What are the social ecological forces that might have influenced your likelihood of engaging in criminal activity? Consider:
- Where have you lived?
- What is the nature of the community or communities in which you have lived?
- With whom have you engaged in frequent social interaction?
- What social ecological forces might influence you through these experiences?
Post your 1-2 paragraph response to the comments section below by Wednesday, Feb. 8
Feel free to review and respond to other contributors responses.
There are several ecological forces that can act upon an individual that can make them more prone to crime than others. Where you live, people you interact with and things such as social media are just a few. When I was young I lived with my mom and step-brother just outside of a small town in eastern Kentucky. This didn’t last long, at a young age I moved in with my grandparents. That decision has been such a blessing and has ultimately made me who I am today. My mom has been in and out of trouble and my step brother passed away at young age because of actions he shouldn’t have been involved in. Seeing the consequences of their wrong decisions made it easy for me to make the right ones.
My grandparents live on a small piece of land outside of another small city in eastern Kentucky. They have raised me to make good decisions and to treat people how I would want to be treated. There is crime in every neighborhood and if people are around it, they will be more likely to be involved in it themselves. In my hometown everybody knows everything and crime is everywhere. I have noticed some people that I graduated high school with, played ball with and friends with have been in trouble with the law. Ultimately, being raised by my grandparents to do right and to work hard for what I have has made me the person I am. If it wasn’t for them along with the lessons I was taught, I would have been more likely to have been involved in crime living with my mom.
It sounds like family trumped neighborhood effects in your experience.
I grew up in a small town in Eastern Kentucky, with my mom, dad, and brother. My grandparents, who I spent a lot of time with, lived only 25 minutes away. I had a great group of friends and a wonderful family but everyone has their problems. My grandfather and dad taught me a lot about being a man and helped shaped me into the person I am today. They both always told me “A smart man learns from his mistakes, but a wise man learns from others.” I took that to heart very quickly at a young age, and in time found that expression to be more important than I would ever realize. As I grew up I saw many of the people I knew make mistakes, and as a result I saw what they went through as a consequence. I’ve seen how a teen pregnancy effects a family, what drugs can do to an addict and their friends, what happens to you when you get a DUI, what it’s like to see someone who is in the final stages of over dosing, and even suicide. I have seen a lot in 22 years and can’t believe the lessons I have learned as result, but make no mistake, I didn’t have to listen to my dad or grandfather’s advice. Where I grew up, crime was relatively low but if you wanted to find trouble you could find it. There were always people dealing drugs, drinking heavily, or committing any assortment of crime, so it’s very easy for anyone to fall victim to a dangerous life style in my opinion. Another great piece of advice my grandfather gave me was “You are judged by the company that you keep.” I would have to say that was one of the most important phrases he ever expressed to me. I could’ve easily chosen to get involved in some sort of crime growing up, it’s easy to do but seeing so many people I went to school do this, made a great impression on me. I simply didn’t want to lead that type of life, I felt that if I had I would’ve hurt so many of the people that I loved. My friends that I grew up with were always together, which is one of the reasons why I feel we never got into any trouble, because there was 15 of us! It’s a lot harder to do illegal things in a big group, especially in a small town where everyone knows everyone.
In my opinion, I think that everyone grows up in different areas. Yes, some places might be more susceptible to crime than others but the fact is you can always find trouble if you go looking for it. I think also that any person has a choice to commit a crime, but it depends on if that person is okay leading that type of life style. A community can make a difference I feel, but only to a degree, the people who are involved in your life on a personal level, can teach you more about the world than any school can. Yes, there are issues each of us face, but it’s how we respond to those issues that truly define us a person. No matter what you excuse you put forward about a choice you have made, YOU made the choice not anyone else.
-Clayton
So… An individual always has the power to make decisions and are not just programmed by circumstances of their life.
I grew up in a rural area, 12 minutes northwest of town, in southwestern Ohio. This town was more of a farming community than anything. Church is a part of many peoples lives here, along with the occasional beer drinking that occurs around 5 o’clock every day. It’s not your typical, “church pew or bar stool” kind of town, many people fall in the middle here. Most people work sun up to sun down; there isn’t a whole lot of time for crime here. The county itself is divided into multiple sections, mainly the “city, north, and south”. The south being the lower income and meth/heroin area. I never really saw this area growing up and it’s not heavily drug populated, people just stereotype the area for what it is; it’s more looked down upon than anything else. The city is a calm place, not a whole lot of issues here. Everyone seems to get along and I think there has been 3 murders here since the early 90’s. The north part of the county is based on heavy agriculture, and there is more wealth here; a very rural area where disputes are few and far between. The farmers farm, they drink beer, and bull shit when the days are done. I grew up with my mammaw and her father until about the age of 5 and then my parents took me over. The reason for them not raising me my first few years was due to their work schedule; each working 60+ hours a week. The school I went to sure was a nice one; an ideal school where any parent would feel comfortable sending their kids. Really the only thing us kids did in high school was underage drink. Drugs and violence were never an issue; I never had any friends who had violent parents or anything like that in general. I was never prone to crime, didn’t really ever think about, and still don’t to this day. My parents did a great job. They never really influenced me one way or another; they wanted what was best for me and they cared about my safety and there’s nothing I would change about that.
I spent the first half of my life in a small rural community. Our house was somewhat isolated so we did not have much experience with crime. However, I know now that this area seems to have higher crime rates within the county. We had our own elementary school, but all of the county schools combined into one middle school. Once all of these students were together, it was easy to see that the elementary school districts were divided into upper, middle, and lower class, with the rural school being the poorest. Around the time I started middle school, my family moved into town, into a fairly nice subdivision with about 10 houses. I watched many of my classmates from elementary school grow up to become drug users, teen parents, and commit all kinds of crimes. Students from the other two schools had their fair share of problems as well, but kids from my school always seemed to be in worse trouble.
I remained pretty sheltered throughout my upbringing, and my parents were very careful about who they would let me spend time with. I have had a lot of friends with similar experiences, and I have seen two possible outcomes: they feel smothered and rebel at the first chance, or they turn out fine. I have seen more of the former than the latter, although most of the rebellious phases pass fairly quickly. From what I have experienced, the factors most likely to influence crime in that county are poverty and boredom.
So a solution in that area would include raising people out of poverty and providing whatever drives to people out of a state of boredom. Sounds like a plan.
…….. I grow up in 4 different location, each location for a number of years. I born in LA, California but my family was big on staying close to home so we moved back to Mexico after two years in California. We stayed in Mexico for 4 years. Then my dad decided, he wanted to move back to the United States to start up his own business and move away from home where politics was huge in our family. My Dad didn’t want to run for office as the new mayor because he said he had bigger dreams for his family. We first moved to Kentucky because my mom’s family were already here and offered to let us stay with them. My Parents didn’t understand what racism was till they moved here, they were not accepted into the neighborhoods they wanted to move into. The teachers and parents at the schools we attended were concerned with us at the school because we were the only Hispanics at the schools and we miss treated by the other kids that had ignorant parents
……..My dad then decided to moved to North Carolina where he had connections about the type of job he wanted in construction and architect projects. We stayed in a gated community where everyone know each other and went to the same schools. My mom was a Spanish teacher and enrolled my two older and younger sibling into a private school. It was an international academy where each race had no more then about 30 percent at the school. And whites were the minority because you had every race form across the world that we gifted in two different school subjects. the only down side to the school was that you started at 8.am and left at like at 5.pm. So the only people you talked to were classes-mates at school and then at home because usually they lived near the school.
……..We moved back to Kentucky after 6 years in North Carolina. The community we left had changed a lot but we lived outside of the community in the country and there was no one around us. the closest person was a 3 minute drive away from our house. So the only interaction we had was when we went to school or schools activity since we all played sports or were part of a club in the school. I personally was the most involved because I was the captain of my soccer, tennis, and track team. I was a part of the honor society, Beta club, and senior advisory where we organized all our school events and parties.
…….After I graduated high school my parents moved, each their own ways. My mom went back to Mexico and my dad moved to Lexington, where construction was a growing business due to the need of new communities and housing. I live on campus because I half a full ride scholarship because of my good academics in high school. So the only people I frequently socialize with are people from part of the dorm, soccer club, Spanish club, or my fraternity sigma alpha epsilon.
What social ecological forces might influence you through these experiences?
The idea of having environmental factors affect large groups that share common living or working spaces. A network of social relationships is an important source of support and appears to be an important influence on health behaviors.They also build their morals based off the what the majority of what the people in the community believe to be right because they want to be accepted. Other factors would be related to safety, violence, and social disorder in general, and more specific factors related to the type, quality, and stability of social connections.
Majority of my life I have lived in small mediocre sized towns like Paducah KY and Lexington KY. Both of those places have good populations sizes for Kentucky but nothing like a major city. I grew up in the foster care system so I interacted with diverse families and children with normal or extremely troubling disorders and behaviors. So I guess you can say the nature of my environment has been ranging from normal American value households to extreme situations most kids at the age of 7 typically shouldn’t half to deal with.
I believe it had a positive effect on me for the most part. Growing up I interacted with criminal and deviants, and also I had amazing strong religious good hearted people in my life as well. So typically I believe when kids grow up in a modern nuclear they see crime and deviance in grey not black and white. I was able to see the extremes of both from a house hold that sold drugs out of it to literally staying with a pastor and his wife for a few weeks. That’s not to say I don’t do bad things it just when it comes to most criminal related things its always black and white to me I don’t justify deviant acts and luckily I have never been forced in a situation to half to see it that way like stealing to eat etc.
Catrina Lewis
There are many forces that can increase the likelihood of someone engaging in criminal activity. I grew up on a farm a little over three hundred acres with a good family, this has ultimately kept me on a good path. The town that I attended school at is commonly known for it’s meth usage. You learned about someone new being on drugs all the time. This made it very hard to make friends because you never knew who was secretly using or who was gonna start using. However, most of the friends I had were the same people that were my friends in elementary school, they kept out of trouble with me and we just existed being surrounded by all this.
After graduating high school, I didn’t have to be around those influences any more, and thankfully I’ve never done drugs or engaged in any criminal activity, but most people I grew up with cannot say the same. There was a boy I knew for years that I just heard about being on the news for armed robbery. My school had gun threats, knife threats, there was alcohol and drugs everywhere, and the scariest part about that town is that it’s probably never going to get any better. The criminal influences in that town is just too much.
overall, i grew up in a very rural area in southeastern Kentucky. the county had a population of around 10,000 dispersed over a large area. economically speaking the area was mainly working/lower middle class with most jobs coming from factory’s, people mainly have a high school/GED equivalent with a low percentage of people having a bacholar or above. most of the people that got a college degree (especially younger people), get their degree and leave town; there really isn’t anything to keep people with higher education or white collar workers in the area.
The area has a major problem with drugs, mainly meth, prescription drug abuse, and heroin. its to the point that that the county has been noted to have some of the highest drug related arrests in the state. As a byproduct you have a lot of broken homes where you have a lo of kids being raised in single parent homes and more likely grandparents raising grand kids.
As far as my home life i had both parents in the home. this had a big influence on me because i can remember growing up that most of my friends came from divorced homes or raised by relatives, I also had the benefit of having both my sets of grandparents in my life from an early age. while there was much in the way of higher education in my family (hell my old man got kicked out of high school in his freshman year), they stressed from an early age the importance of education and learning, and i grew older and saw how my peers were either dropping out of school, getting involved in drugs, teen pregnancy, etc., I pretty quickly realized that wasn’t exactly the best way to live ones life and i didn’t want to end up fucked up and stuck in this s***hole of a town.
in the “was much higher education …” line the was should be Wasn’t
Social ecological forces is a big impact when studying why offenders commit crime. I am from a small town in Eastern Kentucky about two hours from Morehead called Martin County. The whole population is around 2,000 people who solely base their income on the coal mines. The individuals in the community work really hard to support their family. However there is a decent amount of drug crimes committed in this area but no where near the magnitude of a bigger town.
The biggest social force that kept me away from crime is my family. My parents are both school educators in the Martin County school system and they always held me to a higher standard in school and who I associated myself with. When I turned 16 I had to get a job in the community so I would work all spring and summer at the local community center and in the fall/winter I played football and lifted weights. My schedule gave me very little idle time to go out and break the law. Also growing up it was never a choice to go to college, it is something I have to do so education is very important to my family. The people who where my closest friends where individuals on the football team which was beneficial because our coach always checked in on us to make sure we weren’t doing anything illegal and always made sure we kept good grades in school or we couldn’t play.
The last study I encountered indicated that drug-related crimes are more common in Kentucky’s rural areas than in metropolitan.
Growing up my parents were divorced and there for a while I went back and forth between their houses and my dad’s house was in the middle of Louisville, Kentucky, and my mom’s house was in Meade County, but I spent most of the time at my dad’s. Therefore the community that I lived in growing up we knew and still know our neighbors for the most part. Living in Louisville I was spoiled, because there’s a lot of different things to do there unlike here in Morehead. However, living in Louisville one learns that it has its bad parts of town and its good parts. There are gangs present in Louisville, but the closest I venture to there was when I would go to school which was in downtown Louisville. I believe if I had lived in that area it would of had a great influence on what crimes I may or may not of been involved in. Considering the only kind of crime I’ve done is steal a bracelet from some store, which I later returned I feel that the way that I was raised had a great influence on me. Another thing to be considered I went to private schools for every grade but 5th and high school so that probably had a lot of influence on the different people I was friends with. All in all, the way I was brought up had a great influence on my life because I seem to have turned out pretty well being one of the first in my family to go to college.
It is easy to be overwhelmed with potential influential factors once one starts exploring one’s life. How does a person “select” or limit the effects of different forces?
Throughout my life I have lived in Washington state, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Kentucky. In Washington we lived on an army base, where there was a lot of security to deter any criminal activity. Not only was there law enforcement everywhere, but everyone there was in the military, which breeds a strong sense of community since everyone works together. In pennsylvania we lived in a small town with my grandparents. The neighborhood had residents who had lived there their entire lives. All the neighbors knew our family. In Maryland we lived in a very diverse area with a low average income rate. Despite the financial well being of most people there, the community was stable, again with a large number of people who had never lived anywhere else. The area was predominantly small, older houses. In ohio we lived in the suburbs of a small town in the middle of nowhere. Everyone knew most of the people in town and the crime rate there was exceptionally low. The schools had a five star rating. In kentucky we first lived in apartments close to Cincinnati. We didn’t know any of our neighbors the entire time we lived there. We rarely ran into people we knew by happenstance. The school system was noticeably worse than in Ohio. We now live in Morehead just outside of town. We know the neighbors, and they sometimes ask to play with our dogs. It is a much closer community than in northern KY. I most frequently interacted with fellow students and church members. I think the social ecological forces that impacted my upbringing the most were land values and landscape features, as places surrounded by farmland or mountains seem to be closer communities.
At first, the diversity overshadows everything else. Upon reflection, it seems worth searching for potential similarities in the different social environments (e.g., socioeconomic class, educational systems, religious patterns, etc. of course, the diversity/instability itself could play a significant role in influencing one toward or from criminal behaviors.
I was born and raised in the eastern most point of Kentucky. Elkhorn City located in Pike county is surrounded by beautiful mountains that serve as almost an insulating barrier from the outside world. Communities in rural Appalachia are an interesting thing. They are so close knit and yet can draw boundary lines between seemingly similar groups. It almost becomes a tribal system the deeper you go because statistically this is one of the poorest areas in the country so many opportunities are limited.
Many families have no cars, or many broken cars spread throughout their property, so they must find other means of transportation and rely on others. It’s common for most of the population to live deep inside hollows in the mountains colloquially referred to as “hollers”. These roads run along side a creek straight through natural valleys in the mountain. This all makes travel in and out hard, the roads are usually in bad condition, and people tend to be very wary of outsiders. The common tropes of Southern hospitality to exist here it just seems that most people in rural Appalachia have a warming up period in which they are sizing up and evaluating new comers.
In my life and most peoples lives in the mountains you spend most of your time with family and extended family. Neighbors can be right next door or in most cases a mile or two “on up the holler”. The poverty and unique geography of the area creates microcosms of unique almost tribal like communities.
As you describe it, your social ecological environment is strongly influenced by the physical environment. What about them (either physical or social) could affect one’s likelihood of engaging in criminal behavior?
Growing up with a police officer for a father (I have law enforcement on both sides of my family, in fact), I never really considered committing a crime. A also have two uncles and a cousin who are pretty well-known preachers. My family is very religious, and of course that rubbed off on me. I even graduated from a private Christian high school, so I guess you could say that I was a sheltered child. My neighborhood wasn’t a bad place to grow up in: economically it consisted of middle and lower class and I know the majority of my neighbors by name. That’s not to say that it didn’t have its problems, but for the most part it was quiet.
However, just because I grew up in a decent neighborhood with a nice family doesn’t mean that I was never exposed to criminal behavior. Anyone who spends any amount of time in the world is liable to come across people who actively engage in illicit activities. Those most common things I’ve come across is drugs and minors drinking alcohol. I’ve had friends who drank and smoked weed, and some even popped pills. I’ve seen kids shoplift, and have had “friends” steal from me. My street had a couple of “problem houses” that was notorious for selling drugs and there was a homicide in one of the low-income rental houses at the end of my road (jealous ex-boyfriend).
Despite what I’ve seen and some of the peer pressure I’ve experienced, I’ve never done anything criminal. I’ve never touched any sort of substance, never stolen anything, never hurt anyone, etc. My family has had a huge impact on me; from law enforcement officers to preachers, I guess you could say some great morals were instilled into me at a very young age.