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Juvenile Delinquency Is Participation Of Illegal Behavior By Minors

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Juvenile Delinquency is participation of illegal behavior by minors. Although it is no single path to juvenile delinquency, the presence of several risk factors often increases a youth’s chance of offending. Risk factors have been defined as those characteristics, variables, or hazards that, if present for a given individual, make it more likely that this individual, rather than someone selected from the general population, will develop a disorder(May 2014). Risk factors predict an increased probability of later offending but it is true that certain protective factors may work to offset risk factors. To determine this, an assessment is given to the juvenile. This risk assessment will configure the type of intervention that will best suit the individual youth needs in order to decrease their risk of offending. The top three key social factors that contribute to juvenile delinquency in the 21st Century are family, peers, and community. In this paper I will focus on the different aspects of each top key social factor and the affects it will have on the juvenile. Family is the biggest influence for early on-set juvenile delinquency risk factors, primarily affecting children 6-11 years of age (Shader). Children learn basic concepts about good and bad from their family; they make their values and set the norm for society. Majority of the adolescents who show delinquent behaviors at an early age in any form come from families that could not give firm foundations to the children.

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