JUVENILE JUSTICE

Transfer Policies in Juvenile Justice to Criminal Justice

Juvenile Delinquency

Introduction

Juvenile delinquency refers to the crimes carried out by young people or minors. A criminal is one who relapses and commits crimes repeatedly. Most legal systems consider specific procedures for dealing with this problem, such as juvenile detention centers. There are many different theories about the causes of crime, most if not all of which can be applied to the causes of juvenile crimes. Juvenile crime often receives great attention from the media and politicians. This is because the level and types of juvenile crimes can be used by analysts and the media as an indicator of the general state of morality and public order in a country and as a result, can be a source of alarm and moral panic.

Like most types of offenses, crimes committed by juveniles have increased since the mid-twentieth century. There are many theories about the causes of juvenile crimes, regarded as particularly important within criminology. This is because the number of crimes increases dramatically between fifteen and twenty years. Second, any theory about the causes of crime, juvenile crimes should be considered as adult criminals are likely to have had a beginning in crime when they were young (Thomas, 1984).

Gender Delinquency

This early study seemed to indicate that antisocial behavior is probably influenced by the presence of an antisocial father who either serves as a model for such behavior or provides inadequate supervision, inconsistent discipline, or family conflict. The father's influence on antisocial behaviors in children may be a result of traditional gender role training. Males have traditionally received more encouragement to engage in aggressive behaviors than females have, and antisocial patterns are more prevalent among men than among women. As traditional gender roles change one might reasonably expect that antisocial tendencies will increase among females and that mother will play a greater role in the development of antisocial behaviors in children.

Geographic location

Geographic location is also a very important phenomenon that plays a vital role in juvenile delinquency. The physical environment factors that range from prenatal complications, to food, to secondhand smoke, to availability of weapons, and to environmental toxins are important chunks. Some of these environmental factors have a direct impact on children delinquency. For example, there is a physical environment in which availability of weapons is very common, so, it is obvious that the children will use them and depict antisocial behavior. There are myriad places in United States that are far from the cities, where there is the lower rate of literacy, unawareness, and fixed social attitude. These things incline people to be involved in activities which are termed as anti-social. These things affect the children in the same way as adult (Tobey, 2000).

When a comprehensive history of the United States in the 1970s is written, it will report that in 1974 Congress passed a law designed to persuade the states that 14and 15year-old boys and girls should not be detained in secure institutions that much resemble prisons because they disobey their ...