Schwartz, I. M., Rendon, J. A., & Hsieh, C. M. (1994, September). Is child maltreatment a leading cause of delinquency? Child Welfare, 73, 639-655.
The purpose of this article is to connect the methods, discipline, and theories of social work with adolescents to the wider field of the influence of government policy on crime. The way in which this connection is made is through a review of previous research into the causes of juvenile delinquency, but the real message is a critique of policies that tend to be preoccupied with juveniles that are placed into the juvenile justice system. Basically these authors are saying that the debate over the causes of juvenile crime has been focused on the dynamics of crime and punishment as observed in the judicial system. In other words the lionÆs share of attention is being given to juveniles who have been identified as offenders and who may be facing punishment for their crimes. Much less attention is being given to heading off crimes in the first place--finding the causes before they become transformed by juvenile actions into crimes.
The relevance of this for the public in general is that tax resources are being funneled into the activities and programs associated with punishments. While the authors seem to realize that there is a necessity to make this whole system as efficient and fair as possible, their real point is that this will not necessarily mean that the number of juvenile offenses will decrease. The relevance of that argument for social workers comes in because it is that counseling population that is most likely, to be involved in dealing with treatment of offenders, and not just with their punishment. That is why the argument, that the focus is on the offenders per se and not on identifying what motivates or otherwise causes the offenses before they happen, is so vital to social workersÆ interest.
In the background of this article is the difficulty associated with coming u...