Juvenile Victimization in Identity Theft
Introduction
Identity theft is continuously growing crime, and over the past several years we have seen a rise in the victimization of juveniles in the horrendous crime. Three important terms which are addressed in this research (that are important to know and understand) are identity theft, juvenile, and victimization. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, identity theft is defined as “the unauthorized use or attempted use of existing accounts, or unauthorized use or attempted use of personal information to open a new account or for other fraudulent purposes (Harrell, 2013).” Juvenile refers to children, typically persons under the age of 18. Victimization means to make victim of someone or to harm or commit a crime against someone. It is important to understand these terms to understand the full purpose of the following research of juvenile victimization in identity theft (Woods, 2014).
Problem Statement
According to news reports and recent studies, children are at higher risk for identity theft than adults, infants and youth have become greater targets to criminals in the growing trends of this catastrophic crime. Identity theft is a crime of which is difficult for an adult to recover from and get their life back after falling victim, much less an infant, child, or even teenager.
In an article released through the Juvenile Justice Exchange states, “kids under the age of 18 are 51 times more likely to become victims of identity theft than their parents” (Duda, 2011). Juveniles make such tempting target because of the high possibility that the theft may go unknown for years. Just as for adults, juvenile identity theft can have lasting effects (sometimes even greater effects). If t...
... middle of paper ...
...s) online, and don’t give children their social security cards and numbers until they understand how and why to protect it (Duda, 2011). By taking these simple steps, parents can change their children’s futures, as well as theirs.
Works Cited
Creswell, J. W. (2014). Research design. (4th ed.). Thousand Oaks,Caifora: SAGE Publications, Inc.
Duda, C. (2011). Children at higher risk for identity theft than adults, study says. Retrieved from http://jjie.org/children-at-higher-risk-for-identity-theft-than-adults-study-says/
Harrell, E., & Langton, L. Bureau of Justice Statistics, Programs. (2013). Victims of identity theft, 2012 (NCJ 243779). Retrieved from website: http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=4821
Kanupp, B. (2014, April 04). Interview by T.L. Woods [Personal Interview]. Juvenile victimization in identity theft.
Woods, T. (2014). Unpublished work.
Jenson, Jeffrey and Howard, Matthew. "Youth Crime, Public Policy, and Practice in the Juvenile Justice System: Recent Trends and Needed Reforms." Social Work 43 (1998): 324-32
Identity thieves avoid detection by presenting the face of an honest man. Olatunji Oluwatosin could persist in his crime as long as he maintained a different persona. However, James Garrett, a Los Angeles resident, reported to the police that a credit card “in his name had been redirected to another address,” an act which began Detective Duane Decker’s pursuit of Oluwatosin (O’Harrow). During his investigation, detective Decker realized that a customer ...
juvenile justice” (Elrod & Ryder, 2011) is to detour juvenile crimes and not be so easy on
There is no doubt that youth justice practises have changed throughout the years, these changes have been made to adapt to the new challenges that present themselves today. Crime in general, but particularly youth crime is a consistent problem for society.
Vandergoot determines that the reasoning capacity of an adolescent, the ability to make legal decisions, and filter unnecessary information is unclear to a juvenile in the justice system; the vagueness of youth stepping into the courts prevents them from fully participating in the justice system. ( Vandergoot, 2006). As a result of this impreciseness youth encounter Vandergoot concludes a separate justice system allocated for youth to adhere to adolescent needs. Vandergoot discusses the Youth Criminal Justice Act a justice system devised to adhere to youth needs. She summarizes the system that benefits young offenders in contrast to adult offenders.
In a study on juvenile offenders, researchers discovered that over 83% of juveniles showed signs and symptoms of disorders that may antedated their offenses. (Arline, May 2005). Problems with behavior may have been misunderstood for a lack of discipline instead of a disorder, and many juveniles with disorders came from a home with abuse present. In cases of juvenile offenders the courts are not doing enough evaluations on juvenile families, and eon the few that they do have on file their families are stated to be stable (Arline, May 2005). However, many juvenile offenders went through unthinkable circumstances with the members of the community they live in, parents, and agencies who played a role in their life prior to being in adult criminal system (Darden, 2014). A lot of juveniles who are in the criminal system have common elements in their non-profit profiles like regretful choices, mistrusting adults, robbed childhood, and being disappointed (Darden, 2014). For instance, a juvenile offender name Jennifer Pruitt, went through physical abuse, being exposed to drunken behavior, father sexually abusing her, and domestic abuse (Darden, 2014). She ran away fro home and confided in her neighbor as someone she could trust, but her neighbor convinced her to rob another neighbor (Darden, 2014). During the attempt to the rob the neighbor Pruitt ending up witnessing a murder, and was convicted of a felony murder that landed her more than twenty years in prison (Darden,
I’ve decided to write my research paper on the issue of identity theft. Identity theft has occurred all throughout history in various ways and forms. Today, it is one of the fastest growing crimes occurring all over the world. Data suggests that identity theft accounts for roughly $50 billion stolen each year from citizens and businesses in the U.S. I believe that more attention should be targeted towards identity theft because of the detrimental effects it can have on a single victim and on our nation’s economy. Topics I will discuss include statistics about the crime, laws that protect the victims of the crimes, and what we are doing to prevent future attacks from happening.
Juvenile justice is one of the controversial topics in America today. Life is evaluated on how we chose to live it, whether good or bad. Many children, however, choose to live life carelessly and end up being labeled as what we call juvenile criminals. Juvenile criminals (delinquents) are minors, usually between the ages of ten to eighteen. As everyone’s simple logic, childrens brains aren’t fully developed through these stages of life.
The United States has been affected by a number of crimes committed by juveniles. The juvenile crime rate has been increasing in recent years. Everyday more juveniles commit crimes for various reasons. They act as adults when they are not officially adults. There is a discussion about how juveniles should be punished if they commit heinous crimes. While many argue that juveniles who commit serious crimes, such as murder, should be treated as adults, the fact is, juveniles under the age of eighteen, are not adults, and should not be treated as such.
This essay seeks to demonstrate that juveniles, persons who have not reached the age at which one should be treated as an adult by the criminal justice system (16 in NYS), charged with violent felonies, a series of unlawful crime punishable by imprisonment from more than one year to death (murder, rape, arson, and burglary), ought not to be treated as adults in the criminal justice system because this will lead to more acts of violence against juvenile offenders by both adult offenders and themselves. Three argume...
"Prevention Methods." Prevention Methods - Identity Crimes - Center for Identity Management and Information Protection (CIMIP) - Utica College. Center for Identity Management and Information Protection, 2009. Web. 30 July 2017.
In England, conforming to the Civitas’s Crime report Youth Crime in England and Wales (2010) the youngest age that someone can be prosecuted is as young as ten years old. It is also mentioned that trailing, patrolling and applying penalties on young offenders costs almost four billion pounds annually. The numbers of first time offences committed by a young person has decrease over the years; according to the Youth Justice Statistics (2014) youth crime is down by 63% since 2002. In regards to the offences themselves, nearly every offence category has decreased in reoccurrence with exception to drug offences declares Civitas’s Youth Crime in England and Wales (2010). The same report states that theft and handling remains the highest volume category taking up 21% of all youth crime. It is shortly followed by violence against a person, 19.5%, and criminal damage, 11.9%. It can be concluded from both aforementioned reports that crime in the UK is decreasing. Contrariwise to this, youth reoffending rates are soaring concludes Civitas’s Youth Crime in England and Wales (2010).
Child Identity Theft is when a child social security number is used to apply for government benefits, open bank and credit cards, apply for loan or even rent a place. Social Security numbers are the most commonly used piece of information by identity thieves targeting children. In fact, 56% of respondents reported theft or misuse of a child 's SSN; a study found that 2.5 percent of U.S. households with children under age 18 experienced child identity fraud at some point during their child 's lifetime. This equates to one in 40 households with minor children being affected by this crime
Diller, V. (2012, November 5). Teens Who Commit Crimes: What Can/Should Parents Do? | Vivian Diller, Ph.D. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/vivian-diller-phd/teen-crime_b_2035255.html
In spite of this, identification cards can also lead to several problems one of them being identity theft among young adults. As declared by Karen Goebel and Joan Kinney (2006) “Anyone in the United States with a social security number is potential prey, and, this includes children from birth through their teen years” (p.59). By looking at this quote, we are able to conclude that identity cards serve as valuable information to bigger authorities but can threaten people’s identity. As illustrated by Karen Goebel and Joan Kinney (2006), they were able to state a real life example which is “A boy discovered at age 17 that he was $40,000 in debt due to someone else using his social security number to purchase a yacht” (p.6).Even before reaching appropriate age to manage themselves they are subjected to dangers that could affect them later in life. This demonstrates that young teens are most likely to be victims of identity theft since they aren’t aware of the consequences and risks that come with owning a form of identity. To add, it is even harder for teen to recognize the different signs of warnings around identity theft. Finally, identity cards can be hazardous to citizens that aren’t knowledgeable of the risks or conscious of the signs of identity theft but in this next paragraph it may say