Understanding the factors that cause people to commit crimes is one of the foundational steps toward minimizing the threat of criminal activities and creating a safer community. Abuse, in general, and child abuse, in particular, is one of the most egregious types of crimes observed in the modern community. Therefore, it is vital to reinforce the legal measures against child abuse, including the enhancement of legal repercussions for the perpetrators of the specified type of crime.
The importance of maintaining that child abusers must be seen as criminals and prosecuted as such can be explained not only based on the evidence of their assaults on children but also from the tents of the existing theories of crime. Specifically, using the Biological theory of Crime will suggest that people engaged in child abuse are conditioned to do so biologically (Mooney et al., 2021). Namely, the absence of empathy and ethics, as well as propensity to crime, is explained through the differences in one’s biological makeup (Mooney et al., 2021). Although the specified perspective could be plausible, it provides a rather dangerous leeway to excusing abuse due to biological conditioning.
Another theory that could help examine the problem of child abuse from a social perspective, the theory of Social transmission implies that different social standards could force one to perceive the life of a child as insignificant. Also failing to elicit any semblance of empathy for the perpetrator, the specified theory suggests the possibility of rehabilitation. Nevertheless, the specified theory seems to be more plausible since child abuse does seem to be the phenomenon defined largely by sociocultural factors (Mooney et al., 2021). To prevent and manage child abuse from taking place, one must consider social policies such as the promotion of counseling for children at risk.
Reference
Mooney, L. A., Clever, M., & Van Willigen, M. (2021). Understanding social problems. Cengage learning.