Return to When the Good Go Bad Index Page

When the Good Go Bad:
Why Juveniles Become Delinquent

Seminar Leader: Paul Steele

Course overview:

Will children grow up to be socially well adjusted, contributing members of society, or will they grow up to be deviants and misfits? Will they grow up at all? This course will examine the ways in which our social experiences from birth influence life outcomes.

We will follow a biographical format, examining what can go right and can go wrong as children grow from infancy to young adulthood. Examples of "life challenges" that will be discussed include child abuse and neglect, witnessing domestic violence and other crime, experiencing school failure, engaging in sexual experimentation and delinquent acts, and experimentation illicit drugs and alcohol. We will also discuss the effects of good parenting, healthy family structures, effective education, social programs, prevention and early intervention and other influences that support children and help them develop in a socially appropriate direction. Much of our reading for the course will adopt a biographical or autobiographical approach, by illuminating general issues of social development through the description of the lives of normal and not-so-normal youth.

We will also investigate and discuss the positive and negative influences of a number of social institutions, including the family and alternative care giver systems, the school, peers, medical and treatment systems, government (especially the welfare, education, criminal and civil justice systems), and the media. We will visit programs and facilities that serve youth, and have the opportunity to talk with Biological and psychological influences will be discussed as a context in which social influences operate.

The course will consider explanations of why people go wrong or right, within the context of these institutions. In addition, we will discuss what correcting mechanisms exist in society: what can be and is being done to get young people back on course if they start to go wrong.

Reading List:

The Irreducible Needs of Children: What Every Child Must Have to Grow, Learn and Flourish. By T. Berry Brazelton and Stanley              I. Greenspan.
Too Scared to Cry: Psychic Trauma in Childhood. By Lenore Terr
Savage Inequalities: Children in America’s Schools. By Jonathan Kozol
A Tribe Apart: A Journey into the Heart of American Adolescence. By Patricia Hersch
Monster: The Autobiography of an L.A. Gang Member. By Sanyika Shakur
Common Purpose: Strengthening Families and Neighborhoods to Rebuild America. Lisbeth B. Schorr.

Instructor:

Dr. Paul D. Steele is an Associate Professor of Sociology, Senior Associate of the Institute for Social Research, and Director of the New Mexico Criminal Justice Statistical Analysis Center, and Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Cornell University. He is currently involved in research supported by the United States Department of Justice (National Institute of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Office of Victims of Crime, Bureau of Justice Statistics), the United States Department of Health and Human Services (the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention, and Office of Child Abuse and Neglect), the Justice Research and Statistics Association, and the National Children’s Advocacy Center.