to prevent substance abuse. Although Chapter 12 notes that recent evaluations of D.A.R.E. are less than encouraging, it is the most popular school-based drug-education program in the United States and operates in about 70 percent of our nation’s school districts, reaching 25 million students; it has also been adopted in 44 other countries.62 New York City’s Project SPECDA, a collaborative project of the city’s police department and board of education, is another highly praised drug-prevention program.63 Project Alert, a program originating in middle schools in California and Oregon, appears to have had some success in teaching students to avoid drugs and to resist peer pressure to use tobacco and alcohol.64

Effective programs need to incorporate early childhood and family interventions, school-based interventions, and comprehensive community-wide efforts. The important dimension of drug-prevention interventions, as is continually emphasized throughout this text, is a multidimensional approach centering on the family, school, and community.

Treatment for drug abusers takes place in psychiatric and hospital settings for youngsters whose parents can afford it or have the needed insurance benefits. Other youths, especially those substance abusers who have committed minor forms of delinquency, receive treatment in privately administered placements, which vary tremendously in the quality of program design and implementation. Substance abusers who are involved in serious forms of delinquency will likely be placed in county or state facilities whose basic organizational goals are custodial and security oriented, and they generally receive some substance-abuse counseling, especially in group contexts.

Substance-abusing youths with multiple typical problems may be more malleable than adult offenders, but there is little evidence that the majority of substance-abuse programs are any more successful than those for adult substance abusers. Élan in Maine; Rocky Mountain in Colorado; Provo Canyon in Utah; and Cascade, Cedu, and Hilltop in California are privately administered therapeutic schools or emotional growth programs that may be better than the average substance-abuse program for juveniles.65

Drug courts are another fairly recent treatment innovation for those who have a history of drug use. To address alcohol and drug problems, treatment services in drug courts have been based on formal theories of drug dependence and abuse. They also attempt to employ the best therapeutic tools and to provide participants with the opportunities needed to build cognitive skills. Research findings generally show that drug courts can reduce recidivism and promote other positive outcomes, but research has been unable to uncover which court processes affect which outcomes and for what types of offenders.66

The balanced and restorative justice model (discussed further in Chapter 11) has been used as a form of treatment intervention with drug- and alcohol-abusing adolescents. It forms the guiding philosophy in 12 states and builds on restorative justice conferencing that takes place in informal settings where voluntary negotiating encounters include victims, offenders, and their relevant communities.67 Restorative justice conferencing can also use more coerced restorative obligations, such as restitution or community service imposed by formal proceedings. What makes these processes and obligations “restorative,” rather than rehabilitative or retributive, is the restorative intent underlying their imposition.68

Drug and alcohol abuse interventions have also been developed in a number of community-based and institutional settings. Some training schools, for example, conduct group sessions for those with histories of drug use. A social worker may conduct ongoing drug- and alcohol-abuse groups, and members from outside groups, such as Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) or Narcotics Anonymous (NA), may come into the institution and hold sessions.

The “war on drugs” has not been won with juveniles any more than it has with adults. A disastrous consequence of this “war” is that increasing numbers of minority youths who were involved in using or selling crack cocaine have been brought into the justice system for extended periods of time. Some have even argued that the war on drugs has been a factor contributing to the spread of youth gangs.69 Strict enforcement, however, has seemed to make a difference in several ways:

• • The destruction of overseas drug-producing crops has probably had some impact on the availability of drugs in the United States, raising prices and making some drugs harder to find.

• • Heavy penalties associated with the sale of illicit drugs appear to have been at least somewhat effective in deterring both juvenile and adult offenders.

The “war on drugs” has not been won with juveniles any more than it has been with adults.

• • Law enforcement’s targeting of dealers has had some success in getting those offenders off the streets.

• • The policing of the sale of tobacco products, especially cigarettes at convenience stores and other places, has made it more difficult for minors to purchase or obtain tobacco products.

• • The strict enforcement of no-drug zones around schools has discouraged or at least reduced the number of persons trafficking drugs to school-age children.

• • Strict enforcement of laws against adolescent drug trafficking at school and in neighborhoods may have reduced the availability of drugs to young people.

Harm reduction is an approach designed to reduce the harm done to youths by drug use and by the severe penalties resulting from drug use and sales. Numerous harm-reduction strategies have been employed:

• • Programs in which health professionals administer drugs to addicts as part of a treatment and detoxification regimen

• • Drug-treatment facilities that are available for those drug addicts wishing to enter treatment

• • Needle-exchange programs that are intended to slow the transmission of HIV and that provide educational resources about how HIV is contracted and spread

Juvenile drug users generally find a wide variety of treatment programs and facilities. Treatment programs are usually more readily available to middle- and upper-class youths than to lower-class youths, partially because wealthier parents can afford to pay for the care of their dependent children. The legalized administration of drugs to addicts and needle-exchange programs are more typically found when working with adult drug users than with juveniles. See Table 10–6 for a summary of the types of efforts, as well as brief descriptions of the efforts and comments on their effectiveness.

Amy’s father, Simon, had always been a drinker. He had consumed both alcohol and marijuana for as long as she could remember, and he was often tipsy or high, and sometimes clearly drunk. He made no excuses for his behavior, and frequently told Amy that his father had given him his first drink when he was only eight years old. Children who learned to drink early, he said, had far less trouble handling alcohol and other substances later in life than those to whom alcohol was forbidden.

One night when her father was clearly intoxicated, he asked Amy if she’d like to have a drink with him. Until now, he’d separated the part of his life that involved drinking from Amy—except, of course, for the unintended influence that it had had on her to see him drunk. Now, however, he told Amy that it was always nice to have a drinking partner, and that she was old enough to drink, anyway. Of course, alcohol was not new to Amy and she had sometimes engaged in binge drinking while away from home. Amy was no stranger to illicit drugs, either, having smoked marijuana and experimented with cocaine with her former boyfriend, Damon, on quite a few occasions.

So, after a few more words of encouragement from her father, she sat down in front of the television and started drinking Scotch—her father’s drink of choice. As the evening wore on she became increasingly intoxicated and passed out on the couch.

She woke up the next day with a headache, but feeling strangely liberated—as though she had somehow entered an adult world in which she had the freedom to make choices previously unavailable to her. Or at least choices that were somehow now acceptable. Alcohol itself, she realized, was also liberating, and she vaguely remembered telling her father closely guarded secrets that she had kept to herself since running away.

Discuss

• 1. What kind of a role model is Amy’s father? Why are alcohol consumption and delinquency closely associated?

Learn more on the Web:

• • Studies have shown that children of heavy drinkers are at greater risk of having emotional problems than are children whose parents are not alcoholics. Moreover, most children of alcoholics have experienced various forms of neglect and abuse.

• • Learn more about alcohol and crime by visiting the National Criminal Justice Reference Service atNCJRS.gov and reading the publication numbered NCJ 231685.

Follow the continuing Amy Watters saga in the next chapter.

LEARNING OUTCOMES 1

Summarize recent trends in adolescent drug use.

With a few exceptions—specific categories of prescription drugs, marijuana, Ecstasy, and methamphetamine—drug use continues to decline among adolescents in the United States.

• 1. Identify and describe recent trends in adolescent drug use.

• 2. What explains the recent trends in adolescent drug abuse?

LEARNING OUTCOMES 2

Recall the main types of drugs used by adolescents.

In decreasing order of frequency, the licit and illicit drugs used by adolescents are alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamine, inhalants, sedatives, stimulants (amphetamines and hallucinogens), steroids, prescriptions drugs, and heroin.

• 1. What drugs are most used by adolescents? Why are some more widely used than others?

• 2. How does marijuana affect the mind and body?

• 3. How does heroin impact the mind and body?

• 4. What are anabolic steroids, and why are they used?

drug addiction The excessive use of a drug, which is frequently characterized by physical and/or psychological dependence.

alcohol A drug made through a fermentation process that relaxes inhibitions.

marijuana The most frequently used illicit drug; usually smoked, it consists of dried hemp leaves and buds.

cocaine A coca extract that creates mood elevation, elation, grandiose feelings, and feelings of heightened physical prowess.

methamphetamine A synthetic drug that is a highly addictive stimulant; it can be injected, smoked, or snorted.

inhalant A volatile liquid that gives off a vapor, which is inhaled, producing short-term excitement and euphoria followed by a period of disorientation.

sedative A drug that is taken orally and affects the user by depressing the nervous system, causing drowsiness.

amphetamine A stimulant drug that occurs in a variety of forms.

Ecstasy A form of amphetamine (MDMA) that began to be used by adolescents in the United States in the 1980s and 1990s and is now rather widespread.

club drug A synthetic psychoactive substance often found at nightclubs, bars, raves, and dance parties. Club drugs include MDMA (Ecstasy), ketamine, methamphetamine (meth), GBL (gamma-Butyrolactone), gamma-Hydroxybutyrate, phencyclidine (PCP), and Rohypnol.

hallucinogen A drug that causes perceptual distortions of time and place, including possible visual and auditory hallucinations.

anabolic steroid A drug derived from the male sex hormone testosterone; often used as a performance enhancer or to build muscle mass.

heroin A refined form of morphine that was introduced around the beginning of the twentieth century.

LEARNING OUTCOMES 3

Explain the relationship between drug abuse and delinquency.

The relationship between drug abuse and delinquency is complex but there seems to be a sequential pattern of involvement in drug use during adolescence. Adolescents vary in the frequency with which they use drugs, and certain risk factors appear to be related to drug abuse. Moreover, adolescents who use hard drugs appear to be those most likely to be involved in chronic delinquent behavior.

• 1. What is the relationship between drug use and delinquency?

• 2. What are some risk factors associated with drug use among adolescents?

• 3. What is the relationship between the use of hard drugs and chronic delinquency?

LEARNING OUTCOMES 4

Summarize the explanations for the onset of drug abuse.

The explanations for the onset of drug abuse include cognitive-affect theories, addictive personality theory, stress relief theory, social learning theory, social control theories, social disorganization theory, and integrated theories.

• 1. What are the various theories for the onset of drug use among adolescents and adults? In your mind, what theory makes the most sense? Why?

• 2. How does social learning theory explain the onset of drug use?

• 3. How does social disorganization theory explain the onset of drug use among adolescents?

LEARNING OUTCOMES 5

Explain the impact drug use can have on a person’s life.

The impact that drug use can have on a person’s life not only includes present dysfunction but also its destructiveness over the span of the life course.

• 1. Why is drug use frequently so destructive over a person’s life course?

• 2. How does illegal drug use impact the life of a juvenile?

LEARNING OUTCOMES 6

Evaluate various efforts to prevent and control adolescent drug use.

Of the various efforts to prevent and control drug abuse, consisting of prevention programs, treatment interventions, strict enforcement, and harm reduction, none has been particularly effective in treating the individual problem of drug abuse but some have had some impact on reducing the availability of drugs.

• 1. What approaches have been tried to solve the drug problem? Which one appears to have the greatest promise? Explain your answer.

• 2. How do drug-prevention programs differ from strict enforcement strategies?

• 3. What do harm reduction programs focus on?