Violent juveniles and adults from around the world are a direct result of the environment in which they were raised in and the treatment they received as adolescents. Psychologists have argued one's environmental surroundings affect their psychological state for decades. There are many reasons a child's environment plays a role in his or her aggression tendencies as an adult some of which include  living through a childhood divorce or without parents at all this can cause psychological discrepancies. Also being raised in an abusive home with parents that neglected the child causes social isolation and can lead to psychopathic tendencies. Children's brains can be compared to sponges in the ways they soak up any bad habits they are exposed to in an adverse community they are nurtured in during the developmental stages of their brain. The reasons listed above explain why nurture plays a more important role than nature in the issue of children developing violent behaviors later in life.

Divorce is a growing a problem in our country and it affects children more than you think. A child who is exposed to a divorce in its "developing stage of his or her mind" (Nature 6) , can be traumatized by the event. This divorce which will indeed leave a lasting impact, or a mental footprint in the child's subconscious memory (Nature 6). Growing up with a single parent is a huge disadvantage to the child and the parent. The parent because they are at a constant financial struggle compared to other married families, due to the fact that they are basically receiving half of the income a married couple would receive. Increasing the likelihood of a single parent moving into a adverse environment such as neighborhoods with higher crime rates. The stress increases significantly on a single parent which could cause some neglect and their child, or lead to a decrease of the time spent bonding with their child. And growing up with a single parent can leave a psychological impact on the child growing up, so much so as to making that child's likelihood of becoming a single parent themselves, this can be mostly categorized into two reasons. The first being, if the mother has a personality trait or quality that caused the parents to become divorced, the mother could pass that "certain trait" (Fagan 3) on to her child making the child more likely to get a divorce when they grow up to marry whomever. The second and final reason for this being that as the child has grown up into a single parented family they see this lifestyle as being normal to not have a dual parented family, so they feel most comfortable with a single parent. So this tradition of being a single parent just keeps moving from generation to generation because of the way they were nurtured.

Going back on the stress caused by being a single parent, this stress causes you to be absent minded of the activities or wellness of your child. This stress can be caused by many things whether it be from over working to pay the bills, or there being no one to help you get away from reality to take a break from the stressful world. It causes a parent to think of the happiness of people whom are in relationships causing a thought that they will never achieve these standards of happiness. But with all this stress that has built up on the single parent, making them unaware of what hardships the child may be facing at school or everyday life, this psychological impact can and will in extreme cases lead to violence within the child.  Which if not dealt with will carry on into his or her adulthood causing them to develop violent behaviors leading to more crime. In which a chain reaction occurs and the violence keeps being carried on through each generation, because they are all exposed to the same environment and find it normal to always become violent within a short notice. This is because to have a mentally stable child you must temper with their environment in which they're raised, to make sure no negative influences are brought upon them, and show them the kindness and love and child needs to be stable. With neglect they will imitate and show others neglect and carry on the violence. Patrick F. Fagan, (Fagan 3) who has a Ph.D. in psychology and is the director of MARRI (Fagan 3) has core evidence supporting his claim in which if a child grows up having a non-loving family and sees aggressive behavior on a day to day basis between members of the family, the psychological effect plays a vital role in later violent behavior. All of his claims are backed up by research and evidence, and he goes to show that treating a child poorly can affect the child in the long run and develop violent behaviors.

Other parental issues that can lead to violence as an adult are their parent's violent actions that they witnessed themselves while developing. Such as one of their parents murdering the other parent in cold blood, which could for obvious reasons cause psychological terrors. Cause the children will remember this event for their whole lifetime, as the documentary "Children Behind Bars: American Youth Violence." (chapter 2), show as they go into to prisons  to  interview children tried as adults for the serious crimes they committed. Other stories of these juveniles go on to show other horrors they experienced through their childhood include drug abuse and being neglected in general.

This documentary (chapter 2) goes well with the next topic of growing up in abusive homes, and being shown neglect throughout the entirety of their youth, will leave a massive impact that will stick with the child into their adulthood and will be one of the leading causes that make a person so violent. The children interviewed all went through traumatic childhoods and growing up through neglect is the main cause of them being what we would call psychotic. This also goes to show that children really are affected by the way they are treated as young. 

As a  society really should pay close attention to the way we treat children to make sure they are treated properly, so they don't grow up to be psychotic, violent people. Children who are put through abusive environments or even a violent community are not expected to keep up intellectually with student raised in a safe kind environment. These children put through abuse don't have it within themselves to focus on school with such horrors going on in their life. And putting more stress on these certain individuals by sending them to school won't help the problem, but if any just fuel the anger causing more rage and violence to occur. The children are put with many other children who are growing up in normal environments and the less privileged people's envy the lifestyle that the other children go through which. They hear about how great these children's lives are and it may cause them to want to hurt the people bragging about their, to us, normal childhoods.

The most relative counter argument to the idea that nurture impacts violent behavior in children later on in their lives is that a kid born with low monoamine oxidase, a MAOA levels, which is an enzyme that "breaks down serotonin in the brain" (Nature 6). This argument is supported in the "role of Genotype in the Cycle of Violence in Maltreated Children" (Caspi McClay Moffitt 1). MAOA is said to counteract the maltreatment, its genotypes help moderate a child's sensitivity to maltreatment. Which some people say is the reason that not all maltreated people become violent adults. It is said that some people are "hard-wired" to have a genetic difference in connectivity parts of the brain that normally would drive empathy, conscious, and impulse control. Its is said that some people just respond to their stress by an aggression impulse which would be the leading cause in a person being violent, and that some people are naturally mean and have no remorse for the actions they have committed. So they're saying that it is not at all the parents fault and it's just the way mother nature wanted their psychotic son to be. They can not do anything to combat the fact that their son is a psycho and it's just the way their born and none of it is the parents fault.

But counter attacking what was just previously stated, an article on Nature.com (Nature 6), which talks about an experiment conducted on 184 adult males and separated them evenly into an either violent or non-violent group. The plan was to test the serotonergic neurotransmitter (Nature 6), or the release of serotonin in the brain, and they wanted to try to relate this to violent behavior. As most people would say that low levels of this is the main cause of the violent behavior discussed. So the tested each of the males for low MAOA levels and what they found completely went against the argument that low levels was the leading cause of all the violence that happens across the world. Their research showed that forty-five percent (Nature 6) of the males who who were categorized as the "violent males" had low MAOA, and of the males who were categorized as the non-violent males near thirty percent were identified as males with low MAOA. So what this experiment has showed is that the majority of these "violent males" actually didn't even have low MAOA. And even some of the non-violent males had a low MAOA level, which goes to show that being violent doesn't have everything to do with your MAOA levels. So to sum it up, the results prove that having low MAOA levels is actually not the cause to violent behavior because thirty percent of the non-violent males still possessed the low MAOA trait and the majority of violent people don't actually have low MAOA levels. (Nature 6)

A child could be born into a wealthy family with a good home environment and still have psychotic tendencies. These children generally grow up to be money craving, successful men and women. (Heather 4) On the other hand, a child could be raised in a negative home environment with abusive parents which seems to be the "perfect formula for violence" (Heather 4). This child could turn out to be mentally stable but its all in the way that different people perceive the world around them. This now successfully child will still never forget the hardships they faced and how they were hurt. Heather Irvine-Rundle (Heather 4) has written about a variety of different children's lives and how they turned out, like ones who came from foster care, abusive homes etc..

Some interesting side facts to this subject are that females are more likely to kill family members over male, due to the fact that females are more likely to be abused sexually by their family member than males are. And males are more likely to kill strangers to which their influence comes from gang activity to peer pressure into killing strangers, and females influenced to kill for family abuse. The worst consequence that a juvenile may receive is a death penalty, in which their crime is so severe that they are tried as adults for the case. "In 1998, 2,100 juvenile arrests for murder" (Chapter 2) were recorded in the United States of America. But this   juvenile violence is more serious to the economy than most people would think to themselves. It can be quite expensive, with the cost of the incarceration of a juvenile cost on average 36,500 (Chapter 2) dollars for every year they sit in prison. so youth violence does not only leave a psychological burden on the child, but an economical burden on the people of America who are the ones who have to pay for a child to sit in prison for a year.

Children are heavily influenced by the people who raised them and the things they experience on a day to day basis. If a child sees his dad beating his mom every night, not only will it leave a psychological scare in their conscious but they will see it happening at home regularly and see it as just something that just happens in everyone's life so they will take it to school and mimic it in their school environment. But they feel somewhat confused when their teacher or school counselor tells them that what they have been doing is wrong since they find violence as a normal part of life. The community is a major part in how a person grows up, and what hardships they will face while becoming an adult. People don't see a rapper coming out of Beverly Hills rapping about how hard their life was and how their emotionally scarred from what happened in their neighborhood. No society wants to see the gang members and violence coming out of poor neighborhoods such as Compton. People who come out of Beverly Hills aren't categorized as violent for having low MAOA levels, because they hardest thing they have to do in their life is give themselves a shower. If they go to jail it is not for robbing a bank it's for something non-violent like tax fraud. Because you are not born violent, your built into it by the environment, your nurtured into it.

Parenting can be a factor in the violence to cause if your kid is violent you should bring upon him physical harm, (not to the extreme) so that the kid is no longer a "psycho". Which is one of the factor in why people are getting more and more violence because there is no physical punishment, but instead just petty punishment that does not even phase the child. A good example is a son named Jack (Schoolboy 4), and his father Damien (Schoolboy 4) who live in South Wales. Jack, a ten-year-old, can be held criminally responsible in court for multiple acts of violence (Schoolboy 4). His father Damien, is so worried about his son's mischievous acts that he is worried that he himself will be put under trial. Mandy Saligari, his child's therapist, found that Jack uses an extent of verbal and physical abuse toward his father. This father does not ever inflict any harm upon his son or even out his son jack through any form of punishment. So another way a child can become what we classify as a "psycho", is by the parents or whatever other kind of guardian a child may have, not controlling the environment a child is growing up in. Because if the child ever has a random burst of anger, as all children do, and the parents punish them the child will become more careful to not do it next time and try to control it. But if the parent were to do nothing the child would see that the parent will not do anything so they will just do it again and again. Then they will start do it more often and have more and more rage and violence involved each time. It will get to a point of psychotic behavior and become very severe as seen with Jack and his father. All of this rage and violence a direct result of bad parenting, not because the kid has low MAOA levels.

Children who are violent can be caused by the environment a child is in and their sensitivity to that environment. Which if the child uses physical aggression to release their rage we put them in jail, if they rap to release their rage we pay them millions of dollars and let them do whatever they want. But both of these actions of people come directly from the environment the were raised in. If a child receives extreme physical abuse daily as a child, they let the anger build till they bust with actions of violence as the result. When parents divorce leaving scars in the child's mind they will become violent with their future husband or wife so there violent. When parents refuse to use any form of actual punishment and their child gets angry whenever they want, it's the kids fault, not the parent who does nothing to prevent the rage. A child sees his mom get murdered by his dad and he commits violence, he was born with it there is nothing that would have not made him psychotic, he was born that way. It's not MAOA levels that make this kid a psycho, it's the way he's nurtured.

