14 DAY TRIAL // Popular belief has it that African-Americans living in poor neighborhoods are more prone to committing crimes than other races. This is not necessarily true, objectively speaking, because their living conditions don't quite match the cozy, suburban lifestyle associated with lower infraction rates. Recent studies show that family issues play a huge role in the development of young African-American behaviors.
Researchers at OSU Center for Family Research and the University of Ohio studied some 2,549 cases of juvenile court trials, involving both Whites and African-Americans. They analyzed the connection between several societal factors, including gender, race and ethnicity, family and mental health, and learned that the prevalent influence on the behavior of juvenile African-Americans, of both genders, is that of their family.
Black teenagers coming from disorganized families, with a history of violence and conflicts with the law, are more likely to exhibit externalizing and internalizing behavioral patterns, than their White peers. This is especially true for females, who exhibit the highest degree of externalization among all studied groups.
"Families may matter in a different way for African-American youth than what we're finding for White youth. We are now trying to identify exactly what is different in African-American families that affects whether youth internalize or externalize problems, and how best to help them. This means identifying those family strengths that buffer against these problem behaviors as well as focusing on family risk factors that increase the likelihood of these difficulties," says the study.
Stephen M. Gavazzi, Jennifer M. Bostic, and Courtney M. Yarcheck, the authors of this study, say that the federal government should take these issues into account when elaborating social plans, aimed at reducing violence within African-American communities. A comprehensive set of measures in this direction could go a long way towards dropping the alarmingly-high rate of crimes in these neighborhoods.