Trauma In Juveniles

There has been an enormous amount of research, going back almost thirty years, about the relationship between childhood trauma, and juvenile delinquency. Many researchers cannot say that there is a direct link between the two, but after much research, researchers have found that childhood trauma can perhaps be a predictor for juveniles who later in life commit crimes. Trauma is defined as, “a disordered psychic or behavioral state resulting from severe mental or emotional stress or physical injury,” because the definition is broad and can range from a variety of different events, though the focus for this paper will be on neglect trauma in juveniles (Trauma, 2016). Neglect “according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is, the
Although the majority of the clients in the southern region are males, across the state of Illinois female offenders are on the rise, like research implies. Following the research that I found, the female that I worked with was not aggressive and was very friendly and shy when I met her. I learned from the caseworker, that “she had many traumas in her past, and suffered from bipolar disorder, split-personality disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and depression”. As for the males, of the twenty-one that I worked with all but two fit the stereotypical persona of a male delinquent, as they were on probation because of their aggression, and had multiple problems with the law. The other two juveniles that did not have aggressive charges brought against them, had multiple other offenses that they were charged with, and were still breaking the law while in the program. Topitzes, who found a link between neglect trauma and delinquency, think that the delinquency can be caused by different factors, especially gender differences (2011). Like most research that has been done before, males and females tend to commit different crimes, where males commit more violent crimes, and females commit less-violent crimes. This is the main focus for Topitzes theory, he found that males who have had neglect trauma in their past were “significant predictors for delinquency”, and found the results for females to be non-significant
The crime that she committed was a serious non-violent crime and not one of the males that I worked with had committed the exact same crime, or a crime that was similar. Another difference that I found between the female and male crimes, were that the female turned herself in for her crime, and not one of the males turned themselves in. She knew that she was committing a crime, and was scared to turn herself in to the police, but felt that it would be best that she did so. With little experience I had working with the female, I found also that she was more open to accept treatment and more open to talk about her problems with the caseworkers, than the male juveniles. The male juveniles did not like to discuss their feelings or problems, and many refused to get treatment, that was suggested by the caseworker. Because the difference in behavior is very different for males and females, Redeploy does find that male cases are opened longer than