Youth Violence and Crime
Youth violence and crime can be examined in a custom written term paper for any sociology course you have. Look at the instance of youth violence in America and track it with crime statistics in a research paper from Paper Masters.
According to a 1994 youth violence research paper, every year, young people are arrested for an average of the following crimes:
- 3,000 murders
- 6,000 forcible rape cases
- 41,000 robberies
- 65,000 aggravated assaults
Research notes that arrests for juvenile violent crimes grew steadily between the mid 1960's and the mid 1970's. Arrests then leveled off for about fifteen years. Since the late 1980's, the arrest rate has been increasing steadily. Studies in many term papers have explored causes of youth violence. A sampling of explored factors, according to one youth violence term paper that sites the book Crime and Human Nature , includes: "constitutional, developmental, and social-context factors including gender, age, intelligence, personality, psychopathology, broken and abusive families, schools, community, labor markets, alcohol and heroin, and history and culture". Today's youth are, "bereft of guidance and safe passage to adulthood, (and) increasingly cast adrift to define themselves in a hostile world".
In truth, little research has been conducted on the impact of growing up in a violent environment, and how much it plays a role in a violent adolescence or adulthood. According to one youth violence research paper, researchers in the late 1990's are focusing on what people do and the choices they make within the parameters of their existence. As he states, "young people, in particular, are noted, on one hand, for their malleability and capacity to adapt in novel ways to their environment, but they have also been recognized as possessing the ability to alter the status quo". In your youth violence research paper, the Youth Violence of cultural influences on youth violence is explored by discussing factors that cause, support and condemn aggressive behavior in young people.
Youth violence is so prolific in American society that it is identified as a serious public health problem, one that results in thousands of deaths and injuries each year. According to the most recent statistics, more than 5,500 youth between the ages of 10 and 24 are murdered each year and more than 750,000 treated for violence-related injuries. The results of a national survey of high school students revealed that as much as 33% of those examined has experienced at least one physical altercation in the preceding 12 months, with 17% reporting that they had carried some sort of weapon in the preceding 30 days. Hazler and Carney (2002) submit that three-out-of-four young people are abused by their peers at some point during their academic careers, with many abused for extended periods of time. The researchers argue that there are a number of common predictors or risk factors associated with youth violence, including puberty, which is attributed to the "overwhelming, rapid physical and psychological changes" in development that occur at this stage in the lives of young people. These changes included fluctuations in hormone levels, which in turn can contribute to the depression, low self-esteem and negative self-image that can prompt violent behavior.