Addressing Crime And Drug Abuse Due To Social And School Maladaptation Among The Young Generation In Australia In An Essay.

Assessing the extent and severity of the problems requiring social interventions

Critically discuss a policy, project or program of your choice. Your essay/report should be structured in the following way: Introduction; brief explanation of the policy, project or program; assessing the extent and severity of the problems requiring social interventions; the social interventions that the policy, project or program has set up; an evaluation of the intervention strategy.For more detail see ‘Assessments’ in Blackboard as the semester progresses.See How to Write a Masters Report in Blackboard (Assessments).

The project was carried out in Australia, in the Victoria state in the towns of Wondonga and Bendigo. The project was intended to address the rising rates of crime and drug abuse due to social and school maladaptation among the young generation. This was a first and second level crime and drug abuse prevention program, that was implemented by the state government of Victoria (Huesmann,  Dubow & Boxer 2009). The project targeted students in elementary and junior high schools from the age of 11 to 16 years. The target participants were the youths with maladaptive social behaviours both at home and at school. The program to increase the impact in achieving the objectives, incorporated the family, friends and the teachers of the target participants both at and school. The intended participants, were selected basing bon their characteristics in form aggressive behaviours, school performance, family background and familial history of crime and drug abuse.

The project was funded several organizations starting from the state government and the national government. The funding organizations included:

• The Federal Government
• FReeZA program.
• Supporting Multicultural Victoria.
• Empower Youth program.
• Early Intervention and Support program.  

The project was expected to last between a duration of 6 months to 1 year with the involvement of all the funding programs. Therefore, the project activities were run concurrently with the funding organization’s activities in the involved towns of Victoria (Piquero  2008).

The aims of the project were outlined as:

• To improve the adaptation abilities of the youths with difficulties or at risk to their school and social environments.
• To increase the parent’s skills in parenting relating to developmental milestones, problem solving and emotional support.
• To motivate the teachers and case workers working with the selected participants in focusing on the developmental social, cognitive and behavioural skills of the youths.
• To equip the participants with the necessary skills in relating, problem solving and emotion control when interacting with their peers and friends.  

The issue in the project was to address the roles of social and school maladaptation in crime and drug abuse in the Victoria state. This program was a first and second level crime and drug abuse intervention program therefore seeking to address the issues in the families and children at risk and with difficulties in adapting to the social and school environments while relating to parents, teachers and peers in characters and behaviours such as aggressiveness, opposition, inefficient problem solving, poor emotional control and learning disabilities (Skardhamar 2009). The preliminary assessment of the data and statistics were conducted by the Crime Statistics Agency of Australia and recorded a number of offences recorded and charged through police reports. However, the non-recorded crimes such as offenses and drug abuse or trafficking were assessed and recorded by the Save the Australian Child organization.  

The social interventions that the policy, project or program has set up

The preliminary assessment by the SAC was conducted in the months of November,2016 to March,2017.  The data collection and analysis was on a large scale however, for the sake of the study, the focus is on the two towns of Wondonga and Bendigo. There was no pilot program to this project (Walters 2011).

The significant statistics were generated from the collected data on the influence of the maladaptive behaviours on crime and offenses. The figures recorded are of the youths at risk and difficulty due to maladaptation in school and their social environments and the involvement in offenses and crimes.

Criminal offenses.

Percentage in population.

Percentage of youth with maladaptation.

Theft

16.6%

9.1%

Stalking, harassment and threatening

6%

4.8%

Property damage and arson

5.8%

3.5%

Burglary

15.3%

10.7%

Sexual offences

15.9%

7.2%

Drug abuse and trafficking

12.6%

8.6%

1= theft

2=stalking, harassment and threatening

3= property damage and arson.

4= burglary

5=sexual offenses

6=drug abuse and trafficking.

The figures indicate a very high percentage of youths engaging in crime and drug abuse have maladaptive behaviours such as aggressiveness, opposition, poor emotion control, inefficient problem solving and the reduced ability to avoid wrong company and peers.

The following are the statistics collected from the parents and school management about the quantity of offenses committed within the past year and the number distributed across the participants with maladaptive behaviours in schools and social environments.

Offense.

Number committed by participants in their schools.

Percentage committed by participants over the total offenses recorded in their schools.

Drug and substance abuse.

14

58%

Property damage and arson.

6

61%

Theft and burglary.

17

56%

Sexual offenses.

11

39%

Stalking, harassment and threatening.

9

57%

Fights.

31

67%

Providing insights on crime and deviance in individuals’ life courses, (Sampson & Laub,2012), demonstrate in their paper that despite the fact that the rates of crimes increases exponentially when the individuals at risk due to maladaptive anti-social behaviours reach adolescent, the activities do not decline fully in adulthood but remain remarkable. The authors conclude their research with a recommendation for future researches to focus on the controlling of social phenomena to prevent deviance and crimes in future life of the affected individuals.

Giving a psychological review on antisocial behaviour in the development taxonomy of adolescents and the life course, (Moffitt & Terrie,2013) illustrate that these behaviours shows a continuous design throughout the course of life of the individuals. The authors determined that the incidences of the anti-social behaviours increase highly during the adolescent period. According to the authors, a large percentage of the at risk individuals and those with difficulties engages in the antisocial behaviour during their adolescent stages. In that theory, children exposed to antisocial behaviour interact with their environment at home and school, emotions and friends thus developing a pathological personality that predisposes them to crime, drug and substance abuse.

Evaluation of the intervention strategy

This project was developed to reduce the rate at which the youths in the state drop out of school, become socially unfriendly due to drugs such as alcohol, smoking and other hard drugs. The project targeted school going youths between the ages of 11 to 16 years. This project was designed in an educative fashion aimed at providing life skills with knowledge on development, parenting skills, peer-peer relationships and professionals’ encounters.  The project targeted parents, the youths, teachers in the local schools and families (Sampson & Laub 2010). The project targeted 80 participants who were selected based on their predisposing factors such as low socioeconomic status, low parental literacy, positive family histories of school dropout and drug abuse and the youth personality in terms of aggressiveness, interpersonal relationships and learning capabilities. The project was facilitated by the Victorian Youth program in the towns of Bendigo and Wondonga over a period of 8 months. The project was a huge success with the improvement of conflict resolution and parenting abilities in the parents, remarkable emotion control among the youths especially the girls and improved school performance

Reviewing the predisposition of adolescents with maladaptive behaviour to participate in risky activities, (Lane & Cherek, 2011), these individuals in the age ranges from 15 to 17 years, who participated in experiments to determine their risky-taking behaviours. In the article, adolescents with high risks tendencies had a positive history entailing a combination of several disorders in personality and traits such as slow learning abilities, aggressiveness and anti-social personality (Pulkkinen, Lyyra and Kokko 2009). The individuals participating in the research were given options to choose from that involved a decision to make more earnings with a riskier option or a lesser risky option with less earnings. In the final results, the participants with maladaptive behaviours chose the riskier option more often with the view to make more earnings and in the end had accumulated less gains than their counterparts.

In his solution to the critique on the situational crime prevention, (Wortley 2017), the author offers double approach to crime prevention mechanisms by prevention of both precipitating and regulating factors that predispose individuals to risky behaviour and maladaptation in their school and social environments. The article illustrates that in order to prevent the crime, its proper to control the forces that pushes the individual towards the inclination to commit crime.

In the paper by (Bergman and Andershed  2009) the researchers established knowledge on resilience processes in child development. The authors establish the development of children threatened by poverty, negligence, family violence and discrimination and how such factors incline the individuals towards commenting crime and abuse of drugs such as alcohol, marijuana and hard substances. In the theory of developing a positive adaptation, children brought up from such environments need societal support to develop resilience and thus increase their success despite the challenges in development (Farrington, Ttofi , and Coid 2009).

Needs Assessment

A family-centered strategy to reduce substance abuse in adolescents by focusing on the children in middle school, focussed on training and equipping the parents to the risky participants through the Adolescent Transitions Program. This program focuses primarily on the parenting skills as a prevention strategy for the crime and maladaptation behaviours in the social and school environments, (Bergman and Andershed  2009).

The participants of the program were selected basing on the characters and risk factors that predisposes them to risky activities such as crime and drug abuse. The selection criteria were based on the following factors;

• Childhood aggressiveness in terms of following simple instructions, respect for family members, teachers and peers.
• School performance and how the performance dropped over the years approaching adolescent with factors such as discipline, co-curriculum activities involvement and deviant peer affiliations.  
• A positive family history of crime and drug abuse, in the first degree relatives including siblings, cousins and uncles.
• Social interactions with the peers focusing on characters such as problem solving and company.
• Parental and family factors such as levels of emotions, poverty index, literacy and level of education and family cohesion.

The other stakeholders in the program were the non-governmental organizations that funded the program. The program was funded by:

• The Federal Government, through the government of the Victoria state.
• FReeZA program that organizes events in Victoria state to educate the youths on drugs, alcohol and smoking.
• Supporting Multicultural Victoria.
• Empower Youth Program initiative that focuses on the youth in Victoria State. Funded by the government of the state.
• Early Intervention and Support program that focuses on the children and adolescents to prevent the use of drugs and reduce or manage anti-social maladaptive behaviours in order to curb crime.

The funding was adequate, with the money paid on time in the SAC accounts to facilitate the program.

The program was divided into two phases that run concurrently.

Childhood program: children at risk and with behavioural difficulties participated in social skill building activities and learning classes on substance abuse and good peer-to-peer relations.

1. In a 2:1 ratio for children and a social helper, groups of 7 children were assigned to a helper through 20 meetings with the children and provided them with class based learning on social and life skills on topics of drug use and addiction, emotion control, friend affiliations, problem solving and conflict resolution.
2. Peer-helper class and school mates were allowed to interact in 12 meetings to equip the children with difficulties the abilities and skills such as emotion control, conflict solving techniques, friend company decisions and the ability to say NO to bad influence.

Parent program; this consisted of:

• 10 3-hour meeting with the parents of the children with difficulties to educate them on parenting skills such as developmental milestones, difficulty recognition, conflict resolution, negotiation and emotion control.
• 20 participatory activities addressing parenting and teaching themes which combined the parents, teachers and family members of the children. The topics included difficult behaviour, conflict management and resolution, familial emotion control and psychosocial and financial support.

The limitation of the program was acquiring enough social workers and helpers to enhance the program and therefore the ratios of the children with difficulties to that of the social worker and helpers was high.

The program was a huge success as a first and second level crime prevention strategy. The following were the evaluation findings of the project:

1. Girls had more benefits from the program than the boys. Added to their genetic and hormonal make up, the girls with adaptive difficulties developed better skills in the management of their emotions, interaction with their peers and avoidance of bad company and also conflict resolution within their environments.
2. In the childhood evaluation, they were able to manage their anger and aggressiveness more efficiently, interacted better with their peers and had better conflict resolution abilities. This was noted after a series of interactive activities in which the conflicts reduced due to better control of the emotions and also the number of conflicts reported to the teachers or social workers that erupted during the sessions reduced over time which indicated that the participants were able to resolve their conflicts on their own and attain a win-win situation for either involved party. The participants were able to apologize for their actions to their friends, take responsibility of their actions and reduce mischief.   
3. In the school evaluation, the children exhibited more social behaviours, reduced disciplinary cases for the boys and victimization for the girls and their overall academic performance with co-curriculum activities participation improved.  The girls could stand up for themselves and prevent being targets of bullying from other girls with a higher self-esteem and confidence. The boys, though not in greater quantities, were able to control their aggressive behaviours and hence picked up less fights with their peers and friends. Disciplinary cases among the participants reduced remarkably and the students’ academic performance in class through evaluation exams increased.
4. The parent and family evaluation demonstrated reduced family emotion as a precipitating factor for the maladaptive behaviour, increased support and better conflict and negotiations management. The parents were able to recognize more their children’s behaviour was equally learned as inherited and therefore were more willing to offer psychosocial, financial and academic support to their children to reduce the precipitating and maintaining factors for their maladaptive behaviour.    

Comparing the data collected during the start of the program and the end, the following was analysed.  The number of the students engaging in disciplinary cases reduced almost by half after the program was run for eight months.

Offense.

Number committed by participants in their schools before the program.

Percentage committed by participants over the total offenses recorded in their schools

At the beginning of program.

At the end of the program.

At the beginning of program.

At the end of the program.

Drug and substance abuse.

14

8

71%

51%

Property damage and arson.

6

2

61%

100%

Theft and burglary.

17

7

66%

54%

Sexual offenses.

11

4

39%

26%

Stalking, harassment and threatening.

9

6

57%

61%

Fights.

31

17

67%

63%

Fig. 3: comparison between the numbers at the start and the end of the program.

The evaluation, apart from the analysis from this research, was based on the assessment and feedback from the participants and the stakeholders. The participants were allowed a moment to each give their opinion and feeling about the program in a structured deep interview.

Literature Review

The program was within the budgetary allocation and despite the challenges in the shortage in the number of staff utilized during the program that forced the change in child: tutor ratio, the objectives of the program were substantially met.  

The program met the expectations of the participants, the children with difficulties, family and the teachers in their schools in improvement of the children’s social skills and academic performance and avoidance of high risk behaviour. The funding organizations were impressed with the outcome of the program. The project was designed to achieve both immediate and long terms impacts.  The immediate impacts that were expected during the course of the program were met while the long term impacts in the course of the children who participated in the program not yet evaluated but the expectations are very positive if the support system is maintained efficiently.

The participants were happy with the outcome of the program. The overall achievements of the program were remarkable and deserved a recommendation for the utilization into a wider system of childhood development in offering social and life skills.

Small adjustments to this program would make the impacts and outcomes more effective. The first recommendation is that the government should acquire the program and incorporate it into the primary and fundamental structures of education, health and crime and drug abuse prevention. Through the state governments, the national can foresee the implementation of the program into the national system and countrywide. Additionally, the program needs a larger budget and more stuff with a more duration of time for its trial in the state and towns of the country. To assess for long term impacts, the records of the participants should be taken into the Crime Statistics Board and evaluated for crime records. The new set of sets of data would be used to generate the findings of the program for along terms review.

The program has the capacity to be rolled out countrywide in similar circumstances as a first and second level crime and drug prevention program. Assimilated into the government and integrated with other programs directed at the youths, working with non-profitable non-governmental organizations, the program would be able to reach a more citizens and the impacts would be felt across the country.

Conclusions   

maladaptive and anti-social behaviours and personalities in social and school environments predisposes youths and more so adolescents with such risks and difficulties to engage in high risk activities and therefore crime and substance abuse. The maladaptive behaviours such as aggressiveness, opposition, poor peer to peer relationships, learning disability and dropouts and families with high emotional content interact with the environment resulting in a pathologic personality that inclines the affected individuals towards crime. Prevention of the factors, results in better prognosis and outcomes in terms of crime prevention. This program is therefore very effective in crime control as a primary control mechanism and strategy through building of more effective pro-social characters, behaviours and skills such as good parenting, conflict resolution, victim restitution, psychosocial support and negotiations.

References

Sampson, R. J., & Laub, J. H.,2010. Crime and deviance in the life course. Annual Review of Sociology, 18(1), 63-84.

Terrie, E.M., 2018. Adolescence-limited and life-course-persistent offending: A complementary pair of developmental theories. In Developmental theories of crime and delinquency(pp. 11-54). Routledge.

Huesmann, L. R., Dubow, E. F., & Boxer, P.,2009. Continuity of aggression from childhood to early adulthood as a predictor of life outcomes: Implications for the adolescent?limited and life?course?persistent models. Aggressive behavior, 35(2), 136-149.

Piquero, A.R., 2008. Taking stock of developmental trajectories of criminal activity over the life course. In The long view of crime: A synthesis of longitudinal research (pp. 23-78). Springer, New York, NY.

Skardhamar, T., 2009. Reconsidering the theory on adolescent-limited and life-course persistent anti-social behaviour. The British Journal of Criminology, 49(6), pp.863-878.

Pulkkinen, L., Lyyra, A.L. and Kokko, K., 2009. Life success of males on nonoffender, adolescence?limited, persistent, and adult?onset antisocial pathways: Follow?up from age 8 to 42. Aggressive Behavior, 35(2), pp.117-135.

Farrington, D.P., Ttofi, M.M. and Coid, J.W., 2009. Development of adolescence?limited, late?onset, and persistent offenders from age 8 to age 48. Aggressive Behavior, 35(2), pp.150-163.

Walters, G.D., 2011. The latent structure of life-course-persistent antisocial behavior: Is Moffitt's developmental taxonomy a true taxonomy?. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 79(1), p.96.

Bergman, L.R. and Andershed, A.K., 2009. Predictors and outcomes of persistent or age?limited registered criminal behavior: A 30?year longitudinal study of a Swedish urban population. Aggressive behavior, 35(2), pp.164-178.

Moffitt, T. E.,2013. Adolescence-limited and life-course-persistent antisocial behaviour: a developmental taxonomy. Psychological review, 100(4), 674.

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Wright, M. O. D., Masten, A. S., & Narayan, A. J.,2013. Resilience processes in development: Four waves of research on positive adaptation in the context of adversity. In Handbook of resilience in children (pp. 15-37). Springer, Boston, MA.

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