Study Finds Delinquent Behavior Among Boys Is "Contagious" 245
According to a new study, if everyone else was committing a crime, you would too, at least if you are a boy. The 20-year study showed what every grandmother could tell you; children from poor families, with inadequate supervision and bad friends were more likely to end up in juvenile court. What was more surprising is that exposure to the juvenile justice system seemed to increase the chance that the boy would engage in criminal activity as a young adult. "For boys who had been through the juvenile justice system, compared to boys with similar histories without judicial involvement, the odds of adult judicial interventions increased almost seven-fold," says study co-author Richard E. Tremblay.
Re:Ah yes, another breakthrough from MISPWOSO (Score:5, Informative)
Not only obvious, but previously described by criminologists. Sutherland's Differential Association Theory [wikipedia.org] was published in the '70s, and even those concepts were grounded in Social Learning Theory, which was developed in the 1800s.
The basic tenets of Differential Association Theory are that criminal (or delinquent) behavior is learned, usually through contact/behavior modeling of an intimate social group (peers). Further criminological theories posit that the labeling of these group behaviors as deviant can cause the group to develop their own subculture with values apart from traditional society. Therefore, the labeling involved in the "help given by the juvenile justice system" actually promotes continued deviant behavior.
Re:Ah yes, another breakthrough from MISPWOSO (Score:3, Informative)
Sigh. I get that you are trolling, but just in case anyone else misunderstood the point...
The full article [sciencedaily.com] claims that "The most surprising finding from the 20-year study...was how help provided by the juvenile justice system substantially increased the risk of the boys engaging in criminal activities during early adulthood." My point was that this is not surprising, but rather predictable as it simply supports commonly and long-held theories in criminology that have been studied extensively before. Did you really think a study in 2009 (even with its longitudinal nature) is the first to explore social learning concepts outlined over 100 years ago?
From the article "Differential Association Theory" (Matsueda, Encyclopedia of Criminology and Deviant Behavior : Volume 1, Historical, Conceptual and Theoretical Issues, 2001. -- updated from Matsueda's original 1988 article) [sagepub.com]:
Empirical research using survey data on adolescents has generally found support for this structure. Research finds that the process of learning definitions of delinquency is structured by delinquent peers, family structure, parental attachment, neighborhood problems, and social class...
...And then goes on to list a variety of past studies and over 30 references where this information came from. Also please note: In the social sciences, there is no such thing as a "law."
To correct a mistake in my original post, Sutherland's original uses of "differential association" occurred in the 1930s and 1940s (further expounded on in his 1978 work Criminology with Donald Cressey).