Juvenile Delinquency

Juvenile Delinquency

2007

Juvenile delinquency does not have a constant or definite meaning According to some psychologists , delinquents are those , whose pattern of adjustment , is contrary to the accepted rules . Some say that delinquents are those who violate the law , habitually disobedient or truant . But delinquents shouldn 't be treated as criminals but as maturing persons who need outmost guidance , love and support while they find their way towards life

Many researchers contend that delinquency is related to family situations . The broken home in particular is said to be a

strong determinant of delinquency . For example , Joseph (1995 ) indicated classical study by Chilton and Markle conducted in 1972 that found that children living in a home other than one with two parents were disproportionately represented in juvenile court statistics . Many self-report studies , however , have found that the differences in delinquency between children from intact and broken homes were small The broken home factor may be related only to official delinquency because youths from broken homes may get arrested , charged , and convicted more often than youths from two-parent families . So the findings on broken homes and delinquency are inconclusive

Industrialization , urbanization , and bureaucratization have permanently altered modern communities . In the 1990s , a family with strong extended family ties and strong norms and social controls no longer exists in the Western world . The extended family has been scattered : the nuclear family is weakened and sometimes pulverized . For example , in the United States the number of divorces in relation to the number of marriages has risen from 10 .8 percent in 1916 , to 25 .8 percent in 1960 , and to 50 percent in 1991 . The weakening of the nuclear family has been accompanied by a sharp increase in the reported incidents of child abuse and neglect . Each year more than three million children witness physical , mental , or sexual attacks of their mothers by their partners .The exact extent of child abuse and neglect or its impact on youth 's development is hard to determine , however , many studies indicate that abused and neglected children often suffer long-term damage and are likely not only to become abusive parents themselves in future , but to become juvenile offenders . According to Fischer and Geiger (1995 one should not be surprised , then , to find that the large majority of delinquent adolescents indicate that they were abused as children (p .16 . As many studies revealed , abused children reported to have committed twice as many delinquent acts and were arrested twice as often as youngsters who had not been maltreated

Research has consistently shown that family relationships , either the child-parent or the parental relationship can affect delinquency . Some researchers have found that children who feel unloved , unwanted or rejected by their parents are more likely to be delinquent than those who feel warmth and love . Other researchers have found that family conflict and hostility between child and parents affect delinquency Some research focuses on the effect of parental relationships on delinquency . Zimring (1998 ) indicated a strong association between reported marital happiness...