How Do a Juvenile’s Environment, Social Network, and Personality Increase Or Decrease Their Chances of Becoming Involved in Delinquency

Risk factors and protective factors are two imperative aspects that should in some sense be incorporated with one another to reduce juvenile delinquency as an entity. There have been multiple research studies indicating that substance abuse and other negative behaviors increase as soon as risk factors also increase. And something as protective factors is something that can save their lives and help them in some way or form get out of the place they’re in or leading to. Some things that are classified as risk factors would be things such as; early aggressive behavior, academic problems, peer substance use (family too), poverty, drug availability, child abuse, and many more. Some protective factors would be things such as strong protection, support from family/friends, consistent discipline from parents (non-physical), healthy peer groups, surrounded by healthy peer groups. Permissive parenting is something that can lead a child into a horrible place for the future and present.

As we had read in My Bloody Life by Reymundo Sanchez, some of the risk factors he began to fall into had been, things such as the lack of parental supervision, when his mother began to treat him worse and worse over the years he began to get worse grades and began to become susceptible to the pressure of not only drugs but murder and so much more before the age of 14. His cold and unresponsive mother’s behavior was one of the bigger ones, he felt lonely as though this was the only place he could even turn to, and she did not even want him there. She happily wanted to get rid of him, his hatred for her and women grew from there as well.

Another risk factor would be the conflicts he continuously got into with his step-fathers one after another, he lost trust then and from there went downhill. Another risk factor I had found very important would be the peer rejection from his actual friend Pablo, when they began to yell at him that he was not a part of them, not only did he begin to not feel welcome but he began to try to prove his manliness and from there it created more anger in him, he now had to prove he was not a “pussy”. I do not believe he had any protective factors, as everyone continuously allowed him to get worse and worse to the point he only found his life as a confusion ending him in more and more trouble.

A juvenile’s environment, social network and personality all play a huge part in being involved in juvenile delinquency or not. Reymunodo grew up with such a poor family structure, one that day after day continuously changed and got worse and worse, we learn from what we see a majority of the time. And that does not mean that everyone that has been rapped will become a rapist, but children learn from what we see as perceived in the Boba doll experiment by Bandura, in the book we see Reymundo growing up watching only violence, being rapped, being threatened by a gun, and beat to the pulp. All of that only made him eventually perceive violence as something that eventually he found thrilling, as he began to hurt others just as he had been getting hurt. Seeing his own mother being hurt and treated like a sex toy basically, he began to perceive all women as being easy and just as sex objects no matter what their age was. His father marrying his mother at the age of 16 and him being 70 was no problem. Him losing his virginity to a 35-year-old woman was also no problem. Everything around us is learned behavior, we always learn from the things around us, and in my opinion, I feel our experiences in our youth do shape us into who we are.