Oh, The Potato

Many of the factors shown in the potato model for juvenile delinquency are so tangled up in one another, it would be difficult to tease them apart. Family factors such as inappropriate discipline, poor monitoring, physical abuse, and delinquent siblings could affect both individual and peer factors. The lack of self-control or low intelligence could be allowed/encouraged by poor parenting––parents who are do not monitor their children could be missing (or apathetic about) their child's intelligence issues, and abusive parents could be teaching their children that low-self control (as exemplified by lashing out at others) is normal. Both intelligence and control issues could cause rejected status. The influence of delinquent siblings could lead the child to deviant friend groups, and possibly serve as another path to rejected status. Out of the bunch, though, Environmental factors seem to be all encompassing, as low SES or group norms could strongly influence family factors, individual factors, and peer factors in some cases. Every factor shown in the potato model has influence over one of more of its fellows.

Theoretically, family factors would be the most changeable or controllable. Ideally, one could just pluck individuals from their toxic home lives and place them in a safer, healthier environment. Juvenile delinquency would have lost the round! Hooray! However,  things aren't quite that simple in practice. Kids can't be removed from their homes willy nilly, and the system set in place for the kids who are removed from their families is terribly overloaded. Also, some kids may spend x-amount of time at a facility, being healed, evaluated (intelligence-wise), encouraged, and taught to deal with their emotions, may get themselves off the path of juvenile delinquency– only to be sent back home! The cycle continues. I suppose peer factors could be changed by changing schools––new peer group, new peer status–– however, the individual may fall back into old habits, and old peer status as a result.

Environmental factors should certainly not be ignored, however they appear to be the least changeable when compared to any of the others, as group norms and SES would be near impossible to change, unless Daddy Warbucks is looking for children to adopt.