Child Endangerment 1 Running Header: Child Endangerment in Any town, USA

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Child Endangerment Laws Change for Residents of Any town, USA: Social Leaning Theory-How Will This Affect You?

Elizabeth Hall

Kaplan University Criminology CJ 102

Greg Matoesian February 9, 2010

Child Endangerment Laws Change for Residents of Any town, USA: Social Leaning Theory-How Will This Affect You?

Recently the Department of Job and Family Services decided to implement a new policy based on the Social Learning Theory. It was supposed that children who grow up with parents who have documented abuse, neglect, domestic violence, or drug and alcohol charges are committing child endangerment. The new policy states that any parent, guardian and or caregiver with documented offenses of this kind will have their children removed from their homes to be placed in the care of the state or foster care services until the perpetrator can provide documented proof that he or she has been free of offenses for at least six months and have completed all classes that they have deemed necessary such as: alcohol and or drug treatment programs, counseling, family therapy sessions, mental health treatment, and anger management, life skill, and or parenting classes. The Department of Job and Family Services cited the Social Learning Theory as the basis and support of this new policy as a result of research done suggesting that “aggressive children have parents who use similar tactics when dealing with others.” They went on to say that “the children of wife batterers are far more likely to use aggressive tactics themselves than children in the general population, especially if the victims (their mothers) suffer psychological distress from the abuse” (Siegel, 2007, p. 110). Social Learning Theory states that individuals learn aggression from watching other people being rewarded for aggressive behavior. Advocates of this new policy argue that removing the children from the home reduces the extent that the individual child is exposed to such aggression, thereby reducing aggression in the child. The possible benefits of this policy include reduced juvenile crimes, and in time, reduced adult crimes being committed in our society. The possible negative effects on implementing this policy are many. If we as a society began removing children from their homes, and placing the full burden of raising them on the state and it’s foster care programs, just because a person in the home had a single domestic violence offense, drug charge, or other charge that falls into this category, the state would soon run out of places to house these children, and the cost to the taxpayer would be phenomenal. What if the person had committed the crime before they had children, would charges still apply? Would the authorities come and take the child from birth if the charges were obtained before the child was born? There is also the issue of double jeopardy, since documented charges would seem to infer that the case had already gone through the judicial system and punishments would have already been given and served out. To then come back and remove the children would be adding another punishment to the offender, and seems unconstitutional, unethical, and immoral. One could argue that putting these children in overcrowded conditions that would arise from the implementation of this policy would do more harm than good. Not all juveniles placed in foster care are there due to bad parenting. Some of these kids end up there because the parents can no longer control

their behavior, or in between doing stints in juvenile hall. All parents or guardians who lose their children would not have the same degree of offense, which runs the risk of kids from better environments being taught through the same Social Theory negative behavior and aggression from other kids. Because the actual definition of Social Learning Theory suggests that since:

• Human beings and the actions they take are derived from the knowledge gained from life experience and watching others.

• Behavior is maintained by rewards received and negated when chastised or unenthusiastic responses are received.

• Aggressive actions are seen as learned reactions to situations experienced in life. • People are not born violent, but learn violent behavior through experience. • People learn violent tendencies through watching others directly or even through the media • Behavior Modeling- people learn violence through family interactions, environmental

experiences, and mass media

(Siegel, n.d.) Aggressive behavior could be learned from many different sources besides their own parents. Another ethical issue in implementing this policy would be the complete unraveling of the family model that this country was founded on. The children placed in these situations would grow up with a diminished sense of family values and belonging, since more children would be removed under this policy than would have other wise been placed as wards of the state including children whose families would have taken good care of them and are loved. The American Academy of Pediatrics claims that roughly 800,000 children spend time in foster care in any given year, and they have many medical, psychological, and dental health needs which go unmet every year (American Academy of Pediatrics, n.d.). Frontline did a special on the failure of our current system to adequately protect the children placed in foster care. Statistics for the year 2000 show that

• A total of 556, 000 children in the foster care system, 291,000 of these were new cases in 2000. • Typical time length that children were in the system was 33 months. • Many of these children were placed in at least five different residences before exiting the

system. • There were 2.8 million statements given to child protective services in 2000, with 1.7 million

cases warranting investigation, netting roughly 500,000 validated cases of abuse or neglect of children in the foster care system.

• Since the government began giving federal foster care assistance in 1960, the number of juveniles in the system has grown extensively.

Casey Family Programs performed a survey of former foster care children. The results show that: • 13 % have been homeless at least one time after leaving the program • 15 % have been arrested

(Frontline, 2010) The Texas Foster Care Transitions program notes that when juveniles reach 18, they are thrown from state assistance to virtually no help at all and no support systems to fall back on. This often propels them into our criminal justice system, because they did not receive adequate training while in the system to know how to function independently. Many have emotional and mental issues. They are released into society to fend for themselves, and have a hard time not succumbing to: homelessness,

poverty, victimization, criminalization, illness, unwanted pregnancy, and dysfunctionality (Texas Foster Care Transitions Project, n.d.) The impact on those involved in this situation is large. Offenders would have to take time off of work to complete all of the programs that could be required, children of otherwise loving parents taken from them and sent to a strange environment gaining psychological problems along the way from being moved around from place to place, and a negative sense of self worth. The court systems would be more crowded than they already are causing more taxpayer money to be spent on more personnel. I think that after thinking about all of the above scenarios, this policy should not be considered ethical because there are too many risks of turning a semi bad situation into a much worse situation for the child involved. I also think that the Department of Job and Family Services did misinterpret the Social Learning Theory because it failed to take into consideration that children learn bad habits and aggression from many more sources besides their own parents. Although, some parents do set a terrible example for their kids, that is generally the exception to the rule, and just because children are reprimanded to the state, there is no guarantee that a better example would be set for the child once they become part of the system. Reference:

American Academy of Pediatrics. (n.d.). Children’s Health Topics: Foster Care. Retrieved from the World Wide Web February 07, 2010 http://www.aap.org/healthtopics/fostercare.cfm Frontline. (2010). Failure to Protect: Foster Care Statistics. Retrieved from the World Wide Web February 06, 2010 http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/fostercare/inside/stats.html

Siegel, L. J. (2007). Criminology: The Core (3rd ed.). Belmont, Ca. Cengage Learning; p. 109-110.

Texas Foster Care Transitions Project. (n.d.) Executive Summary. Retrieved from the World Wide Web February 06, 2010 http://www.cppp.org/files/4/all%20grown%20up.pdf