Education and crime: examining the relationship

Crime

Measurement of Crime and Crime Theories

Crime is perhaps one of the most widespread problems in society today. It can take any form, and range in violence, which is what, perhaps, adds to the danger aspect. However, crime not only affects the victim, but also the perpetrator. In order to truly understand how one views crime, one must not only understand how crime is seen by society, but also how it impacts and how it is impacted by the perpetrators and those mixed within it. This paper will thus analyze research that has assessed the effects of crime and especially of juvenile involvement in the justice system during high school education, and the outcomes of this involvement, in order to see how crime can affect a population, how it can be measured, and what theories can be drawn from the research about crime and criminal activities.

According to the study by Gary Sweeten, there is little research to assess outcomes of juvenile justice involvement during high school on educational outcomes of the population affected. The study here thus strives to assess the effect of first-time arrest and "court involvement during high school" on "educational attainment," according to Sweeten, utilizing the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997. Sweeten further ascertains that findings suggest, "support for the labeling perspective," as well as support for the premise that the chances of "dropping out of high school independent of involvement in delinquency," and that "court appearance is particularly detrimental to less delinquent youths."

Sweeten supports his theories and his results in various ways. First he states that criminological theories are not "silent" regarding the link between the juvenile justice system and its involvement of educational outcomes. He also adds that while "deterrence and labeling theories" predict opposite effects between the system and the outcome, "propensity theories suggest no effect." Sweeten further goes to say that only some studies have truly addressed these theories and have clarified the outcomes in a way that is both understandable and that actually suggests the real relationship, which in his view is that juvenile arrest increases dramatically the odds of high school dropout rates.

The next point that Sweeten makes regards theoretical mechanisms and ways of measuring crime and its effects on juveniles. According to Sweeten, "criminological theory suggests a number of mechanisms linking juvenile justice sanctions on educational outcomes." These mechanisms, according to the author, include "labeling, deterrence, and propensity theories." Furthermore, the author explains what each mean, which has been afore-mentioned.

In order to reinforce his beliefs, however, the labeling theories, for example predict various mechanisms between juvenile involvement and dropout. One labeling theory, for instance, includes a "deviant self-concept," which can lead to deviant behavior including various delinquencies, such as poor school performance, and even dropout. Sweeten supports this theory with examples from various other authors who conducted studies on this matter.

However, Sweeten constantly reminds the reader that there have been very few research studies conducted on the topic. Sweeten states that some of the studies conducted were limited to socio-cultural context. Another problem relating to this was that there were validity and hypothesis limit problems in many studies. One example includes a study in which the "effects" were stated by the researchers to be only true for males, and the studies were "vulnerable to the selection bias criticism." Another problem was that age of criminal consent was not controlled in the afore-mentioned study, leading to weak evidence, despite the fact that the studies all show the same results that Sweeten tries to prove; namely, that there is a "detrimental impact of arrest on education."

Another reason that Sweeten gives for concern in a non-experimental study is selection bias. As mentioned above, this caused weaknesses in the studies. Selection bias, according to Sweeten included controlling for "serious adolescent delinquency, math aptitude, and democratic variables, but selection bias could drive their results through a number of omitted variables such as age of onset, quality of parenting, or self-control." Such subjective matters, according to Sweeten, are hard to measure and can thus lead to broken links in the study.