Delinquency and Crimes

Delinquency and Crimes

The juvenile and street crime rates are major problems cities and communities including Boston are dealing with today. Why are these rates increasing and what have other cities including Boston done to provide a better and safer community? The answer is community programs. Establishing programs to help the youth head in the right direction had a major impact on the children themselves and the community.

First look at why juveniles were and still are committing crimes in the past. It can be broken down into five reasons: No communication among different agencies among the communities - Police, School Department, the probation officers, and the court system or in the communities themselves.

There was no enforcement of punishment Crack, Gangs, and Guns Weak family attachments or being a witness to domestic violence Lack of community involvement, jobs, and activities all of these things reasons combined created a violent and dangerous city. Some sociologists believe violence is a learned behavior and that delinquency is a result of the influence of family, peers, community, and school (Beccaria 2002). Edward Sutherland was a major Chicago School theorist who believed communities positively reinforce violence and delinquency rather than deter it with punishments. Communities realize that a child's environment plays a large part in their life and decided to put in effect some new programs in the community to help the youth. Children at a very young age must be taught that violence is not an acceptable form of behavior. Community involvement and education are the keys to success. We must look towards the future and invent new ways to help the teenagers of communities.

The first of five reasons is that there is no communication among the different agencies in within the community - Police, School Department, the Probation Officers, and the Court System. Also in the communities themselves there was not much communication going on. When juveniles are arrested, skip school, break probation, or are sentenced to jail, there has to be communication among the different agencies in the community. When a child gets into trouble at school, how are the police supposed to help if they don't know what is happening. “… Federal and local law enforcement communicated like the (Peters 2006) says Michael Hennessey, a lieutenant in the school police, in Time magazine. “We were ordered not to notify the Boston Police because it would make the school administration look bad”. In other words, if there were violence occurring within the school, the local law enforcement would have no knowledge of it. How are things going to change if people do not help one another out? Another big problem with communication was between the police and the probation officers of juveniles. Probation officers and police have always had, in the past, very little communication. Kids could break their parole agreements and the police would pick them up while their probation officer sat at their desk from nine to five. Without the proper communication, problems go around in circles and children get bounced ...