Juvenile Crime Statistics After a decade of growth, the incidence of violent crime in America suddenly began to drop in the mid-1990s. Criminologists propose various reasons for the sudden turnaround in violent crime. Explanations include a strong economy, changing demographics, changes in the market for illegal drugs and the use of firearms, expanded imprisonment, policing innovations, and a growing cultural intolerance for violent behavior. Regardless of which explanation one favors, it is clear that previous increases as well as recent decreases in violent crime were disproportionately generated by the nation’s youth. Criminal behavior has always been more prevalent among young people.
The Impact of Drugs on the criminal justice System The smuggling, distribution, and use of drugs in the United States have a considerable impact on the criminal justice system and its counterparts. Drug use has become one of the main factors for the increase in crime. Individuals that use drugs provide a demand for a product that is illegally marketed. In turn, the public demand for illegal drugs has influenced drug cartels to smuggle drugs into the United States to be sold to lower income and under developed communities. The distribution and use of drugs has led to an increase in arrest and conviction of individuals under economic strain.
In the late 1960s the illegal use of drugs began to be more widespread and the government acted very aggressively with a broad program of arresting drug law violator, having a large number of the drug law violators incarcerated, patrol the borders in an attempt to stop drug smuggling, forming an alliance with other countries to assist in shutting down criminal organizations that manufacture and distribute drugs, and mounting efforts to reduce demand for drugs. The increase of violent crimes committed by juveniles rose at a fast rate. Violent crimes committed by juveniles had reached its epidemic proportions by the late 1980s. The growing market for cocaine and its derivative crack was tied in the 1980s and the easy access to guns. Young people started to get involved in street gangs by working as street soldiers in drug distribution networks, arming themselves, and began to kill each other at a high rate.
(Douglas, Burgess, 1986) Criminal profiling started way back in the 1960’s and became more popular as the years went by. Homicide rates were extremely high back then and tended to increase at numerous rates. Criminal profiling presented a way to understand who is capable of what crime. What do the surveys prove? To answer this question, many people think that criminal profiling is solely based on race, age, and gender but it becomes much more than that.
In this article, we shall evaluate the effectiveness of the measures that have been taken to control the children and adolescents who have a high risk of future offending. According to researchers, there has been a lot of arrests of young children and adolescents. Law enforcement in the United States for example arrested 2.4 million children aged 18 years and below. This was a 18% of all arrests made, 33% of all property crimes and 17% of the criminal activities that were committed that year (Snyder, 1999). More significant is that cases of cases of youthful offenders are on the rise on among the young female compared to their male counterparts and this situation is raising an alarm (Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, 1999).
Juveniles are robbing, stealing and even killing their neighbors behind stupidity. What are some of the reasoning behind this type of activity? Some researchers believe that the structural context of the neighborhoods impact individual participation in violence. (Crutchfield and Martinez, 2010). Living in areas that are disadvantaged causes juveniles to have low self control and bad tempers.
The youth involved in gangs have been introduced to the racially discriminated environment because the hatred of other towns and the people that live there, not only because they are enemies but because of their craving of being superior, being better than another race. By being discriminated people feel sad, mad, or sometimes they might not care at all depending on their educational status. “Welcome back nigger” comments like these don’t bother uneducated gang members because the careless mind, focusing only on anything gang related which is what their life revolves. “In my younger years that wouldn’t have bothered me much. But with my new direction and expanded cautiousness, it struck me hard.” Education is the answer to a better understanding of things and a better
In recent years, the average age for first arrest has dropped significantly, and younger boys and girls are committing these crimes. Between 60-80% of adolescents, and pre-adolescents engage in some form of juvenile offending [2].These can range from status offenses (such as underage smoking), to property crimes, to violent crimes. The percent of teens who offend is so high that it would seem to be a cause for worry. However, juvenile offending can be considered normative adolescent behaviour [3]. This is because most teens tend to offend by committing non-violent crimes, only once or a few times, and only during adolescence.
The increase in violent crime by youth is an alarming trend that has many contributing factors. An environment where violence is fed to our youth daily from all avenues including, home, school, and the media can only reinforce the concept of violence as the answer to our problems. Who has the answer for such dramatic damage in our society? Experts who have studied youthful offenders state that most of them grew up in broken and abusive families marked by drugs and alcohol, violence and mental illness. Abuse at such an early age can lead to aggression and violence (The New York Times, 2000).
“Last year, 15,890 Americans became victims of violent crime each day” (Brinkerhoff). Property crimes are the most committed crimes in the U.S. (Crime). I am shocked how many crimes are committed daily in the U.S. What causes people to commit criminal behavior? Are they born to be aggressive? Are criminals made from their environment?