Taking a political ecological approach to examining young peoples relationship

with crime will help us better understand why they offend?

[t]hey are ordinary kids just doing life to the best of their abilities in circumstances, not
necessarily of their making (France, et al., p.177).

INTRODUCTION
The discussion about youth or young people is always fascinating, not only for the parents with
teenage or for junior and senior high schools teacher, but also for scholars who wants to
explore deeper the puzzling world of the youths. Through sociological analysis, in many parts of
the world, young people are regarded as the agent of change. Nevertheless, they are also
associated as juvenile offenders in various degree of mischief.

Following Spanish philosopher, Jos Ortega y Gasset (1923), Mannheim (1952[1928]: 296)
explained that because of the lack of experience (which facilitates their living in a changing
world) background that young people have, they might play a significant role in social change
(See Berger, 1960, Merico, 2009). Additionally, as outsiders, young people is enable to
accommodate new attitudes, behaviours and cultural patterns. Arulmani et al (2014) stated that
youth have the capabilities to expand their notions of who they are, who they can be, and who
would they like to be, and set forth on the challenging task of navigating adulthood and (more
specifically) their careers; even so, not all of young people have the same opportunities to
leverage these capabilities.

Independent Commission on Youth Crime and Antisocial Behaviour (ICYCAB) (2010) reported
that most young people in UK have a petty or minor criminal record, at least once in their
lifetime. Most of them have also grown out of crime before they are 18. Although sometimes
the number of offenders is decreasing in some periods and increasing in others, youth crime is
becoming a persistent problem (ICYCAB, 2010; France, 2012). New Zealand history also
showed how much the society is concerned about juvenile delinquency: the 1950s is particularly
a high time for serious crimes involving youth in New Zealand (See Manning, 1958; Youth and
crime, 2014).

The tendency of young people to offend is mainly explained by the perceived low self-control
(Gottfredson and Hirshi, 1990) or low self-esteem, neurological problems, or cognitive and
personality disorders (Farrington, 1996). Nonetheless, in the developmental pathway of human,
these problems are omnipresence and seen as a normal part of it (Thornberry, 2005).

We will discuss further about the correlation between youth and crime by addressing some of
these questions: Who is youth? What is the distinction between children, young and adult? Who
has correspondence with them? What are the interests that shape their behaviour? What factors
influence them in committing a crime?

All those questions will be discussed in this essay through the political ecological approach to
help us with better understanding to analyse the relationship between young people and crime,
and why they seem to be very keen to offend. Bronfenbrenners human ecological model and
Bourdieus concept of capital are used in this paper as frameworks to look at the offending
behaviour as a means of survival rather than as an act of insurrection against social integration
in society.

DEFINITION of YOUTH

In 1978, Pierre Bourdieu said la jeunesse nest quun mot (youth is just a word) (Singly,
2008). To some extent, it is correct in the sense that the term youth has different definitions in
various branches of sciences, especially Biology, Psychology, Sociology, Political science, and
Anthropology. The variation of youth definition in many sectors and places, indicate that the
notion of youth and age are culturally and socially constructed while aging is biological process,
there is no universal definition of youth. This is accordance with what is stated by the symbolic
interactionist perspective.

According to Allen (1968, p.321) concept of youth it is not the relationship between ages that
creates change or stability in society, but change in society which explains relations between
different ages. Youth is not inherent characteristics of young people themselves, but on the
construction through social processes. As non-adults, youth are distinguished by the age and
status rather than by their capacities and competences (Archard, 1993; Franklin, 2002; Barry,
2010). They are being constituted as a stage between childhood and adulthood (e.g. Bynner et
al., 1997). Additionally, youth is expected to be an age of deviance, disruption and wickedness
(Brown, 1998).

Historically, a lot of societies in the world does not strongly acknowledge the concept of youth
as a prolonged period of transition from childhood to adulthood. For example, in Islamic
teachings, an individual is considered an adult when they show signs of puberty. In Judaism,
maturity for boys is when they are 13 years old and 12 for the girls. In the Nias islands of
Indonesia, there is an ethnic group whose tradition is to signify the coming of age when a boy is
able to jump over large stone monument. Once he is able to jump over it, he is declared as an
adult. The notion of youth as a normal and normative phase in the cycle of life has just started
gaining acceptance in Western societies during the 19th century (Gillis, 1974). In his book Boys
Adrift, which discusses the disengagement of young men in the society, Dr Leonard Sax (2007)
argued that ceremonial and ritual acknowledgement of maturity, as opposed to a prolonged
coming of age period, is more beneficial in curbing youth delinquency as it gives a sense of
adulthood at a particular point in time. Dr Sax criticised the modern concept of teenage as
exacerbating the problem by giving young people the sense of entitlement and admission to be
delinquent because they are said to be in the phase of being rebellious and restless.




In this section it has been shown that there are complications and difficulties in formulating the
definition of youth. Nevertheless, boundaries and classification has to be made in order to better
understand and model the phenomenon of increased criminal activity in some age group in
society. I personally think that the age range of youth should be a relatively short period of time
with soft boundary that needs to be adjusted over time depending on the demographics, the
distribution of criminal activity among age range, our knowledge on developmental biology, etc.

POLITICAL ECOLOGY APPROACH

France et al. (2012) use the political ecology approach to examine why young people are
offending or involved in crime. This approach is considered as influential in the youths
experience of crime, including their criminal identities and their criminal pathways. Moreover, it
points to how ecological structures shape the social actions of the young and how relations of
power are embedded within them (p.18).

The ecological models of human development theory that was developed by Urie
Bronfenbrenner (1979) become a frame of reference to see how nested political ecology
shapes social action. Bronfenbrenner divided the ecological environment into five structures:
mycrosystems, mesosystems, exosystem, macrosystem, and chronosystem.

These five gradually systems are embedded in individuals live. Microsystem represent the first
layer that shows the pattern of activities, social roles, and interpersonal relations
experienced; gives an overview of this system in family settings, school, peer group, and
workplace.

Mesosystem encompasses the linkages between two or more settings, for instance the relations
between home and church, school and workplace, etc. In other words, a mesosystem is a
system of microsystem.

The third layer is exosystem. This term refers to place between two or more settings where
developing person does not involve as an active participant (Bronfenbrenner, 1979, p.25;
France, 2012, p.20). He gives example for a child, the relation between the home and the
parents workplace; for a parent, this could be the relation between the school and the
neighbourhood peer group.

As the higher order system, the macrosystem consists of the overarching pattern of micro,
meso, and exosystem, it consists of belief systems or ideology, bodies of knowledge, material
resources, customs, life-styles, opportunity structures, hazards, and life course options that are
embedded in each of these broader system. Based on Bronfenbrenner thought, France et al
(2012, p.21) contend that macrosystem as the blueprint for social life and one that provides
laws, rules and regulations on the social norms and values of a given society.

The final system is chronosystem, which be regarded as the influence of time on all other
systems. What happened here is that individual experience refers to historically and might refer
to change experienced by the individual or significant other in the family, school, neighbourhood
or other ecological settings (France et al., 2012, p.21).

Through Bronfenbrenners ecological models of human development, now we have a framework
to understand how complicated the relationship within social context of everyday life is.
However, this system is not complete yet, since it fails to describe the role and how power
operates in the shaping of young peoples life.

The next chapter will be discussed about Pierre Bourdieus work on the analysis of power that
manifested in the concept of capital in social relationship to complement the political ecology
approach on youth based on theory of social practice.

BOURDIEUS THEORY OF SOCIAL PRACTICE

Individuals and groups draw upon a variety of cultural, social and symbolic resources in order
to maintain their own social positions (France, 2012, p.22)

Practice = Habitus + Capital + Field

Individuals live is affected by political, social, cultural and economic factors; we cannot avoid
those factors that shaped our thought and behaviour, especially for young people. To meet the
demand of these factors, every individual has several phases in life.

Bourdieus theory of social practice (1986) focuses on personal networks and stresses on
agency and sociability as on structure and institutionalization as well as on power relationships
and the inevitability of the unequal distribution of capital amongst different groups and societies
(Barry, 2006, p.36). his argument that throughout their lives, individuals accrue capital - social,
cultural, economic and symbolic - through their social practice (Bourdieu, 1984). Furthermore,
this theory views agents as embodying structured, structuring dispositions, the habitus, which is
constituted in practice and is always oriented towards practical functions. (Bourdieu, 1990: 52).

The term of Habitus as Bourdieu has brought into the field of youth phenomenon, refers to:

... the system of durable and transposable dispositions through which we perceive, judge
and act in the world ... acquired through lasting exposure to particular social conditions
and conditionings via the internalizing of external constraints and possibilities.
(Wacquant, 2006: 267)

Habitus is embedded in every individual, it is below the level of consciousness and language,
beyond the reach of introspective scrutiny or control of will (Bourdieu, 1984 p.466). Indeed,
through the perspective of habitus, for young people, being an offender is not regarded as a
deviant act or anomaly but considered as a normal activity. As noted by France et al (2013) that
criminal action was not driven by a motivation or as planned activity but something they had to
manage as a part of everyday life.

Bourdieus concept of capital help to signify how young people can, not only gain kudos and
recognition in youth through offending but also find legitimate and conventional means of
accumulating and spending capital as they move into early childhood (Barry, 2007). He
differentiates capital into four categories such as social capital, cultural capital, economic capital
and symbolic capital. In Bourdieus view, each person engages a position in a multi sector social
space. Every individual is not only determined by social class but each capital they can express
through social relations.

Why capital? The words of capital tends to be used mainly in the relation to assets, especially
economic, and also in the political arena to distributed power. The most common concept in
sociological environment is social capital. Beside Bourdieu, this concept is widely used by many
sociologist such as Putnam (2000) and Coleman (1988). In this essay we are not going to
discuss further about Putnams and Colemans social capital concept
1
, because Bourdieus
concept has more focus on power relationships and the inevitability of the unequal distribution
of capital amongst different groups and societies (Barry, 2007).

Social capital. Here, Bourdieu explains social capital not only about social networks but also
sociability - a continuous series of exchanges in which recognition is endlessly affirmed (1986,
p.250). Family is the primary source of social capital, followed by school milieu, peer group also
have significant role of temporary support and recognition in the transition phase of youth.

Economic capital. Crime often related to the economic background, research has shown that
crime is often occurring on young people with the low level economy income

Cultural capital. is the skills, acknowledgments, and status that comes from ones cultural
identity, particularly in arts and education.

Symbolic capital. Young people perceived the symbolic capital as a result from offending, it
gives them positive reputation amongst their offending peers and street credibility. Moreover,
through offending, young people obtained sufficient recognition which is primarily followed with
services, gifts, attention, care, affection (Bourdieu, 1991, p.128).

As mentioned before, that practice is developed through habitus, capital and field. In every
social circles (e.g., art, economy, politics, religion, etc) have their own rules, structure and
authority; this is what Bourdieu calls the field. Bourdieu defines field as a network, or a
configuration, of objective relations between positions which have objective existence outside
of individual consciousness and these positions reflect the structure of the distribution of
species of power (capital) whose possession commands access to the specific profits that are at
stake in the field (1992: 97).

There is power that forces each individual who enter the field, e.g., a professional doctor need
to have specialist capital to cure the patients illness according to her/his ability as a doctor;
meanwhile a doctor as an agent also required to obey the medical ethics and conform with the
rules of the hospital as the institution or place where the doctor work.

1
Social capital of Putnam and Coleman has more stress on communitarian aspects of social capital
within an institutionalized context. In the political ecological of youth and crime, both theories has different
approach from Bourdieus view of the phenomenon of juvenile delinquency related to the social capital.


Young Peoples Offending

Historically, the majority of public discourse have used young people as a measure of social
disease (Brannen et al., 1994). Some school of thought focusing on identity development claims
that youth offending or risk taking and experimentation are necessary parts of individualisation
process; it is required as a condition for full identity achievement (Marcia, 1966; Erikson, 1968,
1980). In the theoretical and empirical issues of Developmental and Life-Course Criminology
(DLC), Farrington (2002) refers offending to the most frequent crimes of theft, assault,
burglary, rape, robbery, car theft, violence, vandalism, public disorder, minor fraud and drug
use, and to behavior that fundamentally might lead to a conviction in Western industrialized
societies such as the United States and the United Kingdom.

On criminological literature there are variety of reasons why young people are offending (Barry,
2006), it is because of their age; through rational choice or utilitarian; economic or hedonistic
gain; because of an inability to achieve ones aspirations within society; as a result of a lack of
self-control; because of the others influences; because of enjoyment and cultural lifestyles; or
because of a lack of socialization. Additionally, Farrington (2002) figures two factors that
encourage young people to offend, long-term and short-term factors. Long-term factors ex: low
income, school failure, impulsiveness and antisocial models. Short-term factors include
energizing factors (e.g., being bored or angry), opportunities and victims , and a high subjective
expected utility of offending.

Barry (2007) describes some phases in a persons life, that childhood and youth are phases in
the lifecycle where the individual is denied access to the capital enjoyed by adults. Offending
can bring alternative sources of capital as well as temporary relief from an otherwise
disempowering milieu. In other words, through offending, young people would have substitute
sources of capital which gives them more chances to be empowered in their social environment.
Youth transitions in parallel with youth offending enables to describe more of the dynamics of
age, power, interdependence and integration in the transition to full citizenship in adulthood.

Through offending, an offenders is examined to have social recognition, status and position
especially in their relations with social hierarchy of peers; it gives them cultural capital (France,
Bottrell, and Haddon, 2013). Their criminal activities and convictions become a substitute for
academic degrees and professional certifications in achieving a higher societal status. Bottrell et
al (2010) added that offences are seen as the product of negative peer associations. Youths
are particularly vulnerable to this kind of pressure because, for youth, societal acceptance is
paramount. When they dont get this acceptance from their family or parents, they will overtly
seek for approval from their peers, which could put an individual in a very dire situation, if they
seek acceptance from the wrong crowd (Barry, 2007).

Conclusion

Political ecology approach has given us a better understanding why young people have a
tendency to commit crime more than any other age group. The phenomenon of youth offending,
is seen to give young people opportunities to be noted in society, it strengthen their identity as
being someone in the transition phase from childhood to adulthood. As Barry suggests that
offending offered possible status and identity in moving from the confines of the family in
childhood to wider social network of the school milieu (Barry, 2010).

Offending behaviour could be seen as a normal activity but also could be socially and politically
problem. Becoming an offender is a personal choice, nevertheless offending are influenced by
factors, such as external and internal. Family, school, and peer group, those are grouped as
external factors; meanwhile habitus that inherent in young peoples life as unconsciousness is
classified as internal factors.

Through offending, young people is gaining power and helping themselves to fulfil the four
elements of capital, finally satisfying their desire of resources. Those four elements of capital is
manifested in economic (material and financial assets), social (resources accrued by virtue of
membership in a group), cultural (scarce symbolic goods, skill, and titles), and symbolic
(recognition by others) (Wacquant, 1998).

References
Allen, S. (1968, 12). Some Theoretical Problems In The Study Of Youth*. The Sociological
Review, 16(3), 319-331. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-954X.1968.tb01300.x
Archard, D. (1993). Children: Rights and childhood. London: Routledge.
Arulmani, G., Bakshi, A. J., Leong, F. T., & Watts, A. G. (2014). Handbook of career
development: International perspectives. New york: Springer.
Barry, M. (2007, 12). Youth offending and youth transitions: The power of capital in influencing
change. Critical Criminology, 15(2), 185-198. doi: 10.1007/s10612-007-9024-6
Barry, M. (2006). Youth offending in transition: The search for social recognition. London:
Routledge.
Barry, M. (2010, 12). Youth transitions: From offending to desistance. Journal of Youth Studies,
13(1), 121-136. doi: 10.1080/13676260903233712
Bottrell, D., Armstrong, D., & France, A. (2010, 12). Young People's Relations to Crime:
Pathways across Ecologies. Youth Justice, 10(1), 56-72. doi:
10.1177/1473225409356758
Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of taste. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
Bourdieu, P. (2008). Structures, habitus, practices.
Bourdieu, P. (1990). The logic of practice. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The ecology of human development: Experiments by nature and
design. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Brown, S. (1998). Understanding youth and crime: Listening to youth? Buckingham: Open
University Press.
Bynner, J. M., Chisholm, L., & Furlong, A. (1997). Youth, citizenship and social change in a
European context. Aldershot, Hants, England: Ashgate.
Erikson, E. H. (1968). Identity, youth, and crisis. New York: W. W. Norton.
Farrington, D. P., Barnes, G. C., & Lambert, S. (1996, 12). The concentration of offending in
families. Legal and Criminological Psychology, 1(1), 47-63. doi: 10.1111/j.2044-
8333.1996.tb00306.x
France, A., Armstrong, D., & Bottrell, D. (2012). A political ecology of youth and crime.
Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.
Franklin, B. (2002). The new handbook of children's rights: Comparative policy and practice.
London: Routledge.
Gillis, J. R. (1974). Youth and history; tradition and change in European age relations, 1770-
present. New York: Academic Press.
Gottfredson, M. R., & Hirschi, T. (1990). A general theory of crime. Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press.
Marcia, J. E. (1966, 12). Development and validation of ego-identity status. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 3(5), 551-558. doi: 10.1037/h0023281
Sax, L. (2007). Boys adrift: The five factors driving the growing epidemic of unmotivated boys
and underachieving young men. New York: Basic Books.
Stones, R. (2008). Key sociological thinkers. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Thornberry, T. P. (2005, 12). Explaining Multiple Patterns of Offending across the Life Course
and across Generations. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social
Science, 602(1), 156-195. doi: 10.1177/0002716205280641
Wyn, J., & White, R. D. (1997). Rethinking youth. St Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin.