Part 1: Physical vs. Verbal Victimization
Physical victimization disrupts the normal behavior of the victim once the person starts to experience it. This form of victimization results to anger and despair as the victims are forced to live in fear of physical abuse. As a result of continued abuse anger mounts in the victim and he or she feels the need to fight back. However, in most cases and more or so bullying is initiated either by a group or a person with more power against a lesser person. The victim has little or no ability to protect themselves. Hence, they hide in shame and progressively anger is built and the desire to fight back. Consequently, physical victimization was found to be a better predictor of strain causing delinquency than verbal victimization that does not create as much anger. On the other hand, I believe that GST can be used to differentiate the impact of these two victimizations on delinquency. The theory argues that adolescents are pressured into offensive actions by negative attributes or emotions from negative relationships and experiences (Wallace et al., 2005). It is clear that many young offenders will commit atrocities on others as a way of coping with the harsh conditions created. The strain caused on them forces them to find ways of dealing with the situation regardless of what it will take. For some of those who fail to react they end up with the guilt and anger even in their adult life. Perhaps which explains why some young adults have come back to their former schools to cause atrocities among other learners and teaching fraternity.
Part B: Measures to maximize the variation in delinquency
Physical and verbal aggression takes different forms, and the recipients of such abuse use different coping strategies. The physical abuse has more likelihood of the victim initiating delinquency behavior as a coping strategy. Thus, one variant measure is would be to study the most effective means of dealing with physical abuse among teenagers. Emotional abuse such as bullying has taken different strategies including cyberbullying that extends to victim's home. In this case, it is important for studies to examine how emotional bullying can be dealt with both at home and at school. More specifically, in the school settings, the considerations would be educators to have strict measures regarding bullying and to have means of identifying potential victims of bullying since it happens even in the class context when the teacher is inside the class.
Reference
Wallace et al., (2005). Reactions of Victimized Youth: Strain as an Explanation of School Delinquency. Western Criminology Review
6(1), 104-116.
