The Transition From Deviant to Criminal Behavior, Essay Example

Crime as a concept has been part of various societies in the recent past. Most of these crimes in almost all societies are deviance acts, which are considered to be crimes categories as per the characteristics of the offenders. The most deviant acts considered to be criminal in nature are commonly committed by the juveniles, which has been the focus of special attention in various countries. The transition that takes place in an individual to change from deviant to criminal behavior is facilitated by some factors. These factors have so far brought a difference between a juvenile delinquency and adult crimes. This transitional factors or processes include social, biological, and psychological processes an individual undergoes during a specific age. This process of transition mostly affects the future life of an individual. Most of these transitions are seen to take place in urban area rather than in the rural areas among the youths. Most of these young individuals who are more vulnerable to engaging in deviant behavior are those that live in socially disorganized neighborhood.

Most of the socialists have given various transitional processes by use of some theories like the social control theory. This theory is based on the assumption that compliance of every person in the society has some shared standards of conduct. It explains how adolescent’s rule-breaking behaviors results to criminology. It asserts that most of the young people conform to various norms in response to some forces regulating their human behavior. According to the pioneer of this theory, Durkheim, some rapid changes in the structure of the society like, a transformation from an industrial setting to an agricultural setting, or a change from a federal system to a capitalist system has caused a collapse of the society’s norms especially among the young people.

Following the same tradition, the theory of personal and social controls was put forward by Reiss, which focused on the juveniles as a result of their social and personal failures. According to the statistics, 45% or recorded crimes are committed by the young people under the age of 22 years. Within a juvenile justice system, it is evident that ethnic minority and working class youths are the majority in the criminal statistics. He explains that when an individual has no self-control that is the ability to refrain from ways, which brings a conflict with norms and rules of the society, then the person will in all mean ends up being a criminal. On the other hand, social control can be the ability of the social institutions makes effective rules or norms. Considering this role, crime is as a result of ineffective social control. When there is ineffective social control, the only way to achieve those goals faster and in an easier manner is through criminal behavior. Individual with a low self-control are considered to be free to enjoy any kind of an easy and ordinances pleasure of crime without undue concern on the consequences that follows it.

In addition, another factor, which can facilitate criminal behaviors, is the failure of the family to enact effective driving forces of social control over the youth. This involves a direct control, internalized control, indirect control and a control achieved through a means of need satisfaction. A direct control can be imposed to adolescents through punishment or any restraints by an external force hence an influence on individual behavior. Therefore, without this controls imposed to an individual, he or she will develop some criminal behaviors, which will part of their future life.