Some Facts about Juvenile Delinquency

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Recommended: Contributing factors for juvenile delinquency

John Doe, who has been recommended from a group home where other juvenile delinquents are living, is an unmanageable thirteen years old boy. In the past weeks, John Doe committed a great variety of delinquent activities: thefts, vandalism, bully, and trying to kill his mother. John Doe´s mother states that he was manageable when his father, who committed domestic violence against her, was in home. When John Doe was eight years old, his delinquent behavior started by stole a cassette player in an electronic’ store (Santrock, J. W. 2012). As John Doe a lot of adolescents are committing somewhat juvenile delinquency or merely misbehaving. For instance, in 1999, the Uniform Crime Report (UCR) states that 16% of all persons arrested for committed violent crime index were under eighteen years old. Furthermore, 32% of all the property crime index committed were performed by juveniles (Snyder, H. N. 2001). So, it is a serious issue that should be prevented in childhood and/or intervened through mental health treatment planned under the knowledge of the bio-psychosocial risk factors.

In criminology, juvenile delinquency is used to describe socially unaccepted behavior, criminal acts, and status offenses. The law states that to be considerate as a juvenile is necessary to have certain age. These ages vary from one states to others, but almost the three quarter of the states in United States has established eighteen as its limit (Santrock, J. W. 2012). Even though for the least on time in their life all adolescent behave in a harmful way or are unmanageable, the label “delinquent” is exclusive for those who commit criminal acts. Otherwise, those children, who misbehave, are diagnostic with a conduct disorder. The feature of juvenile’s delin...

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.... In addition, this treatment work closely with adolescent to teach them behavioral skills across their community (Mental Health 2004).

In conclusion, Juvenile delinquency or adolescents’ antisocial behavior is a serious issue that should be prevented in childhood and/or intervened through mental health treatment planned under the knowledge of the bio-psychosocial risk factors. These factors do not work alone. It means that it is necessary the interaction of different bio-psychosocial factors to an adolescents become antisocial. Moreover, if an adolescent has some of this factor, it does not means that s/he will become a delinquent. It is just a correlation, but the knowledge of these factors are strongly important for mental health professional to be able to offer an effective treatment that could be different for each one of their trouble youth patients.

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