Essay On Juvenile Delinquency

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According to the Ministry of Justice report (2014), there were 98,837 law violations committed by young people in England and Wales in 2012 and 2013. The report highlights the fact that 13.6 per cent of 1,235,028 arrests for notifiable offences were of youngsters aged between 10 to 17 years old. Juvenile delinquency is one of the major communal issues faced by contemporary UK society nowadays. The problem of youth crime should be seriously taken into account as the various kinds of crime are committed by children, who have less understanding of the world compared to adults. Ministry of Justice (2014) also affirms that in 2012/13, 27,854 young people entered the Youth Justice System for the first time. Furthermore, over 40,000 juveniles under the age of 18 years old were sentenced in England and Wales in 2012/13 (Ministry of Justice, 2014).

Daily Mail (2012) claims that offenders under the age of 18 commit a quarter of all crimes, accounting for more than a million in a single year. The Home Office found that juveniles were responsible for half of the robberies, 32 per cent of burglaries, 31 per cent of vehicle crimes and 28 per cent of criminal damage offences (Daily Mail, 2012). Moreover, the warning alert is that there is a chance of reoffending by the young criminal. As stated by Daily Mail (2012), about three quarters of young criminals return to crime within a year. With regard to the evidence provided it could be stated that youth crime is a serious issue with the possibility of developing into a severe problem in the UK and the significance of emphasizing the issue of juvenile delinquency, therefore, is crucial. This essay will outline and review the causes, effects and possible solutions to such an ominous subject as you...

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... demonstrate criminal behaviour when they do not have similar resources as their peers (Reading Craze, 2013). According to McCord (2001), “factors such as peer delinquent behaviour, peer approval of delinquent behaviour, attachment to peers, time spent with peers and peer pressure for deviance have all been associated with adolescent antisocial behaviour” (via Shader, 2004). Giddens and Sutton (2013) believe there are strong links between crime and social exclusion. They claim that crime rates reflect the growing number of people who do not feel valued by the societies they live in and they lack parental support and guidance.

Moving on to community factors, the environment a juvenile is raised in plays an extremely significant role in influencing the likelihood of delinquent behaviour. The neighbourhood one lives in can allow criminal activities to go unmonitored.

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