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Essay / Social and Environmental Factors
Exposure to violence at a young age has historically been associated with antisocial behavior among youth. This connection is even more evident when violence occurs at home, at school, or in a community associated with child development and care. Numerous studies have shown that violent and antisocial behavior among adolescents is much more common when young people are exposed to high levels of violence in their homes. A study by Flannery, Singer, Williams, and Castro found that violence was three times higher for girls and twice higher for boys exposed to violence in their homes, compared to controls from low-violence homes. . This shows that the environment in which we are raised and nurtured plays a significant role in the manifestation of violence in later stages of life. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an Original Essay In today's society, education is generally considered to be a determining factor in whether or not a person is successful in life. When we examine the disparity between the education levels of inmates incarcerated in prisons around the world and compare these numbers with the education levels of the general population, the results are astonishing. Only 18 percent of the general population has not completed high school or an equivalent degree, while 27 percent of federal inmates, 40 percent of state inmates, 47 percent of local jail inmates, and 31 percent of people on state probation United States did not succeed. just that. Could these figures suggest that a lack of education actually predisposes people to commit crimes? Although lack of education can make a person significantly less employable and may therefore cause less educated people to commit non-violent crimes such as theft and drug use, it is not only non-violent crimes that result from this lack of education. Education not only helps children develop academically, but also allows them to learn invaluable social skills that could help them avoid engaging in violent and non-violent criminal activities in the future. For example, schools emphasize the importance of treating others with respect and aim to teach young people to strive to be good citizens. Schools also provide students with a forward-looking view of life, which aims to inspire thinking about the consequences of criminal activity and allows the individual to be more patient and less likely to take risks that could be associated with the commission of violent criminal activities. Additionally, schooling teaches children essential communicative skills, the lack of which can cause people to act irrationally in conflicts and perhaps more violently because they lack the ability to discuss and argue verbally. . It is therefore possible that a lack of education is the cause of violent crime. This is often the case with knife crimes. In the UK, it is believed that one of the main causes of knife crime is a lack of education, specifically the lack of communication skills mentioned previously, which leads to a misperception of aggression and the inability to reason verbally with opponents. This is evident from the results of a study by Saavedra et al., which indicated that people classified as having a low level of education were almost eleven times more likely to commit a violent crime than those with a higher level of education.pupil. How these can affect crime rates in our world, one thing we look at first is demographics. Demography is the scientific study of changes in the number of births, deaths, diseases, etc. in a country over a given period. If we take two countries with relatively similar industrialization but very different lifestyles, such as the United States and Japan, and compare the crime statistics, it is truly depressing. Japanese cities are much more populated than those in the United States, but crime statistics in the United States far exceed those in Japan. The homicide rate in the United States is more than five times higher than in Japan, the rape rate is twenty-two times higher, and the armed robbery rate is astonishingly one hundred and fourteen times higher. So what is it about American culture that makes it so much more vulnerable to crime? In America, violence is subject to regional variations, with the murder rate in the South being twice as high as in the Northeast, but the robbery rate is almost twice as high in the Northeast as in the South. Continuing to look at America, communities across regions differ greatly in terms of violence. It has been found that in general, the smaller and more close-knit a community, the lower the rate of violent crime. One of the main reasons America is thought to be much more vulnerable to crime is that it has an individualistic culture. Individualistic cultures tend to be located in more western parts of the world and emphasize the importance of independence as well as self-reliance. Additionally, within individualistic cultures, social behavior tends to be dictated by individuals' preferences and attitudes, and being dependent on others is often seen as shameful and embarrassing. In contrast, collectivist cultures tend to be located in the East and focus on self-sacrifice, dependence on others, and generosity. This stark contrast is, in my opinion, the main factor in the high crime rates in Western cultures. In Japan, people often live close to many people they know and would therefore have a harder time committing violent crimes. Additionally, the emphasis on interdependence and generosity would also make them less likely to commit violent crimes. However, this fact does not support the much higher rate of war crimes, for example, in Eastern cultures which tend to be collectivist. Certainly the emphasis on giving back, considered important in this type of culture, would not only reduce war crime rates, but decrease them altogether due to feelings of empathy and self-sacrifice so important. Therefore, this idea that collectivism is used to explain higher crime rates in Western individualistic cultures cannot be entirely true. Whether low economic status causes crime or whether low economic status is caused by crime has been a long-standing debate. Take the example of unemployment. It's unclear whether unemployment causes people to commit violent acts out of anger or hostility, or whether it's their violent acts that cause employers to be unwilling to hire them. When looking at the effect of economic status on violent crime, one of the main reasons there is an association is because crime gives people living in poverty the opportunity to acquire materials they otherwise could not. otherwise afford. This concept is.