Week #3: Reading - Wasserman Flashcards
What are common protective factors?
Female gender
Prosocial behaviour (such as empathy) during preschool years
Good cognitive performance
Proportion of protective to risk factors has influence on child delinquency
Protective factors may offset influence of child’s exposure to risk factors
What is the key to preventing child delinquency?
Focus on risk factors that appear at a young age
By intervening early young children are less likely to succumb to the accumulating risks that arise later in childhood and adolescence
No single risk factor is sufficient in explaining child delinquency, combination of factors
Intervention methods must account for the wide range of individual, family, peer, school, and community risk factors
What are individual risk factors?
An individual’s genetic, emotional, cognitive, physical and social characteristics
Frequently interrelated
What are family risk factors?
Studies have shown that inadequate child-rearing practices, home discord and child maltreatment are associated with early-onset delinquency
What are peer risk factors?
3 factors combine to account for a juvenile’s accelerated movement toward more serious offending in early adolescence
The high risk juveniles own antisocial tendencies
The negative consequences of peer rejection resulting from these tendencies
The resulting deviant peer associations
What are school risk factors?
Failure to bond to school during childhood can lead to delinquency
Academic performance has been related to serious later delinquency
Children with weak bonds (low commitment) to school risk for general offending
Academic achievement and school bonding are interdependent
Boys engaging in delinquency are less committed to school and are also more likely to have shorter plans
What are community risk factors?
Children raised in poor families = greater risk of offending
Certain residential areas may support greater opportunities of antisocial learning
- Inner-city neighborhoods characterized by delinquent peer groups draw young people into crime
