“Outline how our environment plays a role in causing children to kill? ” The topic of investigation into the psychology of criminal minds is one that interests me greatly. Crime is always surrounding us in some way and yet most of us as a society turn a blind eye to and dismiss it, but there are some people such as myself who take interest in it and want to find out the reasons as to why it happens. Also, as I would like to become a criminal psychologist in the future, I believe that this topic is relevant to my future studies that I will be undertaking in university.
In the society that we as humans are now living in, we are and have been frequently asking the question “Outline how our environment plays a role in causing children to kill? ” Our environment is a constant part of children’s everyday life; therefore the amount of violence portrayed and shown to them in their everyday lives affects them immensely. I believe that there are six main causes that can bring out violence in and affect the way children behave in society and their environment.
These causes are the development of social skills, drugs and alcohol, street gangs, media, abuse, and family. In this essay, I will discuss and evaluate all of these six causes with references to case studies. To begin, what makes child killers seem so much more horrendous than any other killers; I believe that it is because children are perceived as innocent and angelic, which is why when they do such a thing as murder another human being they are immediately labelled ‘freaks of nature’1.
However this labelling could be considered unfair, because there are explanations behind why children do this and why their brains function in such a way. Secondly, the development of social skills is highly important in a child’s growth towards morality (learning the difference between right and wrong). Children, who are brought up in a society where there is a lot of violence, are being put at a high risk in their development.
“Studies have shown that children who do have violent tendencies are like this because; those who live in fear hold back their feelings which get in the way of their ability to understand their surroundings, those who are always exposed to violence usually cannot concentrate, those who are always abused feel helpless, or constant stress at home gives them symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Also, certain factors such as past violent behaviour, substance abuse, aggressive peer pressure, family aggression, mental disorders, and access to weapons, put high risk of violence among children.
“From my studies, I believe that children sometimes think that killing will help them to solve their problems, but this is not true, as they do not actually solve anything. However, children can develop the intent to kill with and without knowing what they’re doing, and can kill without understanding that when they do so, the person will die. Society must understand this and make it clear to its children whilst they are developing otherwise, the children may continue to not know what they are doing is wrong.
Another cause of why children kill without being fully aware is when taking drugs or alcohol. Drugs and alcohol are used a lot among adolescents and can make a big impact on what crimes they may commit. Children or adolescents, probably drink to seem ‘cool’ or ‘tough’ or ‘grown up’. I know this first hand because I have seen it happen in bars or on streets; people drinking underage and claiming that they want to ‘get wasted’.
I have also seen and heard first hand drunken boys saying they want to and do start fights, also boys getting angry or violent with their girlfriends, and even girls fighting screaming “I’m going to beat the s**t out of you b***h”. This aggressive and violent behaviour would probably not occur without the effects of drugs or alcohol because these adolescents would be in the right state of mind to think about committing an immoral act.
Teenagers that feel drinking alcohol and smoking cannabis helps them feel more ‘chilled out’ and also rebellious against rules may be right, but if this is continuous, then they can develop life-threatening addictions and behaviours, personality disorders, and loss of control leading to suicide or attacks on others (sometimes fatal). Also if drugs are taken at a young age, this could harm the psychological development of the child for a long time to come. Street gangs often involve deaths and committing murder.
They are usually made up by race or ethnicity and are “a group of people who form an allegiance for a common purpose and engage in violent, unlawful, or criminal activity. “3 These gangs think that violence is fun and that they must enjoy it so that they can get and keep respect and status. Those who are part of a gang, (some children even as young as ten), have put their families lives also in danger because if the member does something wrong or doesn’t do something that the gang tells them to do, then the gang will physically harm the member and his/her family.
Gang members who are not killed end up taking drugs and alcohol and getting long police records. Killing comes into play when gangs go looking for trouble and have a showdown with rival gangs in the form of a drive-by shooting, which results in the death of some gang members but also some innocent victims who were in the wrong place at the wrong time, or simply individual attacks. This gang warfare often influences young children to start gangs and has in numerous cases ended up with child on child killing, and child gangs just killing people such as the elderly for money or fun.