Neglect Trauma Essay

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There has been an enormous amount of research, going back almost thirty years, about the relationship between childhood trauma, and juvenile delinquency. Many researches cannot say that there is a direct link between the two, but after much research, researches have found that childhood trauma can perhaps be a predictor for juveniles who later in life commit crimes. Trauma is defined as, “a disordered psychic or behavioral state resulting from severe mental or emotional stress or physical injury,” because the definition is broad and can range from a variety of different events, for the purpose of this paper, the focus will be on neglect trauma in juveniles (Trauma, 2016). Neglect according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is, “the failure of a parent or other person with the responsibility for the child to provide needed food, …show more content…

In 2008, according to the U.S. Department of Human Services, of all the maltreatment cases “71.1% of those were neglect” (Kazemaian, 2011). Many researchers, (Mersky and Reynolds’, Dierkhising, Kerig, Buffington, Ford, Topitzes, and Ryan, Widom and Maxfield) have studied the topic of neglect trauma and juvenile delinquency extensively, and have all established that although there is no proof that neglect can cause delinquency, there is a strong relationship between the two and have found neglect can play a critical role in later offending. Other researchers (Cohen, Smailes, and Brown) on the other hand have found little to no correlation between neglect trauma and later delinquency. Where as the last remaining researches (Stewart, Hoeve, Tyler, Bright, Widom, Williams, Unnever) have taken another standpoint, to could explain the child’s delinquent behavior such as, the timing of the neglect, the duration of the neglect, gender, and parent-child

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