Neighborhood Social Victimization Essay

In the adolescent population in Baker, La there is a great issue of violence in the community. Factors that can

Moreover, in this study Voisin, Bird, Hardestry, & Shiu noticed that community violence exposure among urban youth has caused them psychological distress, anxiety, depression, aggression, low academic functioning, and delinquency (Voisin, Bird, Hardestry, & Shiu, 2011). The researchers used a grounded theory approach that helped them understand how African American youth live in a high-violence Chicago neighborhood (Voisin, Bird, Hardestry, & Shiu, 2011). The methodology used by these researchers included 16 boys and 16 girls which are equal to 32 participants (Voisin, Bird, Hardestry, & Shiu, 2011). They found out that participants were exposed to community violence by either hearing about it, witnessing it, or as direct victim (Voisin, Bird,

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

The New York State Division of Youth Deputy Director, Charles H. King, researches the potential causes of homicidal tendencies youth, hoping to find a more reliable method of rehabilitation treatment, in his essay, “The Ego and the Integration of Violence in Homicidal You,” published in 1975. During the early 1970s, America was seeing a rapid increase of youth that were displaying intense acts of violence, and even homicide. In an attempt to understand the potential causal factors that lead to violence in youths, and intern develop a treatment method for the afflicted children, The New York State Department of Youth was tasked in preforming a study to define these two parameters. For the study nine random children who had displayed extreme acts of homicidal violence were selected to represent the dependent variables. The average age of the group was about fourteen, with three of the children being African American, two of the children being Puerto Rican, and the final four children being Caucasian. Each child had bean randomly assigned to the research study purely on the bases that they had committed acts of homicide at a young age. The first stages of the study were based around an exploratory design, as the researchers that that point only intended to discover the potential causes for the violent behavior, with the hypotheses being that the act of homicide serving the same psychological purpose for all the children, regardless of age, gender, or ethnicity. To begin the study each of the nine children received a background check, psychiatric evaluation, and subsequently an IQ test. Expectedly each of the children had come from home that displayed a heavy drinking atmosphere, an abusive relationship with one or both of the parents, and parents guilty of neglect. But the results of to the psychiatric evaluation were not what the researchers had expected. During the evaluation portion of the study each of the children were test for psychosis. Only one of the nine children however, met the criteria required to be diagnosed as psychotic. But each child did show a belief that their parents, and others around them were afraid of them, and were out to get

In the case of many inner city youth who are often confronted with numerous external stressors (i.e. low-income urban setting) and developmental stressors, they

This article argues that poor health can lead to delinquency in all ages. People that are unable to afford proper health care when they are ill, are expected to feel negative emotions which cause them to commit nonviolent crimes. The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health did a study to determine if the frequency of health problems have an impact on property crime, delinquency and violence. The ADD health study started in 1994, it consisted of eighty schools all across the United States grades seven to twelve, were selected for inclusion in the study through stratified systematic sampling done in two different waves. 17 students of each gender were randomly selected for inclusion in the study, all students were completely different from each other. Twins, African Americans with at least one parent with a college degree, and the disabled were oversampled.

This neighborhood factor drives children to seek companionship amongst others on the already violent streets and causes them to follow suit. The final factor that may result in violence stems from the individual. For instance, children raised in a bleak and violent environment may develop low self-worth and feel little power over their future. Unable to break the cycle, they become a direct reflection of what they experience in their community and contribute to the ongoing violence.

This reading evaluate the trends for violence, crime, and abuse in the lives of children. This study provides updated estimates for exposure to a wide variety of offenses, including violence, crime, and abuse. This exposure is wide spread in the short term and over the developmental life course. Children and youth are exposed to violence, abuse, and crime in varied and extensive ways, which justifies continued monitoring and prevention

The exposure to community violence exists among various socioeconomic, cultural, and racial groups. But, African American low-income youth in urban communities has displayed to be substantially in jeopardy of being exposed to violence in their community compared to other populations in the United States (Stein et al. 2003). Furthermore, adolescents were more commonly exposed to community violence than younger children. Children tend to navigate close to home where a parent or caregivers are shadowing them. Nonetheless, adult supervision can be inconsistent and portray negative behaviors or influences in the home or daycare, which can influence a child through observation. Especially, if a child is unsupervised and/or positioned in an unstructured setting, he or she is more susceptible to violence (Goldner et al.

A traumatic childhood may predispose a child to violence against themselves or against others, in adolescence or adulthood. This information is and has been off the records, but so far no known relationship between the magnitude of traumatic experiences and different forms of violence at puberty. A study published in Pediatrics, which involved 136,549 U.S. students between 12 and 17 has been commissioned to evaluate this relationship. The researchers sought to determine six adverse experiences for which they had passed the boys in childhood and physical and sexual abuse, witnessing abuse or problems at home by alcohol or drugs taken by a relative. Then he saw the violent behavior at puberty: crime, harassment, bullying, dating violence,

Moreover, a deteriorating structure within a family impacts children from a very young age. They start to get neglected and eventually accept the difficulties. A study was done on kindergarten boys from low socioeconomic neighborhoods in Canada and it found that boys raised in adverse family environments are at a high risk of engaging in deviant peer groups (Lacourse et al., 2006). This indicates that when a child is not cared for appropriately, they are capable of doing as they wish. For the reason that some families have a complex structure and are hard to cope with, youth replace them with a gang which can be seen as a surrogate family. Mackay (2005) depicts that adverse conditions such as parental separation have shown to result in significant

There are two forms of community violence identified as witnessing and victimization. Community violence may include acts such as homicides, sexual assaults, robberies, and weapon attacks. Community violence affects all ages and ethnic groups, however, some individuals are more at risk than others. Specifically, youth living in inner-cities are more likely to be exposed to violence at a higher rate than youth living in neighborhoods of higher socioeconomic status (Cooley-Strickland, et al., 2009). Some factors that increase one's chances of experiencing community violence include living in poor, inner-city neighborhoods, being in a gang, using alcohol or drugs, and belonging to a minority (U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs,

In addition, chronic drug abuse by teenagers during a time of development it is a particular concern because, it can interfere with normal socialization and cognitive development and thus frequently contributes to the development of mental disorders. Violence has become more prevalent among the diagnosed population of drugs and mental disorders. Domestic violence and suicide attempts are more common of the mentally ill who end up incarcerated; there is

Up to 80% of CHR youth endorse a lifetime history of childhood traumatic events and victimization (e.g. bullying) . Bullying has been associated with a variety of poor outcomes, with serious mental illness and psychosis being the most serious. Psychosis symptoms among youth who have been bullied significantly predicted the occurrence of psychosis symptoms in later adulthood (Poulton et al., 2000; Welham et al., 2009); and that increased severity and duration of individuals’ bullying history was more likely to be linked to the emergence of psychosis symptoms (Schreier et al.,

Neighborhood disorder, broadly defined as the social and physical incivilities within a neighborhood (Sampson & Raudenbush, 1999), affects residents’ perceptions of fear and safety (Austin, Furr & Spine, 2002; Yavuz & Welch, 2010). Social incivilities could include drunk people in public space or panhandlers while physical incivilities include litter or deliberate property damage. Wilson’s and Kelling’s “broken windows” theory (1982) provides social sciences with the most well-known model of neighborhood disorder, which posits that the presence of physical and social incivilities lead to greater fear among neighborhood residents. Consequently, a cycle of perpetual social breakdown within the neighborhood occurs.