Juvenile Delinquency
How to Prevent the Juvenile Delinquency
Juvenile is the transition of physical and mental developments between childhood and adulthood. According to World Health Organization (WHO), it defines the juvenile as individuals who are 10 to 19 years old. During this period, they easily get confused with their self-worth and social identities. Thus, some teenagers may fail to conduct the social expectation and start to proceed with the crime acts, including theft, snatch, and so on. According to the survey of Ministry of Justice in Taiwan (2012), there are around 12,000 teenagers who have engaged in the crimes. Apart from the large number of delinquents, the rate of juvenile delinquency has been increasing from 48% in 2004 to 64% in 2012. Under this circumstance, our society shouldn’t neglect youths’ acts. In order to prevent the juvenile delinquency, we not only have to focus on the problems of family’s interaction, peer’s influences, and social media’s usage but also propose some effective solutions to tackle these problems.
Some juveniles’ behaviors are related to unlawful acts. According to the Ministry of Justice (2012), the main types of adolescent delinquency contain offenses of causing bodily harm, offenses of larceny and offenses of drug-related. “Offenses of causing bodily harm”, or violence, is defined as a person harms others in physical or nonphysical way. The data of Ministry of Justice (2012) shows that there are 28.04% of teenagers committing violence. The second highest rate is “offenses of larceny”, also called theft, describing a situation when a person intends to take away other entities’ property. It shows that 26.44% of teenagers had committed larceny in Taiwan. “Offense of drug-related” is the third highest rate of juvenile delinquency, occupied 9.05% of teenagers. Furthermore, according to the survey I conducted, 30.2% of people had experienced or witnessed the crime incident. Among the 43 respondents, 6 of them had witnessed violence, 4 of them had seen the process of theft, and 3 of them had heard or witnessed the drug-related crime (Figure1). Since juveniles are still in a position of development, they aren’t entirely capable of controlling their own behaviors making
their own decisions. It’s easy for them to break the
rules. Once teenagers violate the social order and
safety, they may find it hard to return to the society.
Therefore, the society and government have to seek
the way to protect them from being treated as the
criminals and establish a system to assist them. We
should further realize the reasons why adolescents
do the bad behaviors and how to reduce the number
of delinquents.
Figure1. Survey responses to experiencing 3 types of juvenile delinquency
Family’s
Interaction
Lacking of parents’ support is the first reason causing juvenile delinquency. “The importance of parent-child relations as a highly significant variable in presume “cause” of juvenile delinquency is well-documented in the literature－both theoretically and empirically.” (Hirschi, 1969).The inadequate parenting and the shortage of care usually result in teenagers’ deviant behaviors. Parents are seen to be the primary socialization for children of their developments. It is likely that individuals will learn and imitate from caregivers’ behaviors. If teenagers chronically live in the place filled with quarrel and violence, they may get the physical or non-physical harm. This environment will probably affect youths’ mental developments. According to the research conducted by Ministry of Justice (2009), under the data of family factors on juvenile delinquency, 8.5% is due to the inharmonious family relationships. In addition, a majority of people consider that juvenile delinquency stems from the lack of parents’ care and support. In order to gain attention from their parents, teens are likely to engage in criminal acts. In my survey, 39 people (90.7%) agreed that insufficient care and support from parents may influence youth behaviors. Based on the above, the way is to build up a placement service. Individuals are arranged to one of the communities and allowed them to receive the care and counselling services. The placement service emphasizes on personal cares, including after-school care, career guidance, and leisure activities. By providing this kind of service, it allows teenagers to establish the positive interaction with others and prevent them to from practicing the delinquency. However, according to my survey, there are 7 people (16.3%) disagreeing with the placement service (Figure 2). Some may argue that this method is the same as crowd gathering in jail. Service personals put teenagers with similar value together, and it’s easy for them to commit the delinquency. Besides, other thinks that most of the adolescents won’t volunteer to join in the placement service. While the society exists in these doubts, they still build up several placement services and some of them have well results. For
example, the Good Shepherd Social Ware
Foundation is an organization to supply various
services and activities for teens living in Wan Hua
district in Taipei. This organization opens the
diversity and development’s class so that teens are
able to learn the knowledge and explore their interests.
Therefore, establishing the placement service is
feasible to reduce the juvenile delinquency.
Figure 2.Survey responses to solution 1
Peer’s Influences
Secondly, adolescents’ acts are often influence by peers. When teenagers go to school, they have to build up the relationships with their peers. During this period, teens learn the behavior and attitude from their friends and view their opinions and values as the standard. To engage in the groups, youth tend to imitate their friends’ acts. However, some teenagers may make friends with delinquent people. Since they want to gain the recognition from peers and acquire the sense of belonging, they start to misconduct their behaviors. One study also discovered that youths tend to commit the delinquency with their company. It shows that 73% of delinquent behaviors were committed in the company of others. (Jones and Bartlett, LLC.) Since teens are often gathering in groups, they tend to linger on the bad places, including electronic playground, KTV, Internet Café, and so on. Those places are the hotspots of juvenile collective crimes. For example, on April 27 in 2020, a group of teenagers went to KTV in Chiayi. In that time, because of some argument, they triggered a fight with each other. One of the methods to decrease the incidents of juvenile delinquency is to strengthen the police patrol. It can prevent students from going to the bad places. For instance, one trial in the Minneapolis Police Department tested the impact of increasing police patrols in crime hotspots. Over ten months, the crime rates had significantly reduced in the experimental crime hotspots. (Sherman and Weisburd, 1995) This experiment supports the solution. While 34 people (79.1%) agreed with
the solution, 9 (20.9%) respondents
question it (Figure3). Opponents may
consider that strengthening police patrols
is just the temporary solution, which
doesn’t solve the root cause. Juvenile
still can find other places to do the
delinquency. As a result, we shouldn’t too
rely on the police patrolling to decrease the
collective crimes.
Figure 3.Survey responses to solution 2
Peer’s Influences
Finally, youths can learn the deviant behaviors from using the social media. Social media is a useful tool to connect to the whole society. It allows people to search the information, chat with others, and watch the programs. But, since it permits teenagers to browse various websites, it’s easy for them to expose to violence and sex. For instance, some of the social media may broadcasts the negative topics such as crime, pornography, and violence in order to earn the money with its clinking through rate (CTR). Those programs may encourage youth to engage in violence and have a great deal of impact on their behaviors. In addition, some websites or programs want to attract audiences; thus, they may exaggerate the reports and take a snippet. This wrong and unequal information will mislead youth to build up the incorrect perceptive of reality. So as to solve the problems, the effective way is to strengthening the censorship on social media, such as filter the issue of violence and crime. To take Taiwan’s TV programs for example, they are censored by the broadcasting industry including NCC, NPC, and Media Watch nowadays. Their goal is to establish a high-quality environment for youth and prevent the potential possibility of juvenile delinquency. First, those media supervisory organization should strictly implement a TV rating system, so that audiences are able to know whether the program is appropriate for youth to watch. Furthermore, citizens can report the programs containing the picture of blood, violence and sex. It can filter the harmful and dangerous content, thus teenagers won’t see those pictures and videos and prevent them from imitating those behaviors. In my survey, it presents that 11 people (25.6%) think strengthening the censorship on the social media doesn’t work (Figure4). A majority of opponents declare that it’s not closely related to the juvenile delinquency.
Teens can learn the violence or other deviant
behaviors through other ways. On the contrary,
supporter responses that censorship still can
reduce teens to approach to the violence and
crime. Therefore, we can still try this method
to reduce the juvenile delinquency.
Figure 4.Survey responses to solution 3
References
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法務部.(2009). 少年兒童犯罪概況及其分析
file:///C:/Users/user/Downloads/98%E5%B9%B4%E5%B0%91%E5%B9%B4%E5%85%92%
E7%AB%A5%E7%8A%AF%E7%BD%AA%E6%A6%82%E6%B3%81%E5%8F%8A%E5%85%
B6%E5%88%86%E6%9E%90%20(1).pdf
2. 法務部. (2012). 少年兒童犯罪概況及其分析
file:///C:/Users/user/Downloads/101%E5%B9%B4%E5%B0%91%E5%B9%
B4%E5%85%92%E7%AB%A5%E7%8A%AF%E7%BD%AA%E6%A6%82%
E6%B3%81%E5%8F%8A%E5%85%B6%E5%88%86%E6%9E%90.pdf
3. Gerbner, G. and Gross, L. (1976). “Living with television: The violence
profile.” Journal of Communication, p.173-199.
4. Jones and Bartlett, LLC. Theory and Research: the Social Context of
Juvenile Delinquency and Juvenile Justice. p.69.
http://samples.jbpub.com/9780763762513/62513_ch03_elrod3e.pdf
5. Sherman, L. and Weisburd, D. (1995). General Deterrent Effects of Police
Patrol in Crime Hotspots: A Randomized Controlled Trial. Justice
Quarterly, 12: 625–648.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232860936_General_
deterrent_effects_of_police_patrol_in_crime_HOT_SPOTS_A_
randomized_controlled_trial
Until now, juvenile delinquency is still a difficult problem and issue to deal with. Since teenagers can’t acquire parents’ support and care, they may make troubles to gain the attention. Besides, when going to school, teens have to learn the knowledge as well as acquaint with peers. Some of them may misconduct the crimes with their groups. Apart from the impact of peers, TV program’s content can make them to disobey our social rules. Realizing those existing problems, the government and society are able to seek the method to reduce the rate of delinquency. If parents, schools or organizations can find the adolescent’ unusual condition as soon as possible and give some appropriate assistances, it can help individuals to get away from the criminal path.