What Services Could I Offer For Juveniles?
Beyond all social strata, it is exceedingly rare to detect adolescents who have not engaged in status or benign runaway offending. The prevalence for behaviors such as drinking booze, using drugs, truancy, unruliness, smoking tobacco, engaging in sexual activity, fighting, and theft are nearly 100 percent. Conventional wisdom recognizes that in that location is a distinctive stage of life between childhood and adulthood that increases criminogenic tendencies in adolescents and that each child is a production of the society that cares for it. This paper examines the history of juvenile justice in the United states of america, addresses current social, institutional, environmental, and private factors that protect confronting or exacerbates juvenile delinquency, and finally poses a question: Is the social problem the behaviors that crime-decumbent juveniles engage in, or is it our society's failure to adequately respond to and support the needs of adolescents?
DEFINING JUVENILE DELINQUENCY
What is juvenile malversation? In simplistic terms, any act committed by a minor that violates the penal lawmaking is consider juvenile delinquency. In near of the Usa, and in the federal courtroom system, persons under the age of eighteen are considered juveniles and their unlawful actions are chosen delinquencies. A scattering of states define delinquency as criminal misconduct occurring before age xvi and Wyoming considers persons juveniles until age 19. Children under a certain age (ordinarily between seven and 10) are generally excluded from delinquent status and legal responsibleness considering it is assumed that they are unable to form the criminal intent (known as mens rea or guilty mind) necessary to perpetrate acts of delinquency (Nofziger 2009).
In most cases, delinquent acts would be considered crimes if they were committed by adults. The exception to this dominion are status offenses. Condition offenses are considered inappropriate or unhealthy behaviors for children and adolescents and are proscribed precisely because of the offenders' age. In many cases, these offenses tend to be moralistic ideas of what we think juveniles should non exist doing and such behaviors, if committed by adults, are legal. Examples of status offenses include violating curfew, disobeying parents, using or possessing drugs or alcohol, engaging in sexual behavior, incorrigibility, running away from home, using tobacco products, and truancy.
HISTORY OF JUVENILE JUSTICE
Historically in the United States, what constitutes juvenile delinquency has been variously divers and interpreted. For near of human history, children were treated no differently than adults, subjected to corporal punishments such equally public whippings and dunking in water, to removal from the community and capital letter penalisation. In the 16thursday century, in that location was a modify in thinking. Children were seen equally gifts from God who, instead of being treated as adults, needed concrete and moral protection and didactics (Nofziger 2010). The bones principals for raising children were supervision, discipline, modesty (around children), diligence, and obedience. The prevailing idea was that children need to exist prepared for adulthood, not thrusted into it.
As we moved into the colonial period (early on 17th century) to effectually 1825, focus was placed on the family as the primary source of control in children (Nofziger 2010). Most juvenile lawbreakers were sent dwelling for punishment while serious infractions were punished under English common law. This doctrine, heavily embedded with moral and religious overtones, was rigid and harsh. In 1646, the Republic of Massachusetts passedThe Stubborn Child Law which gave children the capital punishment for disobeying their parents. It read:
"If a man have a stubborn or rebellious son, of sufficient years and understanding (viz.) sixteen years of age, which volition not obey the voice of his Begetter, or the vocalization of his Mother, and that when they have moderated him will not harken unto them: then shall his Father and Mother existence his natural parents, lay agree on him and bring him to the Magistrates assembled in Court and testify unto them, that their son is stubborn and rebellious and volition not obey their voice and chastisement, just lives in sundry notorious crimes, such a son shall be put to death."
Statutes of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, 1646
This draconian police force was derived virtually verbatim from an Former Testament injunction in the book of Deuteronomy:
"If a homo have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the vox of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, volition not hearken unto them: And then shall his father and his mother lay agree on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his urban center, and unto the gate of his place; And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard. And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die: so shalt thou put evil away from among yous; and all Israel shall hear, and fear."
Deuteronomy 21:xviii-21 (King James Version)
The Stubborn Child Law was on the statute books of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for over three hundred years, just being repealed finally in 1973. Some scholars notation that this law was non intended to actually exist carried out but instead placed on the books to serve as a warning to children almost the consequences of disobeying their parents.
With major social changes such every bit the industrial revolution and the emergence of the leisure form at that place was a shift in thinking by the early 1800'south. Children began to be viewed as persons at a unique phase of human development instead of smaller versions of adults with equal cognitive and moral capacities. Positivistic factors such as clearing, poverty, urbanity, poor parenting, and other ecology factors replaced religiosity as the core causes of delinquency. By 1825, a progressive social movement, organized past people known as the child savers, emerged to challenge the definition, estimation, and handling of juvenile malversation. The child savers believed that the family did not accept the necessary resources to be an ideal source of command for children, and consequently sought to remove juveniles from adverse environments and instead make them wards of the state. Based on the doctrine of parens patriae (the land as the ultimate guardian of children), a new organization of discipline developed outside the family where juvenile delinquents were placed in Bastile-like houses of refuge.
Despite the reform-minded intentions of the child savers, issues developed. Nether the belief that juveniles tin be saved from a life of crime, children living in poverty were oft unfairly targeted. These children would be sent westward on trains where at each stop they would be lined up and selected by subcontract families to be forced into hard labor. Children who were not selected equally farm hands stayed on the trains, in some cases for years, until they aged out of the system (Nofziger 2010).
During the belatedly 19th and early xxth centuries, the United States experienced increased immigration and urbanization with accompanying social changes. During this era, boyhood also became recognized as a distinctive stage of life between babyhood and adulthood that provided the opportunity for physical, intellectual, social, emotional, and moral maturation. Reform movements during this period attempted to decriminalize malversation and remove youth from the criminal justice system and instead place them in treatment programs.
On July 1, 1899, the mod juvenile justice organization was created with the Illinois Juvenile Courtroom Act of 1899 and the opening of the first Juvenile Courtroom in Chicago. The purpose of this court was to regulate the treatment and command of dependent, neglected, and delinquent children. There objective was handling, not punishment, with outcomes based on the circumstances and special needs of the kid. These philosophically dissimilar juvenile courts apace spread beyond the nation and processed youth involved in both condition and delinquent offenses. The function of these juvenile courts was not to dethrone, crush, or make the runaway an offender, only instead to uplift and develop the juvenile into a worthy citizen. While noble in their attempts, over time the juvenile justice arrangement was criticized for its inability to effectively reduce delinquency every bit a social problem and, perhaps more importantly, for similarly processing and incarcerating mostly beneficial status offenders with comparatively more serious delinquent offenders. Additionally, children's rights were non-existence. They had no due procedure rights, no rights to legal counsel, and no rights to catechize witnesses. Judges held accented power in determining what form of action would be taken with each juvenile. Such wide powers by judges and lack of rights by juveniles came to cease in 1966 with Kent vs. The United states of america.
With the social upheaval of the 1960s, a variety of more liberal measures were introduced to guarantee the same legal rights for juvenile offenders as developed offenders. It started with establishing procedures before waiving or transferring a juvenile to criminal court in Kent vs. U.S., 1966. In this instance, a judge unfairly waived a juvenile to adult court where he was tried every bit an adult and sentenced to ninety years instead of five years if he was tried equally a juvenile. In 1967, In Re Gault gave juvenile offenders additional rights already given to developed offenders, such as due process, a right to counsel, notice of charges, cross-examination of witnesses, and protection against self-incrimination. In this case a 15-year old received five years in prison after making an obscene phone telephone call. If the juvenile had been tried every bit an developed instead he would accept but received 60 days in prison.
Throughout the 1970s juvenile courts increased in formality and due process rights, including country burden of proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt (In re Winship, 1970), jury trials (McKeiver v. Pennsylvania, 1971), and protection from double jeopardy (Breed v. Jones, 1975). Moreover, the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974 (amended in 1977, 1980, and 1984) called for the decriminalization of driveling and neglected children, deinstitutionalization of status offenders, and established funding for delinquency research.
Over the last quarter of the 20th century, juvenile delinquency was defined in large part by contemporary social problems such as drug abuse, illegitimacy, gangs, and schoolhouse shootings. Several horrific juvenile crimes in the tardily 1980s and early 1990s heightened the public's concerns on how juveniles should be treated past the courts. Incidents such as school shootings catapulted juveniles to the top of the nation'due south listing of most serious social bug, thus giving ascent to increasingly punitive handling of juvenile offenders, specially harsher punishments and increased reliance on incarceration. Hyperviligent public schools adopted zero-tolerance policies which immune no margin for error. Even the most minor student infraction became subject to immediate school subject, applying harsh penalties to innocuous conduct. Nationally, several prominent incidents highlighted extreme decisions past school officials: A nine-year-sometime male child was suspended for one day after giving a jiff mint to a classmate. A kindergarten boy in Virginia was suspended for bringing a pager on a field trip. A inferior high school pupil in West Virginia was suspended iii days for giving a cough lozenge to a classmate. In Ohio, a 13-year-sometime boy was suspended lxxx days for bringing ibuprofen to class (information technology was after reduced to three days.) An 11-year-old girl from South Carolina was arrested and suspended for having a steak knife in her lunchbox to cut craven she had brought to school to swallow. School boards were criticized for their one-size-fits-all approaches and for existence "by the volume", without taking into account the item circumstances of private students or incidents. Countless students across the nation were unfairly punished for violating non the spirit or intent of such policies, but the letter.
As the 21st century began, a epitome shift in the definition and estimation of juvenile delinquency occurred. Malversation was no longer viewed as a discrete, abnormal phase of deviant beliefs to contrast with adult crime. Instead, multidisciplinary efforts framed juvenile malversation specifically and childhood/boyhood mostly in a life-course context in which delinquency was examined every bit one stage in the longitudinal, often developmental, criminal career. These stages included the timing of the initiation of delinquent offending (onset), the proportion of youth who are runaway (prevalence), the number of delinquent events committed annually (incidence), the charge per unit of runaway offenses committed annually (lambda), the decline of involvement in delinquency (desistance), and the cessation of malversation (termination.) This research image has unearthed the most valid and reliable statistical data on the magnitude and stability of juvenile malversation.
WHAT CAUSES JUVENILE Malversation? EXPLAINING THE ELUSIVE NATURE OF JUVENILE Malversation IN THE UNITED STATES
Historically, juveniles have e'er been offense-prone simply what causes a juvenile to become delinquent? Why practise some juveniles cease upwardly persistent delinquents while others exercise not? Some theorists will argue that the answer is simple. Delinquency is caused by violent television, violent video games, or violent music (such every bit rap, metallic, punk, or stone.) Others take argued that low self-control or social, familial, economic, and political variables are responsible for delinquency and violence. Enquiry on delinquency and juvenile offenders has led to a variety of conclusions most what causes, and what correlates with, juvenile crime and the definitions, causes, and policies used past the state to manage juvenile delinquency are highly contingent on trends in the academic disciplines that study it. Fifty-fifty inside academic disciplines, there are differentiating theoretical debates. Archaic definitions equated malversation with supernatural forces, sin, vice, and other bad habits. Economists have defined delinquency every bit the rational consequence of the purposive cost-do good assay of the runaway. Sociology has a similar perspective called Rational Pick Theory (RCT) only has dismissed information technology considering of its falsifiability and inability to explicate crimes based on emotion/expressivity. Biologists take pointed to diverse stigmata, hormones, and other innate characteristics as the natural determinates of youthful misbehavior however sociologists contend that biological theories practise not explain the majority of crime nor practice they explain why some juveniles engage in delinquency while others practice not. Psychologists accept variously divers malversation as the maladaptive product of a defective personality, over- or underdeveloped Freudian superego, low IQ, anger management and opposition-defiant disorder, and an assortment of individual-level pathologies. Psychological theories are very dependent on the type of criminal offence and similar to biological theories, practice not explain all crimes, nor do they explain law-breaking patterns.
In the contemporary United States, the dominant practitioners of malversation are sociologists and criminologists who point to large-scale, structural, extra-individual phenomena as the determinants of human being behavior. According to criminologists, delinquency is a collective and social, not an individual, pathology. Numerous theoretical camps within criminology define juvenile delinquency as the outcome of various social processes. These include interaction with delinquent peers (differential association and social learning); poverty, mobility, and neighborhood dissolution (social disorganization); diff access to societal goals (strain/anomie); weak bonds to conventional social institutions (social command); abject parental socialization (cocky-control); stigmatizing involvement in the juvenile justice organisation (labeling); and the balkanizing effects of competing social statuses (conflict, critical, differential oppression, and feminist.)
Sociological research on the correlates of juvenile offense is all-encompassing, and oftentimes contradictory, and so it tin can simply be stated that there are many variables constituting risk factors in juvenile offending. At the same time, in that location are also many protective factors that continue juveniles from committing runaway acts. Thus, in that location is no one reply to the question of what causes juvenile delinquency, instead the answer is contingent on a number of different factors (Walsh 2008).
For the purposes of this paper, I will utilize the Integrated Social Control model which combines command theory, strain theory, and social learning theory to explicate the origins of delinquent behavior. Families, communities, and society usually exert social control to compel individuals to act in socially acceptable ways. According to this theory, when these controls are absent, subcultures develop that promote attitudes and perceptions favorable to delinquency and other deviant behavior. Differences between a youth's aspirations and his or her opportunities cause frustration and failure. Strain theory argues that youth and so turn to runaway behavior as a manner of coping. Social learning theory assumes that childhood experiences, such as lax or harsh parental subject area, corruption, neglect, or violence, prevent bonding with others and diminish internal self-control.
EXAMINING THE Hazard AND PROTECTIVE FACTORS FOR JUVENILE DELINQUENCY
Contributing factors for juvenile delinquency can be placed into four major sociological categories. They are community, schools, peers, and family.
Community
The structure of communities (location of community, distance to places of employment, type of housing) contribute to juvenile delinquency. Communities in areas of extreme poverty create structural characteristics that create disorganized and unstable neighborhoods. These communities lack protective institutions such as quality schools, churches, libraries, even grocery stores. Equally a result, communities are unable to provide children with traditional ways of success such as legitimate activities, good schools, and job opportunities.
Schools
Structurally, schools contributes to delinquency by throwing different cultures together (leading to conflicts/fighting), and past providing adolescents more access to deviant opportunities such as drug and alcohol use. Schools which lack resources exasperate the problem with overcrowding and being incapable of meeting the needs of struggling students. As children grow older they are given increasing freedom and independence in the family and other settings yet at school the same rules apply yr after yr. Students who practice well at schoolhouse, are popular with their peers, and participate in extracurricular activities probably consider school rules but a modest annoyance. But students who fare poorly academically, are not popular, and participate piddling feel that the schoolhouse does non have much joy to offer and consequently regard its rules every bit oppressive and intolerable. These students find schoolhouse frustrating, develop hostility toward information technology, and oft drift into trouble.
Peers
When institutions cannot run across the needs of juveniles, their peers will. Gangs, for instance, offer a sense of belonging and protection, every bit well every bit an opportunity for recreation and material resources.
Family
Families contribute to juvenile delinquency when they teach behaviors that are non accepted past order or socialize children into cultures that accept or encourage deviance (such as the K.M.K.) Single parent homes also contribute to malversation because parents are no longer working together equally a unified front, fewer demands are placed on the child(ren), and less supervision as the kid is often under the control of only one parent at a time. Maybe virtually importantly, is that single parent homes are far more than probable to alive in poverty and suffer its effects compared to two-parent households.
IS JUVENILE DELINQUENCY THE SOCIAL Problem OR IS THE REAL SOCIAL PROBLEM OUR REACTION TO IT?
The juvenile justice system itself is fundamentally flawed. Though information technology may currently sound unpopular, repression and detention in inadequate correctional institutions should be the final resort in addressing the issue of juvenile delinquency, and reserved only for the most serious offenders. Resources should be focused in prevention and social services where at-risk kids can be targeted before they get involved in crime. We must ask ourselves what trends in our current society will continue to influence juvenile malversation rates? Nosotros must consider factors such every bit single moms, out of wedlock births, the economy, lack of community resources, failing public pedagogy, and American culture (pro gun, trigger-happy media, drugs) itself. Nosotros must understand how these influences effect delinquency rates earlier we decide if and how we are going to hold juveniles answerable for their deviant behavior. By some accounts, saving a single youth from a life a criminal offence saves order an estimated two.six to 4.iv meg dollars (Cohen & Piquerro 2009.) Policy makers must realize that solving the problem of juvenile malversation starts with adequate funding directed at prevention programs instead of punitive actions.
Bibliography
Cohen, M., & Piquero, A. (2009). New Evidence on the Monetary Value of Saving a High Run a risk Youth. Periodical of Quantitative Criminology, 25(1), 25-49.
Nofziger, Stacy (2009, Baronial 25). Introduction to Criminology lecture, Academy of Akron.
Nofziger, Stacy (2010, January 12). Introduction to Juvenile Delinquency lecture, University of Akron.
Nofziger, Stacy (2010, April 15). Juvenile Delinquency lecture on the history of juvenile justice system, Academy of Akron.
Nofziger, Stacy (2010, Apr xx). Juvenile Malversation lecture on the history of juvenile justice organization, Academy of Akron.
Walsh, A., & Hemmens, C. (2008). Introduction to Criminology. 345-350. Los Angeles: Sage Publications.
Source: https://culturelag.wordpress.com/2012/03/08/juvenile-delinquency-and-justice-in-the-united-states/
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