Harry's Influence On Criminal Behavior

with his family members, it created this sense of abandonment which pushed Harry to run away from home. This can be supported by the failure to achieve positively valued goals. As Harry didn’t feel like a part of his family, it created this sense of unjust and emotional backlash that caused Harry to remove himself completely from his home. After a year, Harry returned home to be arrested and sent to “Chehalis State Training School for boys due to stealing stamps in an open safe at a post office and sell them to local stores for half the price” (Chambliss & King, 2004, p. 6). Since Harry still couldn’t adjust to his family’s lifestyle, the anger associated with abandonment correlated to his further push into criminal coping.
As Harry was very young when he committed his …show more content…
Juveniles who tend to start offending before they’re 12 years old are “more likely to continue offending into early adulthood”. Harry began committing criminal behavior around the age of 12. Since Harry would steal bikes and be paid for the parts, it created a positive stimuli and reinforcement that pushed him to continue criminal behavior.
To understand how Harry became a criminal, we must first recognize the influences that associated his pull to criminal behavior. We can examine Harry’s influence into crime through Burgess and Akers Differential Reinforcement Theory and the seven stages of enforcing criminal behavior. Harry’s influence into crime began with the first stage of direct conditioning. The parental school Harry was attending allowed him to become familiar with kids who would steal and peddle bikes. The children taught Harry the fundamentals of how to “break down the bikes and pawn them of for money” (Chambliss & King, 2004, p. 4). Harry then began to increase his influence of criminal behavior by running around with a posse of