Initially, taking a course on juvenile delinquents did not interest me. But during these ten or eleven weeks of school, I have became to fulfill a better understanding as to why these type of kids choose to do some of the things they do. Our textbook, Juvenile Delinquency, by Robert Agnew and Timothy Brezina, focuses solely on what causes and controls juveniles to act out and commit these crimes. When reading this textbook, I became aware that most of the crimes such as burglary, theft, larceny, rape, gang violence, property damage, and etc. were mainly committed by male juveniles. And although this textbook doesn’t state it directly, I feel like most of the information obtained was based on male juveniles. In one of the earlier chapters, I remember reading something about how female juveniles are more closely supervised than males, and that although the rate for female juveniles is increasing, it still isn’t as high as the rate of male juvenile delinquents. So I proposed this research question: Why are females more closely supervised than males if there is a higher rate for crime with male juvenile delinquents?
Kids in general learn from the people in their environment. If they see something good that someone else does, they too will do the same thing. They are not able to control the way they think yet because their cognitive learning skills aren’t as strong as they are when you become an adult. If a child sees someone doing something bad instead of good, the same reaction as the first example will take place and that child will exhibit bad behavior. This goes hand in hand with the social learning theory. The social learning theory focuses on individual behavior. Kids are easily influenced by other kids in their age group bec...
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...hose people who are lesbians or gays to act out for acceptance. They sell drugs, they smoke it, they become strippers or they even commit suicide because they are being suppressed and abandoned by the people they love. Women have been suppressed for too long. Because of this rejection they feel from the people they love, the chances for them to do criminal activities are high. People will watch them because they do not yet understand. The justice system will watch them because it isn’t considered lady like. A woman even doing a criminal act isn’t considered a “lady characteristic”, that is why female juveniles are heavily supervised! Once these girls are in the justice system, the physical abuse doesn’t stop. If a girl does let the justice system know that she is a lesbian or bisexual she would be forced to be separated from the other females and forced to be alone.
It is an undenialble biological fact of life that to exist one must have a biological mother and a biological father, however after the point of conception nothing is certain about how that child will be raised. Some children are raised by foster parents – people who have absolutely no biological relationship to the child – some children have two mothers, some have two fathers… Frequently children are raised in some combination of stepparents, half-sisters, cousins, grandmothers, and whatever other family members are available to rear the child. It is long past the time where a mother and a father would raise a child except for the rare exception. This untraditional makeup of families has a great impact on the child’s successes and failures, as do traditional families which may be traditional in makeup but deal with several confounding factors from differing communication styles to poverty, to more severe abuse and neglect. Oftentimes there is an almost direct connection to an intact family versus a broken family and the type of juvenile delinquency that the children raised in these environments perpetrate. Recognizing the common patterns of family dynamics which
Juveniles get involved in delinquency for many reason; a lot of the time it depends on their home lives. Females tend to lean towards substance abuse and sexual crimes more than violent crimes. What tends to make females go toward getting into delinquent behavior is how the parents treated them as they were growing up. In Davis article “At- Risk Girls and Delinquency”; when a family is trying to get control over their daughter sometimes it can have a negative effect and cause that daughter to act out or even run away (Davis, pg. 297). When a female starts getting involved in delinquency a lot of the time the risk factors are different then their counter- partners. Girls are at greater risk to get victimized than boys are since females are
In the twentieth century, juveniles were oftentimes treated the same as adults in regards to the justice system, however, age was considered in terms of an appropriate punishment. At the turn of the century, criminal justice actors as well as policy makers began to change their perspective on the juvenile by considering them a delinquent child instead of a criminal. The juvenile justice system is comprised of those agencies whose primary duty is to manage juvenile offenders. In most major police departments, juvenile police officers have the sole responsibility of dealing with juvenile delinquency. The juvenile justice system was founded on the concept of parens patriae, which means the state as parent. In other words, the juvenile delinquent
Females are increasingly becoming more active in the juvenile justice system. While these rates are rising with females the rates of involvement for males in the juvenile justice system are said to be declining. From 1983 to 1992, arrests of female adolescents rose over 25% (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 1993), and in 1994 and 1995 girls accounted for one fourth of all juvenile arrests (Girls Incorporated, 1996; Snyder, 1996; Snyder et al., 1996). Moreover, from 1985 to 1994, arrests of females for violent offenses more than doubled (Girls Incorporated, 1996). In 1997, there were nearly half a million arrests, approximately 23 percent, of juvenile females in the United States. Although many of the crimes ...
For many, the term juvenile delinquent likely conjures up images of groups of young men standing on street corners, wearing baggy clothes, and boasting defiant attitudes. However, some may be surprised to learn that the face of the juvenile delinquent is swiftly changing. While boys are responsible for the majority of juvenile crime overall, the number of juvenile females involved with the justice system has been steadily increasing over the past three decades (Gross 84). Of greatest concern is the context of the crimes being committed by juvenile girls, as arrest rates have increased most in the area of violent offenses. In response to this emerging trend, juvenile justice professionals are increasingly advocating for gender specific intervention and rehabilitation models to deter further delinquency involvement. This effort is rooted in investigating the risk factors for criminal behavior among adolescent females, and the compound effect multiple risk factors may illicit.
The Merriam Webster dictionary defines Probation as a period of time given to someone who commits a crime and instead of being incarcerated are allowed to spend their sentence in the community based on conditions set aside by the courts. (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/probation) The task was given to me to build the ultimate model of Probation Services. After careful consideration and great thought this is the route I decided to take. I believe that parents play a great role in some of the decisions their children make. The decisions children make today are a reflection of their parents. My focus on this probation model is to place both child and parent in an institution were they would undergo a period of restoration of family values, rehabilitation, parenting courses, academia and counselling. The ages of these juveniles will range between the ages of ten (10) to seventeen (17) years old.Therefore I stand for institutionalized probation and how this probation will assist in instilling family values.
Resilience is essentially the ability to successfully adapt to environmental stressors by maintaining psychological well-being in the face of adverse circumstances. The concept of resiliency has only recently begun to be a topic for research theory related to juveniles. Most theory research has been centered on why juveniles commit crime, in effect identifying risk factors to show who is likely to participate in delinquent behaviors and what are the factors driving this behavior are.
The differences in behind gender and juvenile delinquency are strikingly apparent. To start it has been proven that females have a significantly higher emotion IQ than males. Females are far greater at controlling their emotions than males. Young boys need supervision and guidance from their mothers. Aggression is a trait that is more evident among males and combined with the fact that males are less apt to be concerned fitting in groups favoring independence more than females, exacerbates an inherent problem.
Girls become delinquent for many different reasons then boys based on biological, social and cultural differences in each gender. From hormones and brain development, to the child’s upbringing by families, to the way girls are expected to act in public compared to boys; a different set of circumstances exists for the reasons why girls become delinquent compared to boys. Siegel, (2007, p.174) explains this by stating. “There are indications that gender differences in socialization and development do exist and that they may have an effect on juvenile offending patterns.”
Aftercare programs are used often with juveniles in hopes of preventing recidivism. Recidivism is of high concern to the criminal justice system in that the safety of the public depends on low recidivism rates. Juvenile Incarceration facilities have programs set up, such as education and pro-social behavior classes, to promote bettering the juvenile’s life. However, research has shown that the progress made while incarcerated slowly declines upon release. This is testimony to the importance of aftercare programs in preventing recidivism.
The juvenile system was first established in the United States around 1899 when Illinois had their first court appearance including a juvenile. This then led to the Nation’s first juvenile system being created, which was for youth under the age of eighteen who have been convicted of crimes. Up until then, most youth were tried as an adult until the system was put into place. The system has different sections in which they youth is taken in such as: intake, adjudication, disposition, and post adjudicatory.
The high rates of mental health problems among the incarcerated youths can be directly attributed to the juvenile incarceration policies. Despite public concerns against the use of incarceration on the youths, the number of incarcerated youths has not gone down. This paper is set up to review the juvenile incarceration policies and its contribution to the prevalence of mental health problems among incarcerated youths. With a third of those who are diagnosed with mental health problems showing that they developed the problems after being incarcerated, it is high time to abandon the incarceration policies in favor of more rehabilitative systems which do not expose the children to the conditions of incarceration.
In 2011, a total of 61,423 youths in the United States were considered juvenile and of that statistic 14% were females (Child Trends, 2013, p.1). The topic of Female Delinquency is important to discuss these days because it wasn’t until recent years that researchers even looked at females and the reasons behind their crime rates. Society normally looks upon males as being the normal criminal; however, with recent studies, females can be just as delinquent as males. Most people look at females as being feminine and not participating in criminal behavior, which is why not until recent years we have stepped out of this incorrect view and saw that not all females are the same. Therefore, we need to understand these female delinquents and gain
There are many juvenile offenders in adult prisons for many reasons.14-year-old Quantell Lott’s was sentenced to life in prison without parole for murdering his 17-year-old stepbrother Michael Berton. Both of the brothers were playing around with blow guns and darts. The situation increased so quickly. One of them grabbed a knife and stabbed the other one. Michael was dead before he made it to the hospital (Chen). Quantell is 23 years old now in prison and according to the article written by Stephanie Chen on CNN he says, “They locked me up and threw away the keys. They took away all hope for the future.” Those words that Quantell said have a meaningful argument. People don’t give second chances when they should. He was just a kid who made
The United States, a country who has prisons filled with juvenile delinquents. Many of the offenders are arrested for status offenses, but there are also offenders who are incarcerated for serious crimes. Are these offenders getting the treatment needed to succeed after their release? Are the punishments in the juvenile detention centers creating more problems? Is the juvenile justice system addressing the needs of those juveniles participating in the system? The answer to these questions will be answered from viewing three separate documentaries on the juvenile justice system.