The Risk Factors Overview

   Welcome to my blog.  In my blog I will be extensively examining the correlation between inner city youth and their surroundings to help explain why some of these people are criminally involved, less educated, or psychologically scarred.  These happenings are downplayed and are barely beginning to get the recognition that they deserve in order to get more people involved towards the goal of inspiring youth to choose another path. 

   There are several different reasons for why youth in urban and impoverished areas are more likely to participate in illicit activity.  A few of the reasons for youth delinquency can be tied to the lack of community assistance; the heavy influence of gang activity through media glorification and everyday experiences the youth witness, the absence of a father or father figure in the household as well as the outdated educational system that plagues the impoverished areas of the United States in general.  For example, the lack of education loses the attention of the students, thus devaluing what these young people do.  Gangs provide an alternative sense of of brotherhood and the things that entail gaining respect dictate the desensitization and acceptance to become a delinquent.  The lack of a father in the household mixed with the mother working or dealing with daily life struggles lessens the structure that a young man needs, thus leaving them more impressionable and vulnerable to peer pressure.

 
   When mixing these specific variables with the everyday lack of resources, it influences people to want to take those resources they cannot attain.  These reasons coincide to Robert Sapolsky's Sick of Poverty article in which he explains the difference of being poor and feeling poor, but many of the youth have to deal with both.  Not only will this blog give the negative factors that influence such behavior, but will also provide programs that different organizations and individuals are doing to undo this phenomena.

 
   Depending on the level of income that someone has, it heavily dictates their social nourishment as well as physical health and this leads to youth delinquency.  For this, the factors will be evaluated, questioned, and validated. 
 
   I have come from and have extensively seen these factors in play which is why I specifically feel that this blog will have valuable insight and bring perspective that many studies have not been entirely addressed.