Another group included 40 sex offenders, who induced crimes such as rape, paedophilia and sexual assaults. Their mean age varied from 41 for the paedophiles down to 28 for the other assaults. The last group of 20 had committed property offences involving theft and burglary, their mean age was 29. The procedure involved the use of the ‘Blame Attribution Inventory’, this measured the offender’s type of offence and attribution of blame in three aspects: internal/external, mental element and guilt. The results exposed the sex offenders as feeling the most guilt with a mean score of 12.7, and the violent criminals followed with a score of 8.1.
Studies have shown that juveniles are more acceptable to committing crimes in groups than by themselves. Therefore they are more likely to get arrested when in large groups then adults are to getting arrested. This was during a period when narcotics came into the mix. More and more juveniles were experimenting with drugs and alcohol and usually would end up getting into some sort of trouble. Four of every five children and teen arrested in state juvenile justice systems are under the influence of alcohol or drugs while committing their crimes, test positive for drugs, are arrested for committing an alcohol or drug offense, admit having substance abuse and addiction problems, or share some combination of these characteristics.
The Ministry of Justice states that members of the black communities are seven times more likely than white people to be stopped and searched , three and a half times more likely to be arrested, and five times more like to be sent to prison. However, such statistics do not tell us whether members of one ethnic group are more likely than members of another group to commit an offence in the first place – they simply tell us about involvement with the criminal justice system. For example, differences in stop and search or arrest rates may simply be due to policing strategies or to discrimination by individual officers, while differences in rates of imprisonment may be the result of courts handing down harsher sentences to minorities. In addition to statistics on the ethnicity of those individuals who are involved with the criminal justice system, we can call on two other important sources of statistics
Around 10-15% of patients with Bipolar I Disorder commit suicide, with the risks being highest during episodes of depression or mixed mania (the state of simultaneous depression and mania) (Suicide Rate, 2007). Some studies believe the risk for suicide in Bipolar II Disorder patients is even higher than those who are suffering with Bipolar I Disorder or major depressive disorder. Patients who also suffer from an anxiety disorder also are at greater risk for suicide. Fast cycling, a more complex bipolar disorder variation does not appear to enhance the suicide risk in patients with bipolar disorder symptoms. Lots of pre- and early adolescent children with bipolar disorder are more severely ill than adults with the disease.
Are criminals made from their environment? Are they made from the combination of both nature and nurture? Do their peers influence them? “Research indicates that genetics is responsible for about fifty percent of criminal behavior and that environment accounts for the rest” (Beller). The causes of criminal behavior in juveniles are failure in school, substance abuse, gang membership and gun possession, their environment, and family problems.
Decrease in Juvenile Crime In 2001, according to the FBI, juveniles accounted for 17% of all arrests and 15% of all violent crime arrests (Snyder, 2003). In the late 1980s, juvenile violent crime arrest had a substantial growth then peaked in 1994. However, between 1994 and 2001, the juvenile arrest rate for Violent Crime Index fell 44% and as a result, the juvenile Violent Crime Index arrest rate was the lowest since 1983 (Snyder, 2003). Furthermore, in 2001, the rate of juvenile arrests for Violent Crime Index offenses that included forcible rape, robbery, aggravated assault and murder declined for the seventh consecutive year. The juvenile arrest rate for each of these offenses has been declining steadily since the mid-1990s; for murder, the rate fell 70% and manslaughter arrest rate fell 40% from its 1993 peak through 2001.
In 2006, law enforcement agencies reported 1,337,365 arrests of persons under age 18. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, youth who are transferred from the juvenile court system to the adult criminal system are approximately 34% more likely than youth retained in the juvenile court system to be re-arrested for violent or other crime. Many youth who are held in adult jails have not even been convicted. On any given day, nearly 7,500 young people are locked up in adult jails. On any given
If we look at the statistics alone we see in many areas we are already winning. According to the Uniform Crime Reports and Federal Bureau of Investigation arrests for drug law violations this year are expected to exceed the 1,663,582 arrests of 2009. Law enforcement made more arrests for drug abuse violations (an estimated 1.6 million arrests, or 13.0 percent of the total number of arrests) than for any other offense in 2009. Someone is arrested for violating a drug law every 19 seconds.3 The current Commissioner of the New York City Police Department Raymond Kelly said “If you look back in history, if you look back 20 years ago, we had about 25 million drug users in this country. They say that we are down below 13 million now.
The Overall Decrease in Juvenile Arrests Overall Review Data from 2008 shows that juvenile arrests for violent crime declined between 2006 and 2008. According to Puzzanchera (2009) “In 2008 there were 2.11 million juvenile arrests, which is 16% lower than the arrests in 1999” (p.3). In 2008 juvenile arrests for forcible rape was at an all time low since 1980, aggravated assault arrests were also at its lowest since 1988. However, juvenile arrests for murder were at its low in 2004, but increased from 2005 to 2007. Further, the Property Crime Index decreased by 20%, larceny-theft by 17%, murder by 5%, motor vehicle theft by 50%, and burglary by 14% (Puzzanchera, 2008).
There are nearly twice as many boys in the juvenile prisons than there are girls (J.Nurse, Superintendent, Her Majesty’s Prison Dodds, personal interview, December 2007); the frequency of drug related offences for female juvenile offenders in Barbados is low therefore the focus will be particularly on male juvenile offenders. The question as to why illegal substances are so popular with today’s youth must be answered in order to fully explain why criminal behaviour is exhibited especially in boys aged 13-17. The most popular and easily accessed drug used by adolescents in Barbados is Marijuana, other illegal substances, such as cocaine and heroin are present but their popularity is not as widespread as the cost is significantly greater, crack, a combination of cocaine and baking soda, is relatively cheap but is not as widely used as marijuana (Barbados Focus Study, 2002). It should be noted that the majority of charged drug offences are marijuana related with male juvenile offenders in Barbados. Most heterosexual families when expecting a baby value having a boy over a girl as it is a sign of manliness and fertility to produce a male child, however in the early stages of development boys are not challenged as much as