Age, Peers and Delinquency Relationship

Age, Peers and Delinquency Relationship

Age, Peers and Delinquency Relationship

Introduction

his paper summarizes and analyzes Mears and Field's article, "A Closer Look at the Age, Peers, and Delinquency Relationship". It provides an overview of the authors' research and discusses how the research was conducted, the subjects used and the findings from the research. The paper then presents the writer's personal opinion regarding the relevance and pertinence of the data presented by the authors and describes which findings were the most interesting and why (Mears, Daniel P., and Samuel H. Field. 2002). This paper is an attempt to explore deeper into the relationships between age , delinquent peer association , and delinquency , and in the process , fill the gap left by previous studies by looking into the aspects not hitherto covered by other investigators . It is also the intent of Mears and Field to be able to offer their own recommendations for further research on the subject , after thoroughly studying their findings . Towards this end , the authors studied and evaluated with care the findings of previous studies made on the subject - a process which revealed to them that the evidences gathered by researchers who preceded them , aside from being inadequate , were not in.

Analysis

The goal of the paper was /is to identify instances of crime and delinquency in youth and the influencing factors on such behaviors . The empirical data collected and used in the study attempts to correlate the nature of youth delinquency with age and social factors such as peer groups and family involvement . Is youth delinquency a result of poor moral upbringing or is it a variable that is uncontrollable as young people are susceptible to factors that are just part of their environment . The report by Mears and Fields takes a very close look at this question and theorizes the issues that are contributing causes for the instances of youth delinquency . In particular there is special attention given to disproving previous theories that state that as youth age the nature of their delinquent behavior and involvement with the influencing social peer groups becomes less and less until the individual matures and eventually does not partake in delinquent behaviors (Mears, Daniel P., and Samuel H. Field. 2002) .

The publication takes a particularly close look at the age and per groups and the nature of the offending that youth partake in and how that involvement is maintained . The paper begins with a multitude of references that reads in a very convoluted way as Mears and Fields provides the reader with the theoretical back ground and past studies that confirm the relationship between age and delinquent specific acts . It is here that it is clear that past studies have shown where the age of adolescents and the association that they have with their peer groups demonstrates the type of delinquent acts and nature of these relationships have to the youth ...