Stability and Continuity

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The Importance of Stability and Continuity
Stability is important, because it helps to predict how an individual criminal behavior will be in the future based on what they have done in the past. Studies have shown that those individuals that have criminal records as adults, had behaviors as toddlers or teenagers that demonstrated that there would be problems in the future. The theory is that the past will predict the future based on how frequent these behavior patterns occurred and if those crimes committed decreased or increase in the seriousness of the crime. However, this becomes a tricky situation, because children are capable of change, but their behavior as children does play a major role in the criminal activities that they engage in as teenagers and adults.
If a child is born into a family that has a criminal past are likely to have a criminal past themselves. Many believe this to be the case, because the child grows up within an environment of negative influences and as a result, they know nothing different and don’t have positive influences to encourage them to do better. If these issues of aggression that could and probably will lead to criminal behavior, are addressed at an early age, the better the chances of intervention. With the proper treatment and guidance as children, offenders could be law abiding citizens, instead of offenders. This is why stability is so important, since it is stability that will give the information necessary to determine the likelihood of a child of teenager becoming an offender. It would be these warning signs that would be used to determine the type of intervention to be used to prevent criminal activity.
Children are vulnerable, because they aren’t able to make sense of what they are doing as being wrong, if they have seen individuals within their family and outside their family conduct criminal activity. Different issues play major parts in behavior especially when dealing with chil...