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.
How exactly is this contagious? (Score:1, Interesting)
They imply that this environment causes this behaviour, which might be true. Just like living under a Power-line, Cell phone tower, and beside a nuclear power plant, MIGHT cause some cancerous effects.
However, that doesn't make it CONTAGIOUS.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Contagious [reference.com]
Cognitive dissnonance, probably (Score:3, Interesting)
Most people don't think they're doing something wrong. They just were hanging out with their friends, or having fun, and don't deserve getting dragged through the courts for it. The ones who prosecuted them are just a bunch of jerks, and if they don't respect me why should I respect them?
Another possible factor is that when this happens once, the people involved probably start getting watched more and treated with more suspicion. If people are watching you more, you're more likely to get caught. And if everybody assumes you're going to steal, some people come to the conclusion they might as well go and do that, since they're being assumed to anyway.
Not as obvious as you might think. (Score:2, Interesting)
Applicable ideas for cross-reference. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:warning! (Score:3, Interesting)
And what happens to the 'good kids' who are misidentified as 'bad kids' and stigmatized for life and ignored by the "good parts" of the system and put into a peer group which has won't recognize anything valuable about them save for delinquency?
Obviously, the system should have a way of allowing kids to move back to the better classes. But many other countries already have a system like this which divides kids early on, such as Germany, and it seems to work rather well. Luckily for them, they don't have the problem we do in the USA with stupid parents suing the schools because they wouldn't let little Johnny take the college-prep classes even though he keeps failing out of them.
Re:Correlation != Causation (Score:3, Interesting)
Hey Slashdot, can we have a "Science Firmly Established in Every Last Detail" section for the correlation is not causation people?
By the way, it's correation =/> causation. There's a difference. A big one.
Create a Positive Peer Culture (Score:5, Interesting)
I put myself through college working as a night counselor at a school for boys --- one needs to remove the perceived glamour of the ``gangsta'' lifestyle, demonstrate the consequences of poor decisions and provide the rewards of mature and responsible behaviour.
Most importantly this needs to be done regardless of the child's intellectual level --- at one meeting a fellow counselor argued that one of the students should be released because he wasn't particularly bright and was ``simply going to be a janitor when he grows up anyway'' to which another added, ``one who swipes small pilferables which won't be missed.'' --- my rejoinder was that if we kept him in the program and continued working w/ him until he successfully graduated that while he might be a janitor when he grew up, he'd be an honest one who wouldn't steal and that that was a worthwhile goal, and maybe he could be something else, but that he would never get that chance if he didn't graduate.
He stayed in the program and I actually ran into him a couple of years later --- he was just completing an apprenticeship in the building trades and had been out of trouble since graduation.
William
Re:Cognitive dissnonance, probably (Score:1, Interesting)
vadim_t wrote: And if everybody assumes you're going to steal, some people come to the conclusion they might as well go and do that, since they're being assumed to anyway.
This, of course, leads to the realization that if one is convicted and jailed for something they did not do, then, once free, they might as well do it. IOW, actually rape the bitch who's testimony send you up the river for 10 years, once you get out, for example.
Or, go one better: if ever jailed for a crime you did not commit (yes, whether an act was criminal is sometimes dependent on interpretation, and not a question of fact, but let's ignore those cases), declare war on society when you get out, commiting murder and mayhem until "they" kill you. Hmm, how much does a black market nuke cost, and what would it take to get it on a container ship bound for a densly populated sea port? Mwuahahahaha!
Now, we get into the realm where the thought police get interested. You know, the ones who can't tell the difference between musing about consipiring to commit acts of violence, murder, and mayhem (remembering always that "rape, pillage, and burn" makes for a much happier Viking than do "burn, pillage, and rape"), and actually so conspiring. These are the kind who would seek to jail one for expressing the outragous horror they would consider to inflict once released after being jailed for a crime they did not commit.
Finally, we reach the belief that one will be jailed anyway, on whatever pretence, for simply considering how they will respond to injustice when freed, and therefore ask one's self, "Self, why wait until after serving sentence for a crime I did not commit to enact revenge? If the jailing is a certainty, why not commit murder and mayhem on as large as scale as possible before it occurs? Surely, then the jailing, if not killed, will be just, and we do believe in justice, right?
So, fellows, "Let the killings begin! You're going to be jailed for daring to think anyway. Might as well be for something you did."
Crap, I should have been a sociopath, and not a software engineer.
A good example of this... (Score:5, Interesting)
At our small rural school, a junior one day threw a pop bottle at the car of a senior as the senior was driving away. The senior got out, roughed up the junior a little bit, and put him in his place.
But, the junior got pissed, got two of his buddies, and went over to the senior's house and vandalized the guy's car to the tune of about $1,500, plus did another $1,000 to his mother's car.
When the three stooges appeared in court, one of the three was a minor. (An accomplice, not the junior...he was 18...yea, what a shocker.) They got the minor to testify that he did all the dirty work, and the other two were just accomplices. Rather than the junior getting 90 days in jail and a $2,500 fine, he made off with just a small fine, and the minor got 40 hours of community service.
They don't just learn how to be a criminal by their friends...they are groomed.
Re:warning! (Score:4, Interesting)
I volunteered for a class like that. I learned many things, such as:
1) how to pick a lock
2) how to palm a beer into your sleeve
3) where to buy illegal drugs
4) classes with high female-to-male ratios are great for 3/4's of the class
5) which uppers made you lose pregnancy weight the fastest(not too useful)
6) "if you don't hate me, why haven't you had sex with me" means Run!, not Awesome!
Re:warning! (Score:3, Interesting)
This is why i say that we shouldn't focus on making class sizes smaller, but on putting more adults in the classroom. Imagine if each class had a teacher in the front and another in the back. Or a parent. The teacher can focus on teaching and the assistant can be the eyes in the back of the teacher's head.
And yeah, i agree with separating kids by behavior and interest level. Get the problem kids together, give them the attention they crave, and work on getting them to WANT to play along and to WANT to be in the other class. Not by threats of being a failure or punishment, but helping them understand the benefits. By teaching them that they CAN do well. i didn't know i could get good grades until i was a Junior in high school, by then it was too late.
Don't force your kid to share ... (Score:4, Interesting)
Locking kids up because they want more attention and freedom doesn't seem to be the solution, particularly since they come out with a higher probability of worse crimes against society.
Girls (Score:3, Interesting)
The Death of Respect (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:System (Score:4, Interesting)
There's also money in pointless research proving what humankind has known since forever.
(1) These "obvious result" stories are often oversimplified or misreported by the media. There's often more to the study and/or conclusions than is clear from the report.
(2) Things everyone "knows" to be the case aren't always correct. Even if they're true 95% of the time, it's worth it for the other 5%. You can't base higher-level science and studies on things that "everyone knows that's true".