The Criminal Mind - of children

Children are cute fuzzy little cuddly things until they become teenagers. The Cambridge (England) study in Delinquent Development studied over 400 boys from age 8-25, in the years 1961 - 1980. This study offered psychologists a wealth of data associated with offending with respect to gender, socioeconomic class, income, parenting and race. Scientists Thornberry and Figlio concluded: (a)The peak ages for most offenses is 16-17 years; (b) juvenile and adult crime are closely related; (c) as the number of convictions increases beyond six, so the probability of further convictions become greater; (d) juveniles convicted at the earliest ages (10-12) become the most persistent offenders. In this post, I hope to outline the criminal thinking patterns most common young offenders and contrast them with Allah-fearing and virtuous intelligence and reasoning in the child companions of the Prophet Muhammad (s.a.w). I had to write an essay on the rise of youth offenders. I am sharing my notes from two scholarly readings: (1) "Cognitive-Behavioural Interventions with Young Offenders" by Clive R. Hollin and (2) "Child Companions around the Prophet (peace be upon him) by Sameh Strauch (Darussalam). The purpose of this post is to help start a discussion on saving our children from criminal impulses and raising them with Islamic disposition.

Several cognitive theories claim that young offenders share 50 styles and errors of thinking which defines their criminal minds. These theories encompass the following conclusions:

• Ross and Fabiano blame criminal activity on the omission of thought between impulse and action. They say that children lack reflection; they fail to stop and think; fail to generate alternative responses to conflicts. 
• Rotter suggests young offenders lack internal control; they perceive their behaviour as determined by influences outside their personal control such as luck, friends and authority figures. 
• Chandler reports young offenders lack empathy, that is, they are incapable of seeing things from someone else's perspective; they do not have the capacity to care at an emotional level - they are egocentric. 
• Hain and Ryan explain that young offenders have a moral problem; they have self-serving, hedonistic and anti-social values. 

"Psychology and Crime" by R.V.G Clarke, 1977, Bulletin of the British Psychological Society, 30, p.281 address the elements contributing to the occurrence of a criminal events in children. he article claimed that early environment and upbringing (broken homes, inconsistent discipline, criminal father etc) coupled heredity traits like low IQ, emotional lability, poor conditionality etc cause cognitive criminal behaviour. Children living under these conditions are most likely to develop criminal personalities: become extraverted, impulsive and aggressive. This is especially true if children are young, boys and unskilled. Living circumstances and crisis events like inner-city residence, delinquent associates, truant football fan, drinking over the weekends or failing a course, getting beaten up in school, having a friend who was arrested etc also strengthens criminal behaviour. The criminal act is finally trigged when such children are perhaps on a poorly lit street with no police patrols, nearby unlocked cars or self-service shops; they are bored, fed-up, want money or thrill and they see low risk in crime and high reward. 

You must be thinking, my kid is not a criminal. Though this may be true, it will still be pretty ghastly to know that according to the Youth Criminal Justice Act 2006, for every 100,000 youth in Canada between the ages of 12-17, 8000 were charged with criminal code offenses (excluding traffic), and additional 4000 were charged with property crime and 2000 more with violent crimes. Canada produced 14,000 criminal children in just one year! So alhamdulillah, if your kid is not stealing or hurting someone, but they may be hanging out with other children who are. This puts your kid at risk of being exposed to learning crime or worse, becoming an accessory to crime.

The world in which our  live, learn and play is a mirror or their atittute and expectations. Our children are bound to behave like the environment we leave them in. So it is important to select their school, friends - programs they watch on TV, games they play etc with the greatest care, because this very "environment" is the mental feeding ground out of which the food that goes into their minds is extracted. This is how they shape their beliefs, interpret values and attach meaning to events.