Juvenile Delinquency In The United States

Description of Social Issue/Concern
My concerned issue is juvenile delinquency. The reason I choose juvenile delinquency is because I felt it can be explained well by looking at the social learning theory. According to Siegel & Welsh (2012) social learning theory is applied to criminal behavior, theory stressing the importance of learning through modeling others who are criminal; criminal behavior is a function of copying or learning criminal conduct from others. The social learning theory argues that juveniles imitate what they see and if what they see are criminal behaviors then they will more than likely follow. Therefore, delinquency is a big problem in juvenile crimes in the United States and has become a universal problem since the mid-1990s
Macro-level structural factors may influence the decisions adolescents make regarding peer affiliations or the identification of role models. For instance, the neighborhood in which a youth lives often dictates his or her choice of peers and playmates, quality of schools, and availability of amenities such as parks, playgrounds, libraries (O’Hare & Mather, 2003) and the role models to whom he or she may be exposed (Hartinger-Saunders & Rines, 2011). For instance a child whom is raised in an area where crime is less visible has a slight chance of engaging in criminal behaviors versus a child that is raised in an area where crime is high. The outcome suggests that parents with a low socioeconomic status tend to use a more coercive and control-based parenting. Therefore, their children tend to seek aggressive friends who further reinforce these cultural definitions of violence (Hartinger-Saunders & Rines, 2011). In other words if a child experiences a violent childhood then they will more than likely exhibit violent behavior towards other, and they will more than likely hang with friends who express violent personalities as well. Youths living in extremely disadvantaged neighborhoods may have limited options. Hence, the exploration of macro-level factors warrants attention by social learning theorists
I have visited the Regional Youth Detention Center (RYDC) and many of the youth I encountered had similar stories. Majority were African-American. There were males and females, separated of course. They all grew up in poverty and relatives that had been incarcerated or were incarcerated. They didn’t have any role models to look up to. They repeated what they