Delinquency Among Adolescence With A Focus On Iq

Deviance is the recognized violation of cultural norms which is represented primarily by crime. Crime is the violation of a society’s formally enacted criminal law (Macionis, 222). With this known, this paper is going to discuss the connections between delinquency and IQ mainly among adolescent children. In psychology deviance is viewed as the result of “unsuccessful” socialization (Macionis, 223). The articles that I have read mostly pertain to adolescent adults and deal with the predictability of delinquency based on their intelligence from a variety of IQ tests.

The tests that are used in the articles are the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (or WISC-R) and the ACID profile test (or Arithmetic, Coding, Information, and Digit Span subtests). The WISC-R tests Performance, Verbal, and total IQ as well as the Freedom from Distractibility factor (FD). The study was aimed at making connections between dropout delinquent adolescents and nondelinquent adolescents and was comprised into three groups. They were the dropout delinquent adolescents living in residential institutions, dropout delinquent adolescents living at home, and nondelinquent adolescents living at home. The test involved 215 participants from Israel who like the United States suffer from high dropout rate and tend to dropout just a year from completing their formal education at tenth grade. Dropping out of school is generally followed with social unattachment and come from low-socioeconomic families in areas that are financially distressed. A large portion of the adolescents come from families that are dysfunctional to some degree Kahn-Stavzisky, 3, 1999). This will include mental illnesses, drug and alcohol abuse, or prostitution and criminal activities. The results of the study were analyzed by educational and clinical psychologists who did not know the adolescents group identity. The results were categorized into three categories: Verbal IQ, Performance IQ, and Total IQ. In the Verbal category the results showed that nondelinquent children scored notably higher than both the delinquent in residential institutions and living at home. The results were the same in Performance and Total IQ with the lowest scorers being the nondelinquent adolescents living in residential institutions. The findings concluded that there are more differences in the nondelinquent group and the two delinquent groups which show that the low scorers in the WISC-R IQ test were more prone to delinquent behavior. The findings of this study have practical implications to target potential dropout students and to put them into rehabilitation programs to give additional needed support.

In reading Intelligence and Delinquency, the prior theory holds validity but is said that the relation is at least as strong as the relation of either class or race to official delinquency. They state that IQ has an effect on delinquency independent of class and race and the effect is mediated through a host of school variables (Hirschi, Hindelang, 1977). A sociologist by the name of West monitored a little over four hundred boys over a ten-year span and compared the delinquent and nondelinquent groups on the prevalence of low IQ (West, 574). The data was substantial in the fact that one-quarter of those with the IQ score over one hundred and ten had a police record, and the same was true of one-half of those with IQ scores of ninety or less. Even more remarkably, while only one in fifty boys with an IQ over one hundred and ten or more was a recidivist, one in five of those with an IQ score of ninety or less fell in the same category (West, 574). His analysis showed that low IQ was a forerunner of delinquency even to the same extent as other major factors such as race and class. This is not always true for everyone. It is just a predisposition for the attributes associated with deviance. A boy with a high IQ whose talents go unrecognized and unrewarded is a prime candidate for delinquency (Cohen, 578). Another study that confirms the correlation between low IQ and delinquency was done by Brown University. Three thousand children from the ages four to seven were compared and they found that compared with non-delinquents, juvenile delinquents scored an average of eight points lower with recidivists even lower. This would stand to reason that low IQ begets delinquency rather than results from it.

There are arguments to the connection between IQ and delinquency ranging from cultural bias to the forms the intelligence tests come in. “So-called intelligence tests measure only вЂ?test intelligence’ and not innate intelligence” (Clinard, 1968:170), and “mainly they [IQ tests] measure the socioeconomic status of the respondent” (Chambliss and Ryther, 1975: 373). The cultural bias is based on the fact that the tests are bias against low income and minority group children and focus toward excelling schools. Others look at society and how it is structured and how a society can be structured in such a way that promotes delinquency and criminal behavior.

The material I have read has made a lot of sense and I now understand the Deviance chapter much better. I have realized that there is not one single factor that will determine the outcome of an adolescent to become delinquent. IQ is an early warning sign and it is a good tool to target at risk children however it is not a constant and there are many factors that can sway a person one way or another. Psychological explanations of deviance focus on abnormality in the individual personality (Macionis, 223). This can be attributed to IQ, race, gender, social class and age as well as many more variables. I believe that the connection between deviance and IQ are most closely represented by the social-conflict approach because the deviance would result from social inequalities and it also sees deviance as political: people with little power are at high risk for becoming deviant. Most of the children that become deviant come from low income families who live in low income neighborhoods and are subjected to more deviant actions than you would see in a rural middle class neighborhood. But those with the lower IQ are more prone no matter what to become deviant.

I found a lot of new information in the articles that I read and the most interesting was that delinquent children score an average of eight points lower on IQ tests than nondelinquent adolescents and that this carries up into adulthood. Age also has a difference in delinquency as official crime rates rise sharply in the late teens, and then fall as people get older. This