Forensic Psychology For Dummies (151 page)

The heightened sexuality of so much in adult life these days, and the increasing acceptance of sexually suggestive clothing for young girls, must be having an effect on how children under the age of puberty see the world. Displays of conjugal activity that would never have found their way into a Hollywood film 50 years ago, now seem par for the course. Whilst not making sexual activity seem secret and forbidden is a healthy aim, getting the balance right, especially when considering receptive young minds, is a challenge that all parents have to face.

Looking into the criminal careers of young offenders

Not all young offenders set out on a criminal career in the same way. This has been demonstrated by a major study carried out over many years by David Farrington and his colleagues at Cambridge University. They followed youngsters from their early years to see which of them became involved in crime, how they did, and why. Their different journeys to becoming adult criminals help to clarify the nature of their criminal behaviour and the likely progress it may follow:

Early-starter persistent offenders:
The teachers of these youngsters often recognise when they are 8, 9 or 10 years old that the child is already on a path to criminality. By the age of ten, a few children already show serious signs of deviance (as I describe in the earlier section ‘Committing childhood antisocial behaviour is indicative of later criminality’). If not helped, these children go on to extensive criminal careers and may spend a large portion of their lives in prison.

Offences limited to adolescence:
Some youngsters drift into deviant peer groups in their mid-teens and their criminal activity fades as they move into their mid-20s, being limited to trivial crimes (mainly drug-related). They become isolated from their criminal friends and find a non-criminal lifestyle through work and entering into a caring relationship and starting a family.

Serious offenders of limited duration:
A crucial period exists in people’s mid-20s when some can become involved in serious crimes. This period can even include murder despite them having no previous history of significant violence. This behaviour seems to be part of what may be called a late adolescence, in which the person is trying to make sense of who he is. Often, these people are capable but for some reason failed at school. By their early 30s, they may have ‘found themselves’ and dropped out of criminality, ended up in prison or committed suicide.

Recognising Protective Factors: The Good News

Of course, the great majority of children from vulnerable backgrounds don’t become criminals, because many things can protect youngsters from the potential impact of debilitating circumstances. For example, they may be poor but well cared for by their parents, or a step-parent is delighted to take on a supportive parenting role. Even if these cases don’t apply, children may find someone who cares for them outside their immediate family, such as a grandparent or teacher. They may discover success in some areas, such as sport or music, which gives them a feeling of healthy self-esteem and provides opportunities that take them away from delinquency and deviant friends. Inherent personality aspects that include lower impulsivity and more self-reliance can also reduce the impact of negative environmental factors.

These protective factors can be enhanced by various activities set up specifically to generate contact with people whom the child senses care about them, and who engender feelings of self-confidence and achievement. Examples include after-school programmes of positive activities. The Scouts is an obvious example but other activities such as youth clubs, sports organisations and orchestras or bands, or mentoring projects in which an adult gets to know and support the child on a one-to-one basis, have all been found to help children who may be vulnerable to avoid drifting into criminality. Trained foster carers are a more intensive and highly effective way of taking mentoring a step further.

Working with parents and families on such things as literacy skills or with reading schemes, also helps to give the child some feelings of achievement. Tackling school truancy directly and tackling why a school is excluding pupils also provide positive support that can counteract youngsters’ potentially destructive experiences.

Keeping Things in the Family: The Central Importance of the Home

The most effective treatments to reduce delinquency and later criminality are those that work with the whole family (as I describe in this section). Importantly, these approaches keep the child in question at home and in the community, so that any interventions are integrated into their daily life. As a result, they avoid the many problems associated with institutionalising the child, including any deviant changes in behaviour that have occurred in the institution being transferred to the world outside.

Family-oriented approaches see the child as being part of a system of activities, feelings and attitudes. For this reason they’re often called
systemic
therapies. They don’t explore only the troubled individual’s characteristics and problems, but also the dynamics within the family and any problems that parents and siblings may be facing.

Parenting wisely

In this section, I take a look at two approaches to improving parenting of problem children.

Donald, a US psychologist, takes a very direct approach to dealing with problem behaviour in children. He claims that what’s needed is ‘wise parenting’. He sees this idea as being based on such a clear set of principles that it can be understood and learnt initially from a CD-ROM, which therapists can use as the basis of their training.

A central idea behind
wise parenting
is that many of the problems the family face, can be re-interpreted to form the basis of positive productive activity rather than negative disturbing concerns. For example, if fights between the children are seen as a problem, parents can instead think of them as being a product of jealousy, boredom or a desire for attention. Dealing with conflicts as signs of such issues allows parents to deal with them effectively, as opposed to just shouting at the children and making matters worse. The other central principle of ‘wise parenting’ comes from the significant work of the psychologist B.F. Skinner, which was mainly conducted on pigeons, but nonetheless provides a simple and direct piece of guidance for many aspects of human behaviour.

Skinner’s central notion is that punishment doesn’t make people behave better, it just suppresses the actions that are punished. In order to get people to do the right thing they need support and encouragement for any steps they take along the way towards doing what’s required. An illustration is that if a child is regularly late for school, shouting at the child is less likely to have an impact than finding out the stages that lead to lateness, such as going to sleep so late that he’s difficult to rouse in the morning. Encouraging the child to go to bed earlier, and rewarding him for that, even if initially this approach doesn’t lead to him being on time at school, is a step in the right direction.

Here’s a very brief summary of the stages in the wise parenting process to show how these principles can be put into practice. Essentially four stages take place in each meeting with the family:

1. Building rapport and trust with the family by relating to their daily concerns and experiences.

2. Establishing goals of what the family wants to achieve.

3. Reviewing any successes in achieving initial changes, however small, so that the family begins to feel that the process is having some effect.

4.
Identifying parenting skills that can be developed and tried out between sessions with the therapist.

These stages are repeated at every meeting with ever more intensive consideration of the goals and problems the family is facing, as well as developing the skills needed to achieve the goals. These skills include both the ability to make sense of the behaviour of the children and the parents, and the social skills of managing conflict and dealing with heightened emotions.