Daniel Garcia
TH 1:30-2:50pm
March 14, 2017
Advanced Concepts in Criminal Justice
From the works of Morenoff and Astor, we are to explain why crime might be higher among second generation immigrant Americans. Though there are many assimilation theories which coincides with this, Portes and Zhou’s theory of segmented assimilation stands up to be the strongest of them all. My reasoning behind it is based on the array of the data from Morenoff and Astor collected in this article and my own interpretation which I experienced first hand. The article shows segmented assimilation branching out to two main scenarios of the straight line assimilation, the positive and the negative.
Segmented assimilation is carried though by the immigrants themselves or by their offspring adopting aspects of the culture in which they 're residing in. These characteristic could be either detrimental or an advantage to their way of life in that certain community. For instance in the article, it showed the second generation of foreign born second generation immigrants to have
…show more content…
This leads to the kids not wanted to do better in terms of attending school, obtaining a good paying job, and avoiding crime. As shown in the article, the second generation offspring eventually grew up assimilating the crooked ways of living, such as I’ve seen from some of my acquaintances that I watched slowly succumb to detrimental side of assimilation. Just as my friends and I made pacts to strive to success, they made pacts to strive to failure. Failure as in dropping out and turning to drug dealers, or getting on the wrong side of the law which for some, ended in death. The way I see it, the more positive guidance a child has growing up, especially at the delinquency age of 11-17, the more likely their chances of swaying away from crime increases, and vice