In response to my colleague posts, consider the following: How did your risk factors differ? What may be some explanation for differences?
Colleague post #1:
When assessing risk, there are several things that come into consideration in order to provide the forensic psychologist with information on the client. Completing risk assessments can be challenging, depending on the age, home life, social life, etc. of the client. For example, some things that affect an adult may not affect a juvenile delinquent. Therefore, risk factors may be completely different or opposite. Researchers have found multiple risk factors that are important when assessing risk. According to the article, there are three main categories followed by several subcategories that take part in the assessment. These include, individual, social and community risk factors.
Individual; Researchers have found that pre/perinatal complications which may cause health issues (poorly impacting a child’s development) have been linked to delinquency or criminal acts. There have also been contradictions on whether mothers who smoke cigarettes while pregnant can influence delinquency in children. Within the psychological, behavioral and mental aspect of a child’s life, a lower verbal IQ and obstructed language can cause delinquency in a juvenile.
Social; I feel that these are the most important factors to acknowledge when assessing risk in a juvenile. I say that because who a delinquent spends there time around, friends and family, can impact their behaviors immensely. Family because if a child has overly strict parents, they might insist on breaking curfew or sneaking out, and if the child has a poor family life, they might not have a curfew, or guardians that truly “care” about them or what they do. Peers can pressure a child into doing things that they don’t want to do, causing the child to become risky and putting things at risk in order to “have some fun.”
Community; one’s community can play affect i risk factors because if a child grows up in a harsh area with poor education systems, they may be influenced by the area and make poor choices. For example, growing up in a area with a high crime level, a child is more likely to have violent tendencies than they would growing up in an area with a lower crime rate.
Personally, I grew up in a suburban area with a lot of corn fields and farms. For a brief time, I moved to the city over with a friend in an apartment. That city has a crime rate of 985.5 per 100,000 people. There would be nights where we would be sleeping and wake up to people yelling and tires screeching. There is a “bike gang” where there is all teenagers and young adults riding bicycles, street bikes and more in ski masks, causing violence and reckless driving because they want to be “cool.” I think social factors play the biggest risk in this city because of high crime rate, poverty in some areas, and peer influence. Luckily, I don’t live in that area and now live in a completely different state.
I do think that ethnicity plays a role in juvenile risk factors, absolutely. There have been so many stories on young people being convicted of crimes that they did not do. For example, when I was in my undergraduate degree, I studied a case where a young African American teenager (16), Kalief Browder, allegedly stole a backpack. He was arrested at the age of 16 and sent to Rikers Island Prison for 3 years awaiting trial. He was beat down, neglected, and abused constantly in the prison. After he finally went to trial several years later, he was found not guilty, and released. He committed suicide 3 years after being released. I believe that this is a perfect example because Kalief Browder just happened to be an African American and in the wrong place, wrong time. If he was of any other ethnicity, would he have been put through this much? Socioeconomic status also is a big risk factor because of money, jobs, and educational levels in young teens. Though these are not all of the risk factors, I do believe that they are extremely important and should be recognized.
References:
Huss, M. T. (2014). Forensic psychology: research, clinical practice, and applications (2nd ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, Inc.
Shader, Michael. (n.d.) Risk factors for delinquency: An overview. https://www.ncjrs.gov/html/ojjdp/jjjournal_2003_2/page3.html
Coie, J.D., Watt, N.F., West, S.G., Hawkins, D., Asarnow, J.R., Markman, H.J., Ramey, S.L., Shure, M.B., and Long, B. 1993. The science of prevention: A conceptual framework and some directions for a national research program. American Psychologist 48(10):1013–1022.
Colleague post #2:
When assessing the potential risk factors, there are three broad categories: individual, social, and community. Each category assists with the assessing the potential risk factors; however, I strongly believe that one’s community plays the most important role in determining potential risk factors. I am unable to speak for everyone, but I can only create a picture of what I witnessed. My younger cousin was a star high school basketball player in Philadelphia, PA during the 2002-2003 school year. He was raised by a single mother with two older brothers still living in the household. He was an honor student, because his charter high school had a strict academic policy with regards to their student athletes. Within in his social circle, he was surrounded by other children that displayed a bright future. I would describe his neighborhood as a middle class, and a low crime environment. Additionally, my younger cousin never displayed any mental health complications. Unfortunately, his mother was unable to maintain her house due to her employment decided to relocate to another country to “save” money. My Aunt and her three children were homeless. My father was able to house everyone, but the neighborhood was not welcoming to individuals outside of the community. One day while playing a pickup (exhibition) game of football, my cousin shattered his ankle. His dream of playing college basketball was over. He found it difficult to travel to school via the city bus, because he literally had to fight each day walking home from the bus stop. He was tired of fighting each day, so he stopped going to school during the Spring of his junior year, and he officially became a high school dropout. Without an education, the only thing that men from my neighborhood can do is to pickup a gun, and forcefully take over a street corner. His environment/community led to him doing what was necessary to survive. Currently, my cousin is a thirty-four-year-old family man (a wife and three children). He went back to school and completed his GED and bachelor’s degree. He is currently working as an engineer.
The most important risk factor where I live is undoubtedly social – peer influences, because many students that I taught, and coach love to play “gangster.” They like to wear the Bloods (street gang) garbs, communicated using the symbols, and display the flags often. These kids/young adults truly do not know the dangers of street violence. Popular culture glorifies criminals, and they do not understand the consequences and repercussions of their behavior. These kids/young adults view images from social media that they deem to be “cool,” so monkey-see-monkey-do, and voila, now they are “cool.” As their teacher/coach, I constantly called them clowns, and made them remove their garbs before entering my classroom or gym. Additionally, I made them pull up their pants, and wrote interesting behavioral reports to their parents about their conduct.
Absolutely, ethnicity plays a part in the risk factors for juveniles depending on where they are from. People of color, predominately dark-skinned males are viewed as deviant criminals in the eyes of the law. According to Edwin Grimsley of the Innocence Project (2018),
The disproportionate figures go deeper. Of the 83 DNA-based exonerees who were arrested when they were younger than 21, 70 (84%) are people of color; 62 (75%) are black. Studies by wrongful conviction experts Sam Gross (2003) and Joshua Tepfer (2010) have noted that blacks are the majority of all youth exonerees.
The Innocence Project noted that at least seventy-five percent of exonerees of color who were minors at the time of their arrests were falsely implicated by other children; wrongly convicted youth of color were often accused of committing crimes in large groups; and false confessions and guilt admissions make up eighty-four percent of the cases of exonerees of color who were arrested as juveniles (Grimsley, 2018).
Peace
References
Grimsley, E. (2018, February 1). Lessons about Black Youth and Wrongful Convictions: Three things you should know. Innocence Project. Retrieved January 25, 2022, from https://innocenceproject.org/lessons-about-black-youth-and-wrongful-convictions-three-things-you-should-know/
