1.I believed gaining and maintaining the respect of my male peers was the most important thing in my life; more important than my life, my liberty, or my family……I totally disagree. The reason you are looking for respect is because you lack love. When you have no love in the family you go outside to find it. Your anger comes because you confuse love with respect. When you don’t get it you commit crimes.

2.I believed I could gain the respect of my peer group by taking risks (criminal acts were worth the most respect); this proved my loyalty and bravery………..Here you are explaining your need to gain respect, but in fact you are really wanting love. Not the romantic love but a love that is missing from your family relationship. You have to remember that your parents are your first interactive people in your life. If it breaks down, when you are unable to meet expectations, or commitments, or satisfying wants; you rebel. You go on lying to yourself in trying to prove a false loyality to someone else instead of your original problem with your parent or parents. You end up proving nothing.

3.I believed I could gain respect by disrespecting others outside my male peer group, especially rival males (and all females to a lesser extent) ……… Here you go explaining your disillusion which is really how you would react to your parents. So maybe you did act that way to your parents, and continue that same smart -alek attitude getting people to laugh and making believe to yourself that your so called friends support you more. Your friends if they were your friends would essentially tell you that is not how to behave to older people, or people who serve you.

4.I believed that I would lose the respect of my peer group if someone disrespected me and I failed to retaliate violently………This is the point; but it is not respect you fear losing, it is the feeling of losing your new family members, the fear of losing that new family love relationship. And you don’t want to go through that again.

5.I believed showing respect to someone who had not earned my respect is a sign of weakness. (see the above ways you could earn respect) ………..because your mother or your father never earned your respect you have felt weak. Since they never thought of it as respect but love they gave it unconditionally. BUt there is anohter side to the coin as well. Perhaps the parents were bad parents and unable to nurture their child because of economic conditions, and they themselves lived in the same cycle of loss of family love as you experience. This becomes the problem, this is what snowballs into a gigantic national epidemic. All because we don’t know how to be parents.

6.I would rather kill or die than face humiliation ………..To kill or die is a feeling of fight or flight. Humiliation is not a bad word. Most people think it is bad and degrading, but actually it is a new beginning. It is human to error. We learn by making errors, and then not do them again.

I contend that the Drug War and Prison Expansion is the result of no understanding to love and parenting in America. Granted economic forces come into play, but I think if America became more in tune to how other cultures keep families together we as Americans may learn something. Other countries do not have the same Drug, or Crime problems as the US does. This is a first clue. And since America is lacking in family values, and the right way to living in modesty, honesty, committment, contentment, and away from the need to try and find your false family circle, this is why we have the problems of today. I think the movies and hard rock are the expressions of anger. Sex is used as a sedative to take away pain, and so we have the rampant sexual dysfunction in America. You find it everywhere on the internet.

Before we decide that crime and sentences are wrong, think about why we need them, if we have no skills in original family upbringing. The good days were when we could watch shows on TV like Leave it to Beaver, The Andy Griffith Show, Captain Kangaroo, The Waltons, The Cosbys. Those family structure shows gave Americans a model of togetherness. Today we have nothing like it, and I think it will continue to get worse, until we change and realize that it is not respect we are after, it is not money or cars, and sex we are after, it is really love and family we want.

i have two friends -neika & zenna
and they where in science and of couse as youngsters do they dont do their computer work they like to check out other sites

and since i suggested they go to your brillant site
so they did
and loved ever last word of it

you really are fantastic
your site is fantastic
it is the most intresting thing ive read on the world wide web
no joke

well my point is more or less
you are doing a fantastic job
and i admire you for everything you have come through

keep up da g00d stuff
:]

I liked the pictures. You shiould have a picture blog!!!!

xx beth xx

Untimately there are several major schools of thought on this process. One suggests that whan traditional goals such as wealth accumulation and social status are denied to people they turn to other means such as property and violent crime to gain respect and status that notion is reinforced and a subculture is created centered around a value system that suggests that these means are the only method to successfully get what you want.. Another theory states that people are socialized to violence, just like most of us are socialized to conform. It suggests that the more exposure to deliquent peers one has, the more he or she adopts criminal values. The last major micro level theory states that violent behavior is the product of a lack of social controls and assunes that we all would participate in violence and devience without the proper controls, including psychological controls.. It suggests that those less involved in mainstream society have fewer social bonds and committ crimes as a result.

All of these theories may provide partial explanations for causes of deliquent behavior and all enjoy some statistical support. If you are really interested in these topics invest time in studying these and other theoretical explanations. I think your personal experience is very valuable and is certainly worth consideration. After all, it has already resulted in you having more logical conclusions than most people. However, it can also prevent you from having a more complete understanding of this issue if you use it as the only basis for yor conclusions. I have spent may years working with prison populations, juvenile offenders, and parolees. I have spent years doing cognitive restructuring classes with convicted criminals in an attempts to help them understand how their own mindset differs from others. I have also spent a lot of time on the street inolved in undercover work and fugitive apprehension. I am very familiar with the criminal mindset. I would suggest that you begin with your core understanding based upon your personal experience and expand that by researching others contributions from both the field and the academic world.

Thank you for this blog… I strongly recommend you continue to make contributions in the future. The next step should be the most important question which is ‘Where do these criminal values originate?’