Juvenile Delinquency: Causes, Effects and Prevention Essay Example

to act out is if the family is going through a bad divorce or separation.

This puts much stress on the child, causing them to do treacherous things. Also, when talking about parental influence, one could say that child abuse and neglect have also been a factor towards juvenile behavior. Children that are abused and neglected start to offend early than those, of course, who are not neglected and abused (Maxfield and Widom 1996). In all cases, that is true.

Doing some background information on some killers or rapists, you will most likely find out that most of them come from broken homes or from abusive parents. Things like this will tell you that children that are neglected and abused are more likely to become chronic offenders (Maxfield and Widom 1996). In this saying, it explains that children that come from parents that neglect or abuse them will most likely become all-time offenders. Next is the neighborhood and how it affects youths.

Neighborhoods impact children’s behavior by giving an illustration of the values that person lags, and the instance impacts children’s identification of what is satisfactory behavior. (Curry and Spergel ) This means that depending on how the neighborhood is, it shows the values of how a person act and what the difference is between good behavior and bad behavior. Research shows a number of ways that may account for the contrast between where a person stays and the crime rates. Two kinds of research have been pointed to the importance of the social environment of antisocial behavior.

Firstly, research on the characteristics of different communities shows the extremely unequal distribution of criminal activity. Second, research on human development

shows the importance of the environment when it comes to antisocial and criminal behavior. This goes to tell you that some of these kids that are committing these crimes, have come from so very rough neighborhoods and that neighborhood had affected their social life and their behavior. Now, not only do you have your neighborhood and parents affecting you, you now have your peers. Your peers are the ones changing your aspect on everything.

The impact of peers changed depending on the impact of guardians. It is common to see that the peer's impact is more prominent among children and youths who have a small interaction with their guardians. (Kendel 1978) So, when talking about parental influence, you could say that peer influence is more effective than parental influence. Factors such as peer pressure for abnormality has been associated with antisocial behavior.

The effect of deviant peers is heightened if kids believe that their peers approve of them acting out. The more time a child spends with someone, a peer, that pressures them into doing something, the more crimes they will be willing to commit. The more time a child spends with someone, a peer, that pressures them into doing something, the more crimes they will be willing to commit. Peer influences have a strong relationship when it comes to family conflict. For example kids, lack of experience for their parents can influence antisocial behavior.

For example, it shows the deviant peers in the 6th grade can be predicted from poor parental monitoring and antisocial behavior in the 4th grade. Many children reach adulthood without being involved in serious delinquent behavior. Most adult criminals were involved with delinquent

behavior but most do not grow up to become an adult criminal.

Around 10,000 juveniles are housed in adult jails and prisons- 7,500 in jails and 2,700 in prisons. Those kids spend 10 to 20 years of their life in jail. After they have spent a significant amount of time of their life in jail, they have learned their lesson and are now ready to be set free. But when they get out from doing their 10 to the 20-year term, they realize that things are different.

When in jail, it’s harder for you to get a job or get into a good college to pursue a career. Out of all the jails in the United States, 60% of jails have no educational services at all. (Caitlin 2016) That’s saying that most jails in the United States do not have either the necessary tools to gives these kids a good education or are not trying to give any educational services at all. Eleven percent of correction facilities provide special education services and seven percent provided vocational services.

Vocational services enable people with disabilities to overcome barriers accessing, maintaining, or returning to employment or other useful occupation. But, as you can see, that’s only for people that have committed a crime and have functional, mental, physiological, developmental, or emotional impairments or health. What about the kids that have not type of disability? They do not get to have those chances.

Instead of getting a chance of having a good education and getting a decent job, they spend their time in these facilities and it is setting them back mentally, educationally and emotionally.”Youth that is charged as adults, receive an adult

criminal record. It keeps them from getting jobs or getting into the best schools.” (Curley 2016). What makes matter worse is the sexual victimization that happens to youth that is housed in the adult prison facilities. Youth that is in the adult system are more at risk for sexual victimization than any other group of incarcerated people. Children are five times more likely to be sexually assaulted in adult prison.

Whatever the reason is behind the sexual victimization, in 2017 13,398 people were sexually assaulted in prisons and 9,175 of those are kids. A national survey showed that, between the years of 2010 and 2012, 45% of girls and 22% of boys have experienced rape while serving out their prison or jail sentences. The result of these many sexual victimizations happening is that youth that are housed in jails or prisons and has been sexually assaulted are 36 more times likely to commit suicide than those in juvenile facilities. This goes to show that our youth are not safe enough to be in the same jail cell or the same facility as grown men.

When committing a crime, it’s something that people don’t give two thoughts about. It’s not a contemplative move. When you are a juvenile and you are sitting in the jail cell, staring at the four blank walls, you start to think. Why did I do this? What was I thinking?

But, by then it’s too late. Over 920,000 of juveniles are arrested in the US alone and around 25,000 youth are tried, sentenced and incarcerated as adults in the US each year. Half of the kids that are tried, sentenced and incarcerated, their brains

are not done developing. Your brains are done developing between the ages of 20 and 30. The part of the brain that does your thinking is the cerebrum. The cerebrum makes up 85% of the brains weight.

The cerebrum is the thinking part of the brain and it controls your voluntary muscles, the ones that move when you want them to. If it can control the part of your brain that helps you think, it could have prevented these kids from committing the crimes. Most kids wouldn't have known about the cerebrum and would often say that thinking about the what-ifs at that moment, wouldn't have been the first thought to come to mind.

“When a juvenile is committing a crime, maybe they’re thinking that they are not going to get caught or possibly don’t care.” (V. Powell 2018) When doing wrong, most people think about consequences afterward, and some don’t think about them at all. Most people let the guilt let them from the inside out and then you have those people who just know how to move on with their lives. For the people that let the guilt eat away inside their head, they start to go crazy which causes them to have mental and emotional issues. For the people that don’t have that problem, they go and keep committing these crimes. “When a juvenile has no sense of direction, low self-esteem or even a mental disorder, they tend to act out.” (Powell 2018)

The reason why they people think that they should be charged as adults is that if they know how to load or shoot a gun, then they are capable of killing someone

or committing any crime. They think that if even their brain is not fully developed, they have enough common sense to know right from wrong. Even though kids brains are not fully developed, they are capable of committing any crime, even if they know right from wrong. Juveniles being charged as adults have an impact on how they live, how they grow up and how they think.