Reference no: EM131062684

1) These final chapters are exactly as Agnew and Brezina (2015) call Chapter 18, pulling it all together. It gives an overview of what was taught throughout the book, the causes of delinquency. This ranges from biological to social factors and everything in between. The remaining chapters give strategies of deterrence such as get tough efforts (mandatory minimum sentences), restorative justice (sanction offenders in a more effective manor), and incapacitation (Agnew and Brezina). They also list strategies of prevention like D.A.R.E. programs or Head Start programs early on. In regards to the Head Start programs, they want to help intercept the children who are at a greater risk early on.  

Agnew and Brezina (2015) state that there are several early family intervention programs that help to reduce the likelihood of producing delinquent juveniles. They attempt to reduce biological harm and provide health and safety training to the parents. A study was done on the effectiveness and produced findings for a five-year family support program for low income children and their families (Goodson, Layzer, St. Pierre, Bernstein and Lopez 2000). This study focused on the two-generations that encompassed their health, education, and social needs.

To conduct this study they found and followed 240 families for five years, half were the control and the other half were the program group. They used a group of control families that were not allowed to use the services provided to the study families. This began in 1991 and ended in 1996. About one third of the original families stayed for the entire 5 years. The article explains that the effectiveness of the program had shortcomings because not all of the families continued and it was difficult to have exact data. The differences in outcomes could not be attributed to the overall length of time. In the end, they found that the Comprehensive Child Development Program was essentially not educationally or statistically significant in meaningful effects (Goodson, et.al. 2000) on the children's social-emotional or cognitive development. With such a wide array of areas to explore, it was difficult to demonstrate the failure of effects. The authors had a few reasons they hypothesized as to why the program failed to produce change. First, the parenting education was not effective. Second, was they expected the children to have greater access to better education. They felt if they had a better education it would help them in the long term. Lastly, they hypothesized that to affect child outcomes through services to aid in the family's economic well being; such as job assistance and education. For this specific program, it did not yield the results they hoped for and while this program did not go beyond the five years, we don't know if those children in the program and the control family were less likely to become delinquent.

2) According to Agnew and Brezina, the best way to handle juvenile delinquency is to focus on prevention rather than punishment (2015). The country's law makers have begun to focus on the family, community, and the school in terms of preventing juvenile delinquency. It takes both time and money for these programs to be successful, and many times the budget does not go far enough to see any drastic improvements. However, there is evidence the programs help, but more government support is needed. Many times these programs are implemented in the lower income areas of a city, and this leads to a bigger problem needing solving. The poverty seen in America is a direct link to juvenile delinquency, especially for the young African Americans who already face discrimination. 

The article discusses how the country's use of get-tough measures in the past have added to the negative stereotypes associated with poor African American juveniles today (Hinton 2015). "Black youth overwhelmingly fell into the category of "potential delinquent," defined as any young person who appeared to be prone to contact with penal and juridical authorities" (Hinton 2015 :815). This same conclusion was found by Agnew and Brezina, who stated that in today's society if the trend stands one in three African American male will end up in prison (2015). Also found in the article was that "by classifying low-income black youth as delinquent before they had committed any legal violation, the development of the American juvenile justice regime yielded new possibilities for supervision.." (Hinton 2015 :809). This social fact is another Agnew and Brezina agree on, especially in the sense that poverty has an affect on both crime and juvenile delinquency in more than one way (2015). Do you think the the main problem the country needs to focus on is poverty? Or is poverty a natural effect of capitalism, which then will always be a problem when trying prevent juvenile delinquency?