A Research Study Into Juvenile Delinquency Essay

The contributing factors to juvenile crime may include poor education performances, poor upbringing, substance abuse, disadvantaged socioeconomic status, low school

The primary risk factors for criminal behavior majorly come into play in the early years of a person’s life.

The criminal justice system approaches young offenders through unique policies to address the challenges of dealing with juvenile offending. They take special care when dealing with juveniles in order to stop them from repeat offending and stop any potential bad behaviour which could result in future. Juveniles have the highest tendency to rehabilitate and most adopt law-abiding lifestyles as they mature. There are several factors influencing juvenile crime including psychological and social pressures unique to juveniles, which may lead to an increase in juvenile’s risks of contact with the criminal justice system.

Youth crime is a growing epidemic that affects most teenagers at one point in their life. There is no question in society to whether or not youths are committing crimes. It has been shown that since 1986 to 1998 violent crime committed by youth jumped approximately 120% (CITE). The most controversial debate in Canadian history would have to be about the Young Offenders Act (YOA). In 1982, Parliament passed the Young Offenders Act (YOA). Effective since 1984, the Young Offenders Act replaced the most recent version of the Juvenile Delinquents Act (JDA). The Young Offenders Act’s purpose was to shift from a social welfare approach to making youth take responsibility for their actions. It also addressed concerns that the paternalistic

This essay will look to explore and discuss the minimum age of criminal responsibility in England and Wales and see if the minimum age should be brought into line with the rest of Europe or not. The first thing to look at is the current age of criminal responsibility which is set at 10 years of age. (https://www.gov.uk/age-of-criminal-responsibility). Looking at the law, the age of 10 seems to have been chosen on numerical grounds and belief that crime becomes too popular at the age of eleven. This was despite recommendation from the penal reform international which argued that children under 12 should not be punished and the age should be increased, with a potential rise to fourteen. (http://www.penalreform.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/justice-for-children-briefing-4-v6-web_0.pdf). In recent years the boldness and humour towards young offenders is high, due to an extensive public awareness of growth around youth crime and the death of James Bulger by Robert Thompson and Jon Venable, who were 10 at the time of the killing.

Research in adolescent brains has shown us that they use their amygdala to make decisions. Amygdala is responsible for fear and anxiety making juveniles reliance on it quite dangerous. In male adolescent in particular we see an increase in testosterone which increases aggression and in females the increase of hormones causes depression & anxiety causing irrational choices. (American Bar Association, 2003) Often the underlying issue behind juvenile delinquency is due to factors that they juvenile cannot control. Growing up in situations where there was substance abuse, being the victim of physical or sexual assault can trigger

Youth crime is the crime committed by juvenile offenders. It is the common issue in Australia. The age group between 14-19 years old is the popular group of youth crime. (News 2013) Different age groups commit different types of crimes. (The youth court 2009) Also, there are many kinds of crime and crime method in the society, such as, drug offences, robbery, burglary, assault and violent offenses. The group of people who crime together that is called criminal group. It is a prevalence crime method and it is effective for crime. This question will focus on what is youth crime, the change of youth crime in recent year and the relationship between drug offences and the youth crime in Australia.

Juvenile crime statistics show that offenders under the age of 15 represent the leading edge of the juvenile crime problem. "Violent crime grew some 94% among these youngsters from 1990 to 1995- compared with 47% for older youth (Siegel and Welsh, 2011).

Risk factors for juvenile delinquency have been identified from multiple studies. These risk factors are different for older and younger juveniles. When focusing on the individual juvenile between the ages of

Providing the criminal justice system with an appropriate selection of sentencing choices and focusing any sentencing on preventing re-offending by stopping the vicious cycle young offenders tend to fall into. This report will also discuss the widely shared opinion that our justice system is severely inadequate for UK 's young people therefore failing to rehabilitate young offenders and strongly promote and enforce "restorative justice" as Sir Alan Beth MP (The Chair of the Youth Justice Committee) intends to. According to UK Governments official crime rate stats, In 2015 there were around 950,000 arrests made in England and Wales, of which 94,960 were of people aged 10-17 years. This immediately shows how obligatory it is for our system to be constructive for young offenders and therefore advantageous for society in decreasing crime rates within young people.

Juvenile delinquency is a social issue in the United States today. Juvenile delinquency, is when “a violation of the law is committed by a juvenile and is not punishable by death or life imprisonment” (Juvenile Delinquency). The juvenile system is different from the adult system in many way and most juvenile delinquents are from the age of ten to the age of seventeen (Juvenile Delinquent). Once the delinquent or anyone is at the age of eighteen, they are considered to be an adult. Therefore, in the justice system they are tried as an adult. There are many different reasons why a child would commit crime, such as mental and physical factors, peer influence, home conditions, neighborhood environment and school conditions. Teens are greatly influenced by the interactions and surroundings they are around. Their behaviors can result from the parent and/or their peer influences. Parents play a great role in the child’s life and a teen’s peers also play a strong role in how the teen behaves when the parents are not insight. This research will examine links between the social environment of teens and how it influences the teens actions and behavior which leads them to commit an offense.

     Some causes for conduct in adolescents are no discipline, unstructured discipline and a broken home. A broken home is one of the factors that can produce a delinquent child. A broken home reduces the opportunity for creating a strong attachment between child and parents and that reduces the parent’s ability to condition the child. Many theories concerning the causes of juvenile crime focus either on the individual or on society as the major contributing influence. Theories centering on the individual suggest that children engage in criminal behavior because they were not sufficiently penalized for previous delinquent acts or that they have learned criminal behavior through interaction with others.

There are four top social risk factors believed for the involvement of crime. Parental behavior plays a large role in a child’s risk of involvement of crime because of the parent’s influence on a child’s development (“Social Risk Factors for Involvement of Crime”). Poor parenting in supervision, maltreatment of a child, or if the parent is a

Deviance among adolescents in our society has many different causes and multiple theories throughout the history of criminal justice have been developed to attempt to explain, prevent and reduce incidents of status offenses and juvenile delinquency. There are theories varying from individual, to social and environmental. All of these theories have their merits and contribute in one way or another to the advancement of the understanding of juvenile delinquency and the treatment and prevention of delinquency within our society. Those that have proven to be successful we have applied in our justice system while those that are proven over time to be ineffective or defective we have discarded. There is no single theory that applies to all delinquent behavior in all situations. It is best to determine what theory may work best in each specific case based on the individual and the specific situation. Dodge’s information processing theory of social problem solving (Crick and Dodge 1994) was developed by Kenneth Dodge in an attempt to explain the interaction between the child’s cognitive development and their social environment. This theory combines elements of both the individual and the social environment and examines how these two variables interact with each other to present a model for juvenile delinquency. During my investigation of this topic I discovered that an adapted model of Dodge’s theory existed that seemed to be more encompassing of the causes of juvenile delinquency,

Juvenile offending is a major problem in society. Understanding the risk factors that contribute to the increased likelihood of a juvenile to engage in delinquency is important. There are many factors that can influence the increased risk of juvenile delinquency. These factors include poverty, low socioeconomic status, age (Jarjoura, Triplett, & Brinker, 2002), race, gender (Lucero, Barret, & Jensen, 2015), education (Lucero, Barret, & Jensen, 2015; Jarjoura, 1993), and family structure (Anderson, 2002; Kierkus & Hewitt, 2009). It is important to examine if some risk factors can contribute more than others and to what extent they interact with one another. This paper will discuss three important risk factors that contribute to the likelihood of juveniles engaging in deviant acts. The three risk factors discussed are poverty, family structure, and educational attainment. In addition, this paper will demonstrate how these three risk factors interact with one another, resulting in a higher propensity for involvement in juvenile delinquency.