Running Head: Social Learning Theories and Juveniles

Social Learning Theories Relating to Juvenile delinquency

Abstract
This paper takes a closer look at the social learning’s of society’s subculture that displays delinquent behavior. Using differential association I explain the learned behavior through the social environment such as role models, peer influence, and poverty stricken families. Delinquency is not biologically nor psychologically but is learned just as a person learns to obey the law. The study design is to help further the notion that criminal behavior is learned and not inherited due to genetic structure.

Social Learning Theories Relating to Juvenile delinquency

In today’s society juvenile delinquency is the
Through this method they are proving that anti-social behavior can be undone and the juvenile is demonstrating a higher success rate upon entering back into to society i.e. recidivating is not as likely. Many of the offenders in this prison reportedly gave into peer pressure of delinquent behavior causing their present stay in the Singapore prison.
In a novel by Sanyika Shakur titled Monster: the Autobiography of an L.A. Gang Member he is a product of his environment, he learned his criminal traits through older gang member he associated with and fed off of his intimate personal group of the Eight Tray Gangsters. Several times during the chronicle of Shakur’s life he justified his actions of murder particularly in a grocery store whereupon he gunned down a mortal enemy of his “set”, stating after the fact that “Fuck him, he was going to shoot me. I justified my shooting of him with self-defense” (Shakur, p.42). There was not a time where Shakur felt remorse during his “banging” days for his actions of violence and delinquent behavior. The most prevalent theory that this book exemplifies is the differential association theory. Shakur sought to receive a status achievement and a family that supported him in every fundamental aspect of gang life. He is an example of trying to prosper in a low-income impoverished neighborhood, where the social bonds took the individual to live a life of crime.