Stanley Hall portrays youth as a
time of moral instability, undisciplined passions, and physiological weakness.
These innate attributes coupled with unsupportive environments formed around a
weak education system and a lack of national identity are proposed causes of
youth crime. Hall wrote this article when youth were most characterized as objects-of-saving-and-studying.
While he does study youth and promotes attempts to save them, this article
struck me as also supporting the concepts of youth-as-dangerous-class and youth
being psychologically different to adults.
Consistent with the youth-as-dangerous-class
paradigm that intensified in the 1980s Hall branded adolescence as ‘the
criminal age’. Hall further establishes youth-as-a-dangerous-class by listing
heinous crimes committed by children as young as nine, including murder for
amusement. In 1904 Hall warned that
juvenile crime was increasing and youth were becoming criminals at younger ages.
One reason he cites for this youth crime phenomenon is that before adulthood
“reason, true morality…are but very slightly developed”. By comparing adult
criminals to “overgrown children” Hall reinforces the idea that the irrational
nature of criminals is inherent to the period of youth. Hall’s suggestion of a
genetic influence on crime could have far-reaching legal as well as social
consequences. As eugenics fell out of popularity after the association with
Nazism, Hall’s theory seems dangerous today as the profiling of ‘hereditary
criminals’ could be used to support controversial eugenics practices such as
sterilizing inmates. However, other sociologists in the late 19th
and early 18th centuries, such as Richard L. Dugdale conducted
studies on families with many incarceration members that also suggested that
criminality was hereditary. This idea promotes the ‘youth-as-a-dangerous-class’
paradigm by insinuating that juvenile criminals are genetically different to
‘normal’ people, which fuels the fear of ‘super-predators’; an almost distinct race
of uncontrollable, dangerous people. It is interesting that Hall wrote this
article before such concepts had summited in popular consciousness and the
media.
The lack of nourishment of youth
by education and religion, and the country’s novel history are other suggested
causes of youth crime. Hall prefigures the increasingly popular idea of the USA
being a multicultural mosaic and suggests that this heterogeneous heritage
created an environment where youth grow up too fast. However, youth crime seems to be a global
phenomenon; Hall claims in one study that 45% of German thieves were less than
twenty-one years old. Failures of religion and education to ‘moral instruct’
youth are other possible causes of youth crime.
Regardless of the cause of youth
criminality, Hall suggests that youth are a stratum psychologically different
to adults. The Supreme Court’s opinion in the court cases of Roper v. Simmons
(2005), Graham v. Florida (2010) and Miller v. Alabama (2012) echo Hall’s
assertions in 1904 that youth lack the same self-control and decision-making
skills that adults possess. Even before advanced scientific methods proved that
youth’s brains were chemically and structurally different to mature adults Hall
recognized and propagated the idea of youth needing to be treated differently
to adult criminals by society (and in turn law) due to biological differences.
Hall,
G. Stanley. Adolescence: Its Psychology and Its Relations to
Physiology, Anthropology, Sociology, Sex, Crime, Religion and Education.
New York: D. Appleton, 1904. Print.
Christianson,
Scott. Bad Seed or Bad Science?. New York Times, 2003. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/08/arts/bad-seed-or-bad-science.html
The author thoroughly analyzes Stanley Hall's article and raises many interesting and noteworthy questions. I agree with the author that with the advancements in technology and a faster information flow, the media just adopted the already embedded perception of youth in society. Therefore, the concept of "super predators" existed long before the title was actually given to it.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I believe that there is no danger when it comes to returning to eugenics. With Skinner v. Oklahoma, the US Supreme court ruled that the sterilization of inmates was unconstitutional.
This essay clearly described the link between the 1980s legal representation of “youth-as-dangerous-class” and the physiological differences presented in the early 1900s by Granville Stanley Hall. It is remarkable that Hall addressed the idea that there may be a genetic influence on crime over 100 years ago, and yet it is still unknown how to deal with youth. In fact, there are many different causes that attempt to explain what leads youth to commit crimes aside from physiological differences. For example, as noted in the essay there is lack of education and religion, as well as a history filled with crime. This insinuates that the causes of youth crime are not only genetic, but also environmentally related. The numerous causes of youth conflict definitely contribute to the legal representation of “youth-as-a-dangerous-class” and even help to explain why society is still supportive of laws such as gang injunctions, despite radial effects such as racial profiling. When considering “youth-as-a-dangerous-class,” it is also important to note the influence of the media and how youth crime is portrayed in a selective manner. Nevertheless, it is still significant to consider the effects of the differences in brain capabilities between youth and adults, not just how youth is portrayed or represented, as Hall was so early to notice.
ReplyDeleteThe author of this article did an excellent job at explaining the idea that Stanley Hall was a man ahead of his time. During a time when society was fixated on “youth-as-objects-of-saving”, he understood the psychological key differences between adults and youth. Something interesting the blog pointed out was how Hall not only understood that youth are capable of violent crimes, but he sought to understand the reasoning behind these crimes. As the article pointed out, Hall labeled “youth as dangerous”, similar to the legal representations of the late 20th century. But along this label indicated the idea that youth needed to be controlled or restrained. Articles such as the ones written by Males and Savage expressed this idea. Society failed to examine why events such as violent crimes occurred, and instead attempted to control and restrain youth. Hall takes the “youth-as-objects- of-saving-and-study” and “dangerous” and merges them, which creates an idea that youth are still dangerous, but needed to be studied to examine where behaviors originate from. They don’t necessarily need to be” saved”, but by understanding why behaviors occur, steps can be taken in the future to better handle youth in danger of turning to criminal activity.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with Hannah’s point that Stanley Hall’s characterization of youth approaches the youth-as-dangerous-class concept. But the fundamental difference, in my opinion, is the over-reliance on biological assumptions in the earliest depiction of youth. Hall defines youth as a step in the morphological development of the human being, a stage during which man follows his primal hereditary instincts and is oblivious to the moral consequences of his actions. The malleability of character of that stage however allows for some hope with the proper education and positive environment. Still, paradoxically, Hall puts together a list of physical and moral traits that would predestine a young person to a life of criminality which, when coupled with a familial background of lawlessness, offers a tragically deterministic vision of youth life. These explications for juvenile delinquency can still be perceived in later legal representations of the youth, which supports the idea that these representations never completely fade away but merely fluctuate between two or three general trends. Yet, with time, we can perceive a move away from Hall’s biologically deterministic vision of youth criminality and a focus on environmental factors. More recent representations present juvenile offenders’ complicated or disadvantaged environmental background as a mitigating factor, if not an excuse, in the sentencing process. The decision in Miller v. Alabama (2012), for instance, mentions the lesser developmental stage of the brain of youth but focuses on the existence of a family and home environment from which child cannot extricate himself.
ReplyDeleteI fully agree with what you’ve written here. I find it curious that despite the fact that youth are seen to be inherently criminal, the courts are beginning to afford them more rights. Isn’t it counterintuitive to give a group of people that, according to popular consciousness, are felonious in nature more rights? I also found it interesting that despite the over one hundred year gap between the time Hall’s book was published and the decisions in cases like Roper, Graham and Miller the antiquated train of thought has sustained. One would assume that with today’s sophisticated research methods and techniques we could more fully understand the thought processes and nature of youth. Hall also asserts that the failure of socialization from societal institutions contributes to the criminal nature of youth. Rather than focusing on the “biological” aspects of criminality, why hasn’t society attempted to improve things within its control? If youth truly are inherently a “dangerous class,” there should be a greater emphasis on reform in schools and family. It is not enough to put gang injunctions in place and hope that youth will abandon their “biological nature.”
ReplyDeleteThis essay is a sharp and thoughtful analysis of Hall’s article with some very interesting points. The main suggestion that along with “youth as an object of saving and study,” “youth as a dangerous class” and “youth as not quite adults” are perspectives also expressed in Hall’s work seems like an accurate one. His thoughts on biological development and associations with youth and criminality properly support this claim. Perhaps something to note is that youth being prone to criminality may even result in the view that youth have a diminished capacity (youth as not quite adults as an explanation/justification for youth as a dangerous class). Overall this analysis of Hall’s article was excellent with well-supported claims.
ReplyDeleteI feel that the author does a good job summarizing the main points of Hall's article which was the fact that a youth's psychological instability paired with an unsupportive environment along with a weak education system eventually results in youth crime. However the argument that I feel Hall focuses on the most is the biological differences between adults and youth which in turn should be a reason to treat each category differently. In my opinion, I feel that Hall recognizes that there are other factors contributing to youth crime as he mentions a weak education system and unsupportive environments but rather than addressing those problems, simply states that youth should just be treated differently than adults. I feel like that doesn't solve the underlying problem of youth crime and simply creating exceptions for youth in law such as in the Miller and Simmons cases hinders the ability to lessen youth crime. Instead focusing on better education programs paired with more supportive environments, in my opinion, would prove to be more effective.
ReplyDeleteAnother piece of evidence to support your claim that the concept of youth-as-a-dangerous-class had been a classification prior to the 1980s is that the "super-predator" was a response to the heavier concentration of youth in urban areas. As industrialization, immigration, and the idea of a generation of permanently poor (a generation of youth who grow up in poverty and are, or at least thought to be, more inclined to criminality) increased the visibility of youth in concentrated packets of the country. With increased visibility regarding the criminality of youth, it can be understood that a media scare largely on the increase criminal data among youth in urban pockets of country, but this would not account for the per capita increase of crime rates.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, I think there is a distinction between Stanley Hall's research and the 1980s concept of youth-as-a-dangerous-class. Hall assumed that youth were inclined to criminality because they were underdeveloped youth [adolescents], while youth-as-a-dangerous-class focused on urban youth, largely a class of youth of color, as largely a new class of heinous youth criminals who were more violent than youth had been in earlier decades. The super-predator was coined to reflect a class of persons [youth] who were inherently more violent not because of their being youth but because the schema of what youth was slowly changing and accounting for evidence of higher crime rates by urban youth.
ReplyDeleteOverall, the paper is well written and concise, and the author gives a great overview of Hall’s article. She is able to clearly connect all the concepts we have been learning in class. I especially like the link between Hall’s work during the “youth-as- objects- of saving and studying” era and “youth-as-a-dangerous,” and then linking it to Hall’s final conclusions, which goes hand in hand with “youth-as-not quite –adults.” The fact that Hall’s research and conclusions about youth are still relevant to the way youth are being discussed today. For example, labeling adolescence as the “criminal age.” It is outstanding to think that Hall was one of the first to think about youth as being different from adults and how his work has led to concepts like diminished capacity and learner’s permit. It seems that research and different perceptions of youth have sometimes been simultaneously at play with a particular perception of youth taking center stage while others influence that particular perception. Ultimately, it is interesting to see how the psychological distinctions Hall makes between youth and adults translates into law. I do wonder however, what Hall would have to say about the criminalization of certain youth and legal practices such as stop and frisk.
The author did a great job of bridging the gap between youth as objects of saving and study which is when the article was written and youth as a dangerous class in the 1980s. Like we were discussing before, a lot of these characterizations of youth stay in the minds of the people even when there is a change in thinking. There was obviously a lot of fear from youth at this time, and although youth would go on to be characterized as rights holders before being youth as a dangerous class, that fear lingered in the minds of the people. During the Romantic era, there was no fear of the youth, and maybe it is because of the school systems and lack of education that Hall was talking about which caused this fear. It is quite astonishing to see the contrast of how youth were viewed as born criminals at this time when just a 100 years ago, they were seen as the social ideal and born naturally good according to Roussou. I guess the only thing that can be agreed upon is that youth are fundamentally different than adults, whether that be a good or bad thing depends on the times we study.
ReplyDeleteAn interesting point drawn from the article is how youth being classified as a dangerous class and also in the need to be studied to have some insight of behavioral infrequencies that differentiate them psychologicaly from adults. Also, classifying adolescence with the irrational nature of criminals inherently correlative to the period of youth which reminded me of the lecture on psychological correlates of youth violence and aggression deriving from media effects which may include many different factors for youth's motive to commit crimes. I feel the author did a good job at exposing Stanley Hall’s curiosity to understand the reasoning and origin behind those crimes committed by youth.The author also posits that Hall’s understanding of the need for youth to be treated differently from adults not only in society but also implicating that there should also be a different treatment for youth through law. Overall I think the author of this article gave a good analytical insight of Stanley Hall’s article.
ReplyDeleteI love how this essay shows just how timeless and interwoven these representations of youth are. Hall takes on an adult-centered perspective as a social scientist and establishes how youth are part of a fundamentally and biologically distinct stage within human development. However, like this author claims, Hall tackles this "study and saving" of youth by adding a criminal element to their liminal nature. Writing during the Progressive Era, Hall's analysis would scientifically support the middle-class-women-"child-savers"-movement to save urban youth from the failing institution of the House of Refuge. Hall also supports the need for saving youth by directly criticizing these types institutions himself. In addition, the criminal element he attaches to the adolescent psych aligns well with the media's representation of youth during the early 20th century: the Apaches in France, Jacob Riis's photos of young gangster-types, and other news reports on the distinct rise of "The gang" among urban communities. This image of the gangster, with a particular style and behavior, doesn't go away, but we see it again in the 1980's representation of "youth-as-a-dangerous-class." This essay shows that the 1980's representation didn't just spring up because of bad thinkers (like Reagan), but that the basis for it stems from the theories/writings of Hall and other social scientists at the turn of the 20th century, and perhaps stems even father back to the French Revolution- where youth spirits and virtue could pose threats to government power.
ReplyDeleteHannah I really enjoyed your essay on Stanley Hall. I found it quite interesting that you connected Stanley’s ideas to the ideas we have been learning in class. For example how you said that his ideas really connected to the Youth as objects of saving and studying, but at the same time some of his ideas give off the impression that he is talking about youth as a dangerous class. It really puts the ideas more in perspective and makes it easier to understand what exactly he is saying about Youth. I found it quite interesting that Hall was saying that Youth were objects of saving and studying but at the same time he gave all these examples of how they were really dangerous. It leaves the reader to make his or her own decision. Do we see youth as a dangerous call because of all the bad crimes they have committed or do we see them as needing saving because they are not as fully developed as adults. Hall gives us all the information we need for us as individuals to make a decision!
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading this essay very much because it gave a good summary of what the Hall reading was regarding but Gibbon's also went past that, to give his/her own interpretation and to raise various ideas that one could correlate to the issues discussed. I agree with the idea that Hall tries to portray a complete "other group" that is very distinct from being an adult and from being an infant demonstrating the change in various legal representations over time. By completely separating youth from adulthood, youth can be created and shaped into this dangerous being that is a "super-predator" who does not have the ability to make rational decisions. As mentioned in lecture and in other readings, these ideas were created from both fear and psychological and/scientific analysis of the different cognitive abilities of both you and adults. I would've like to see the author of this essay touch more on the fact that this reading was giving an adult-centered perspective, as have the majority of our readings and therefore explains some of the reasoning behind ideas such as that of the "youth-as-a-dangerous-class."
ReplyDeleteI found this point of view of the hall piece to be very interesting. I have found a big interest in the concept of youth as super- predators. It seems strange that we have let the youth get so out of hand throughout history that it has come down to them being labeled as a super- predator. I feel like there needs to be changes in either the way the youth are being viewed, or the way they are being treated in order to ensure an end to this type of labeling.
ReplyDeleteI think it is safe to say that youth do not process things in the same way that adults do. I do not think that they are necessarily psychologically different, but more of not as psychologically advanced. They are still on the same path as each other, they are just at different points on the path. I do not think though that this necessarily makes the youth dangerous, but more of misunderstood.
I agree it's interesting that Hall was ahead of his time mentioning youth as a dangerous class and super predators. The principle of youth as not quite adults is present in Hall's work and serves as a factor explaining why youth are prone to criminal tendencies. Overall the colleague did a great job in summarizing Hall's work and relating it to Supreme Court cases that view youth as incompetent compared to mature adults.
ReplyDeleteThe author wrote a masterful essay on Hall's framing of youth-as-a-dangerous-class, despite living in an era of framing youth-as-objects-of-saving-and-study. She makes a great point in that Hall's framing of youth as being prone towards criminality parallels that of the super-predators in the 1980s. This connection leads me to think of the Males piece in which the author questions the manner in which youth is framed. Did Hall's framing stem from the media's constant framing of youth, such as the Apaches, are highly dangerous? Is there truly an era in which youth is extra-criminal due to their immorality, or does Margaret Mead's book "Coming of Age in Samoa" counter the idea that only one type of adolescence exists? Either way, the author did a great job of delineating and expanding the reading to other topics we've read.
ReplyDeleteI think the author did a great job illustrating her point. I also agree with her that many of the identities associated with youth that we see more prevalent in other periods were prevalent during Stanley’s time. I particularly see the youth-as-dangerous class among the early gangs in the inner cities beginning in the Industrial Revolution, if not more dangerous than later periods. While today youth are seen as dangerous largely because the media portrays youth as dangerous, from the mid-nineteenth century and throughout the beginning of the twentieth century youth were actually dangerous as seen from previous articles. They actually killed people. But contrasted with today, rather than the law allowing for youth to be locked up indefinitely, society saw youth as a class that needed to be saved. I think this is interesting because of the contrasting views to how to approach youth-as-dangerous changed in how to deal with youth.
ReplyDeleteThis is truly exceptional work from the author. She began by summarizing Hall's theory of youth as being a phase of "moral instability, undisciplined passions, and physiological weakness". Aside from from highlighting the arguments made by Hall, what really impressed me was the author's ability to find connections between Hall's claims and "findings" in the progressive era and other more contemporary periods such as "youth-as-a-dangerous-class" (1980s) and "youth-as-not-quite-adults" (2000s). It is rather remarkable that one man's work could have such a drastic impact on the juvenile justice system, regardless of whether we believe it to be right or wrong.
ReplyDelete-Jonathan Verdugo