Juvenile crimes are one of the most common problems that have negative consequences on any community. Juvenile crimes refer to the crimes that are perpetrated by individuals who are under the adult age. Statistical analysis indicated that this number grows daily. This has triggered the government to seek intervention measures to help reduce the increasing trend and hence safeguard the society against future offending. This because such children who have records of crime develop to become uncontrollable gangs in the society.
Violent, preventable crimes by minors have long plagued America’s larger cities but have scarcely been punished because of the age of the perpetrators. Protected by a lenient and highly outdated juvenile justice system, violent youth have taken advantage of such benefits and have run rampant in our cities. High profile slayings are quite the norm on the evening news, and every once in a while, disaster strikes and we lose a large number of lives at the hands of young offenders. And sadly, naive America continues to lose more and more lives at the hands of reckless teens and repeat offenders because we choose to give them as many chances as they need so long as they are not legal adults. Unfortunately, we have to lose and destroy more lives because we refuse to
46 states use the judicial waiver, 29 states use statutory exclusion and 15 states use concurrent jurisdiction. “Nearly every state in the country has been moving greater numbers of juvenile offenders into the criminal court using a variety of mechanisms known collectively as "transfer." When juveniles are "transferred" to adult court, they lose their legal status as minor children and become fully culpable for their behavior. Transfer is often used for juveniles charged with violent crimes, but many youth are transferred for lesser charges” http://www.urban.org/publications/307452.html
I think it is clear that young people are not deterred from bad behavior by just the fear of punishment. Kids know then a person's “bark is bigger than their bite.” At the same time,if a young person sees someone else get punished for problem behavior, this might deter them by proxy. The idea of general deterrence is that just one punishment is enough todeter other people if the situation is taken care of quickly enough. General deterrencerelies on the idea that, if young people believe that society both intends to punish criminalacts and that they are able to, they will be deterred from committing a crime by thesefactors and this awareness. One example of this is that more police officers can go onto the police force, so that the young person sees them everywhere and believes that they mightcatch them.
Why juveniles join gangs? By: Moni Williams Abstract Juveniles sometimes have trouble finding who they are where they belong in the world. Juveniles join gangs for a number of reasons. All juveniles have their own reasons for joining a gang. Juveniles look for people and groups of people who same their same morals and values of life.
Criminal behavior has always been more prevalent among young people. Thus, studies of changing crime patterns need to distinguish juvenile crime and youth crime from crime by adults. In the late 80's and early 90's the crime rate involving juveniles started to rise at a high rate for all offenses. Especially with the teen population. Studies have shown that juveniles are more acceptable to committing crimes in groups than by themselves.
(Kathleen Stassen Berger, 2011 p. 57). The biological development of a young child’s brain directly assists the cognitive development of the brain and vice versus. According to Lev Vygotsky’s sociocultural idea, all children have the ability to learn despite of all mental disabilities (p.49). The knowledge and capabilities that are acquired depends on what is deemed important by their culture. To further understand a how a crime can be committed by a young child, Albert Bandura’s theory that humans can learn without reinforcement called “modeling” is a good explanation.
That is, considering the two pathways to delinquency described by Moffitt. The first path to delinquency mention by Moffitt is the Life course persistent. Youths who fit in this category tend to exhibit behavioral problems at an early age which by no means that these offenders tend to remain lawbreakers throughout their adulthood. Not only does this affect the lives of these offenders but it also affects the people around them. Nonetheless males and females are much more likely to be associated with life course persistent.
The social learning theory states that people learn from one another through observation, imitation and modelling. The theory has often been called a bridge between behaviourist and cognitive learning theories because it takes into mediating cognitive factors such as attention, memory, and motivation. In crime, the social learning theory plays an important role in explaining offending behaviour. It is explained through the differential association theory developed by Surtherland (1939). The theory claims that learning crime takes place through observing people (like peers, parents and so on), from there if the person if exposed to more pro-criminal attitudes than anti-criminal attitudes then they are more likely to offend.
Every single person living in the United States today is affected by juvenile crime. It affects parents, neighbors, teachers, and families. It affects the victims of crime, the perpetrators, and the bystanders. While delinquency rates have been decreasing, rates are still too high. There have been numerous programs that have attempted to lower this rate.