Why does juveniles commit crime

Issues associated with family can be one of the risk factors. These issues can be economic, social, etc. In Georgia, with the increasing number of immigrants rises the number of minors left without a parent. For grandparents or other caregivers, sometimes it is challenging to pay attention and supervise these children so they do not end up in an unfavorable environment. The causes of committing a crime can be domestic violence, parental indifference and their bad habits, etc.

Often, potential perpetrators are the victims of violence. Individuals may confront violence in a variety of social settings: in family, school, etc. A human being goes through several stages of social development, among which childhood and adolescence are important. Values, patterns of behavior, and motives are forming in childhood age. Further, in adolescence, people try to define their own identity, try to establish themselves, and often the influence of parents is replaced by the influence of peers and friends.

Hence, the reason for juvenile delinquency can become imitation. They can follow the example of:. This mentality is still propagandized within juveniles, where crime is considered as a norm. Some teenagers have chosen a similar path that increasing the risk of committing a crime by them. Poor socio-economic status, indifferent attitude of parents, feelings of inferiority, lack of attention, and many other reasons can lead to various types of psychological issues in children and adolescents.

For example, depression, fears, and complexes, excessive aggression, etc. This can provoke the minor to commit a crime. Because these circumstances can be the deciding factor in breaking the law or not, the court system looks very carefully at the entire situation when reviewing a case involving a minor. Any criminal case involving a minor requires the right type of legal representation. Parents or guardians of an accused minor should seek out a Waukesha criminal attorney that has a dedicated department to juvenile crimes.

An attorney that is familiar with the juvenile justice system will be able to provide the best representation for your child. The juvenile justice system is different than the adult system.

The focus of the courts is to rehabilitate and help the child turn their lives around. However, the court must be made to understand the circumstances of the crime and the life of the accused so that the best decisions can be made about the case. An attorney who works with accused minors on a regular basis understands these requirements and will be able to aggressively represent your child in court.

Securing quality representation from a Waukesha criminal attorney that represents minors will help your child obtain the best possible outcome from their trial. Why juvenile commit crime? What are the Causes of Juvenile Delinquency? Some of the reasons that are most common for a minor to turn to juvenile delinquency include: School Problems School problem is one of the causes of juvenile delinquency.

Economic Problems Lack of food, clothing or a secure place to stay can also lead to criminal activity. Substance Abuse — Home Life When there is a home life that has substance abuse taking place within the home, there is a high risk for criminal activity by the minors in that home. Substance Abuse — Personal When there is substance abuse at home there is a high risk for substance abuse in the minor and is one of the reasons for juvenile delinquency. Physical Abuse At Home When a child or teen is being physically abused at home it is not unusual for them to act out when away from home.

These conclusions about neighborhood. One exception to the general lack of comparisons across neighborhoods in the ethnographic studies of development is Sullivan's systematic comparison of three groups of criminally active youths in different neighborhoods of New York City. Using this comparative approach, he demonstrated close links between the array of legitimate and illegitimate opportunities in each place and the developmental trajectories of boys who became involved in delinquency and crime.

Even though the early stages of involvement were similar in all three areas, youths from the white, working-class area aged out of crime much faster than their black and Hispanic peers living in neighborhoods characterized by racial and ethnic segregation, concentrated poverty, adult joblessness, and single-parent households.

The youths from the more disadvantaged areas had less access to employment and more freedom to experiment with illegal activity as a result of lower levels of informal social control in their immediate neighborhoods Sullivan, If neighborhood effects are defined as the influence of neighborhood environment on individual development net of personal and family characteristics, then the amount of variation left over to be attributed to neighborhood in a given study can vary a great deal according to the data and methods used.

As many researchers note, neighborhood effects may be mediated by personal and family factors see, e. To the extent that this is the case, then neighborhoods affect individual development through their effects on such things as the formation of enduring personal characteristics during early childhood and the family environments in which children grow up.

From this perspective, efforts such as those described earlier to measure neighborhood effects net of personal and family characteristics may substantially underestimate neighborhood effects as a result of artificially separating personal and family characteristics from those neighborhood environments.

Similarly, if the subsets are not separately analyzed, neighborhood effects will be artificially minimized if some, but not all, types of family constellations increase the impact of neighborhood conditions McCord, A number of studies demonstrate neighborhood concentrations of risk factors for impaired physical and mental health and for the development of antisocial behavior patterns.

To date, little research has been able. Nonetheless, existing research does indicate a number of ways in which deleterious conditions for individual development are concentrated at the neighborhood level.

Furthermore, the neighborhoods in which they are concentrated are the same ones that have concentrations of serious youth crime. The risks involved begin for individuals in these areas before birth and continue into adulthood. They include child health problems, parental stress, child abuse, and exposure to community violence. Neighborhoods with high rates of poverty and crime are often also neighborhoods with concentrations of health problems among children.

In New York City, for example, there is a high degree of correlation at the neighborhood level of low birthweight and infant mortality with rates of violent death Wallace and Wallace, Moffitt has pointed to a number of conditions prevalent in inner-city neighborhoods that are capable of inflicting neuropsychological damage, including fetal exposure to toxic chemicals, which are disproportionately stored in such areas, and child malnutrition.

Thus, even to the extent that some neighborhoods have larger proportions of persons with clinically identifiable physical and psychological problems, these problems may themselves be due to neighborhood conditions. Thus it can be difficult to disentangle individual developmental risk factors from neighborhood risk factors. Similarly, some parenting practices that contribute to the development of antisocial and criminal behavior are themselves concentrated in certain areas.

McLloyd has reviewed a wide range of studies documenting the high levels of parental stress experienced by low-income black mothers who, as we have already seen, experience an extremely high degree of residential segregation Massey and Denton, This parental stress may in turn lead, in some cases, to child abuse, which contributes to subsequent delinquent and criminal behavior Widom, Child abuse is also disproportionately concentrated in certain neighborhoods.

Korbin and Coulton's studies of the distribution of child maltreatment in Cleveland neighborhoods have shown both higher rates in poorer neighborhoods and a moderating effect of age structure. Using a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, they showed that neighborhoods with a younger age structure experienced higher rates of child maltreatment, as measured by reported child abuse cases and inter-.

Recent research has begun to demonstrate high levels of exposure to community violence across a wide range of American communities Singer et al. Studies in inner-city neighborhoods have found that one-quarter or more of young people have directly witnessed confrontations involving serious, life-threatening acts of violence, while even larger proportions have witnessed attacks with weapons Bell and Jenkins, ; Osofsky et al. Various outcomes of this kind of exposure to community violence have been identified.

The most commonly cited of these include depressive disorders and posttraumatic stress syndrome, but some links have also been found to increases in aggressive and antisocial behavior Farrell and Bruce, Experimental research has shown a pathway from exposure to violence to states of mind conducive to and associated with aggressive behavior, particularly a pattern of social cognition characterized as hostile attribution bias, in which people erroneously perceive others' behavior as threatening Dodge et al.

Taken together, these studies point to a multitude of physical, psychological, and social stressors concentrated in the same, relatively few, highly disadvantaged neighborhood environments.

Besides affecting people individually, these stressors may combine with and amplify one another, as highly stressed individuals encounter each other in crowded streets, apartment buildings, and public facilities, leading to an exponential increase in triggers for violence Bernard, Agnew , having demonstrated the effects of general psychological strain on criminal behavior in previous research, has recently reviewed a wide range of studies that point to just such an amplification effect at the community level.

Other aspects of the environment that have been examined as factors that may influence the risk of offending include drug markets, availability of guns, and the impact of violence in the media. The presence of illegal drug markets increases the likelihood for violence at the points where drugs are exchanged for money Haller, The rise in violent juvenile crime during the s has been attributed to the increase in drug markets, particularly open-air markets for crack cocaine Blumstein, ; National Research Council, Blumstein points out the coincidence in timing of the rise in drug arrests of.

As mentioned earlier, Blumstein argues that the introduction of open-air crack cocaine markets in about may explain both trends. The low price of crack brought many low-income people, who could afford to buy only one hit at a time, into the cocaine market.

These factors led to an increase in the number of drug transactions and a need for more sellers. Juveniles provided a ready labor force and were recruited into crack markets. Blumstein explains how this led to an increase in handgun carrying by juveniles:. These juveniles, like many other participants in the illicit-drug industry, are likely to carry guns for self-protection, largely because that industry uses guns as an important instrument for dispute resolution.

Also, the participants in the industry are likely to be carrying a considerable amount of valuable product—drugs or money derived from selling drugs—and are not likely to be able to call on the police if someone tries to rob them. Thus, they are forced to provide for their own defense; a gun is a natural instrument.

Since the drug markets are pervasive in many inner-city neighborhoods, and the young people recruited into them are fairly tightly networked with other young people in their neighborhoods, it became easy for the guns to be diffused to other teenagers who go to the same school or who walk the same streets. These other young people are also likely to arm themselves, primarily for their own protection, but also because possession of a weapon may become a means of status-seeking in the community.

This initiates an escalating process: as more guns appear in the community, the incentive for any single individual to arm himself increases. Other researchers concur that juveniles responded to the increased threat of violence in their neighborhoods by arming themselves or joining gangs for self-protection and adopting a more aggressive interpersonal style Anderson, , ; Fagan and Wilkinson, ; Hemenway et al.

The number of juveniles who report carrying guns has increased. In , approximately 6 percent of teenage boys reported carrying a firearm in the 30 days preceding the survey Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, By , Hemenway et al.

Of these, 29 percent of 10th grade males and 23 percent of 7th grade males reported having carried a concealed gun, as did 12 percent of 10th grade females and 8 percent of 7th grade females. The overwhelm-. Moreover, juveniles who reported living in a neighborhood with a lot of shootings or having a family member who had been shot were significantly more likely to carry a gun than other students. Additional student surveys also have found that protection is the most common reason given for carrying a gun e.

By studying trends in homicide rates, several researchers have concluded that the increase in juvenile homicides during the late s and early s resulted from the increase in the availability of guns, in particular handguns, rather than from an increase in violent propensities of youth Blumstein and Cork, ; Cook and Laub, ; Zimring, Certainly, assaults in which guns are involved are more likely to turn deadly than when other weapons or just fists are involved.

The increase in gun use occurred for all types of youth homicides e. Furthermore, the rates of nonhandgun homicides remained stable; only handgun-related homicides increased. Public concern about the role of media in producing misbehavior is as old as concern regarding the socialization of children. Although few believe that the media operate in isolation to influence crime, scientific studies show that children may imitate behavior, whether it is shown in pictures of real people or in cartoons or merely described in stories Bandura, , , ; Maccoby, , Prosocial as well as aggressive antisocial behavior has been inspired through the use of examples Anderson, ; Eisenberg and Mussen, ; Eron and Huesmann, ; Huston and Wright, ; Staub, Thus media models can be seen as potentially influencing either risk or protectiveness of environments.

In addition to modeling behavior, exposure to media violence has been shown to increase fear of victimization and to desensitize witnesses to effects of violence Slaby, ; Wilson et al. Children seem particularly susceptible to such effects, although not all children are equally susceptible.

Violent video games, movies, and music lyrics have also been criticized as inciting violence among young people. Cooper and Mackie found that after playing a violent video game, 4th and 5th graders exhibited more aggression in play than did their classmates who had been randomly assigned to play with a nonviolent video game or to no video game. Anderson and Dill randomly assigned college students to play either a violent or a nonviolent video game that had been matched for interest, frustration, and difficulty.

Students played the same game three times, for a total of 45 minutes, after which they played a competitive game that involved using unpleasant sound blasts against. After the second time, measures of the accessibility of aggressive concepts showed a cognitive effect of playing violent video games. After the third time, those who had played the violent video game gave longer blasts of the unpleasant sound, a result mediated by accessibility of aggression as a cognitive factor. The authors concluded that violent video games have adverse behavioral effects and that these occur through increasing the aggressive outlooks of participants.

None of these studies, however, finds direct connections between media exposure to violence and subsequent serious violent behavior. The images young people are exposed to may provide the material for violent fantasies and may, under rare circumstances, give young people concrete ideas about how to act out these impulses. But the violent impulses themselves, and the motivation to follow through on them, rarely come from watching violent films or violent television or from listening to violent music.

I know of no research that links the sort of serious violence this working group is concerned about with exposure to violent entertainment. Research on the development of conduct disorder, aggression, and delinquency has often been confined to studies of boys.

Many of the individual factors found to be related to delinquency have not been well studied in girls. For example, impulsivity, which has been linked to the development of conduct problems in boys Caspi et al. Behavioral differences between boys and girls have been documented from infancy.

Weinberg and Tronick report that infant girls exhibit better emotional regulation than infant boys, and that infant boys are more likely to show anger than infant girls. This may have implications for the development of conduct problems and delinquency. Although peer-directed aggressive behavior appears to be similar in both girls and boys during toddlerhood Loeber and Hay, , between the ages of 3 and 6, boys begin to display higher rates of physical aggression than do girls Coie and Dodge, Girls tend to use verbal and indirect aggression, such as peer exclusion, ostracism, and character defamation Bjorkqvist et al.

Research by Pepler and Craig , however, found that girls do use physical aggression against peers, but tend to hide it from adults. Through remote audiovisual recordings of children on a play-. Internalizing disorders, such as anxiety and depression, are more frequent in girls and may well overlap with their conduct problems Loeber and Keenan, ; McCord and Ensminger, Theoreticians have suggested that adolescent females may direct rage and hurt inward as a reaction to abuse and maltreatment.

These inward-directed feelings may manifest themselves in conduct problems, such as drug abuse, prostitution, and other self-destructive behaviors Belknap, Whether or not the rate of conduct problems and conduct disorder in girls is lower than that in boys remains to be definitively proven. Girls who do exhibit aggressive behavior or conduct disorder exhibit as much stability in that behavior and are as much at risk for later problems as are boys. Tremblay et al. Boys and girls with conduct disorder are also equally likely to qualify for later antisocial personality disorder Zoccolillo et al.

Delinquency in girls, as well as boys, is often preceded by some form of childhood victimization Maxfield and Widom, ; Smith and Thornberry, ; Widom, Some have speculated that one of the first steps in female delinquency is status offending truancy, running away from home, being incorrigible , frequently in response to abusive situations in the home Chesney-Lind and Shelden, Indeed, Chesney-Lind has written that status offenses, including running away, may play an important role in female delinquency.

In one community-based longitudinal study, however, a larger proportion of boys than of girls had left home prior to their sixteenth birthday McCord and Ensminger, In a long-term follow-up of a sample of documented cases of childhood abuse and neglect, Kaufman and Widom reported preliminary results indicating that males and females are equally likely to run away from home, and that childhood sexual abuse was not more often associated with running away than other forms of abuse or neglect.

However, the motivation for running away may differ for males and females. For example, females may be running away to escape physical or sexual abuse or neglect in their homes. For boys, running away may be an indirect consequence of childhood victimization or may be part of a larger constellation of antisocial and problem behaviors Luntz and Widom, From the small amount of research that has been done on girls, it appears that they share many risk factors for delinquency with boys.

These risk factors include early drug use Covington, , association with delinquent peers Acoca and Dedel, , and problems in school Bergsmann, McCord and Ensminger found, however, that, on average, girls were exposed to fewer risk factors e. Delinquent girls report experiencing serious mental health problems, including depression and anxiety, and suicidal thoughts.

In a study of delinquent girls conducted by Bergsmann , fully half said that they had considered suicide, and some 64 percent of these had thought about it more than once. In a survey of mental disorders in juvenile justice facilities, Timmons-Mitchell and colleagues compared the prevalence of disorders among a sample of males and females and found that the estimated prevalence of mental disorders among females was over three times that among males 84 versus 27 percent.

The females in the sample scored significantly higher than males on scales of the Milton Adolescent Clinical Inventory, which measure suicidal tendency, substance abuse proneness, impulsivity, family dysfunction, childhood abuse, and delinquent predisposition.

Timmons-Mitchell et al. Teen motherhood and pregnancy are also concerns among female juvenile offenders. Female delinquents become sexually active at an earlier age than females who are not delinquent Greene, Peters and Associates, Sexual activity at an early age sets girls up for a host of problems, including disease and teenage pregnancy, that have far-reaching impacts on their lives and health.

Teen mothers face nearly insurmountable challenges that undermine their ability to take adequate care of themselves and their families. Dropping out of school, welfare dependence, and living in poor communities are only a few of the consequences of teen motherhood. And the effects are not limited to one generation. Teen mothers are more likely than women who have children in their early 20s to have children who are incarcerated as adults Grogger, ; Nagin et al. Although a large proportion of adolescents gets arrested and an even larger proportion commits illegal acts, only a small proportion commits.

Furthermore, most of those who engage in illegal behavior as adolescents do not become adult criminals. Risk factors at the individual, social, and community level most likely interact in complex ways to promote antisocial and delinquent behavior in juveniles. Although there is some research evidence that different risk factors are more salient at different stages of child and adolescent development, it remains unclear which particular risk factors alone, or in combination, are most important to delinquency.

It appears, however, that the more risk factors that are present, the higher the likelihood of delinquency. Particular risk factors considered by the panel are poor parenting practices, school practices that may contribute to school failure, and community-wide settings. Poor parenting practices are important risk factors for delinquency.

Several aspects of parenting have been found to be related to delinquency:. School failure is related to delinquency, and some widely used school practices are associated with school failure in high-risk children.

These practices include tracking and grade retention, as well as suspension and expulsion. Minorities are disproportionately affected by these educational and social practices in schools.

Both serious crime and developmental risk factors for children and adolescents are highly concentrated in some communities. These communities are characterized by concentrated poverty.

Residents of these communities often do not have access to the level of public resources available in the wider society, including good schools, supervised activities, and health services. Individual-level risk factors are also concentrated in these communities, including health problems, parental stress, and exposure to family and community violence. The combination of concentrated poverty and residential segregation suffered by ethnic minorities in some places contributes to high rates of crime.

Although risk factors can identify groups of adolescents whose probabilities for committing serious crimes are greater than average, they are not capable of identifying the particular individuals who will become criminals. Delinquency is associated with poor school performance, truancy, and leaving school at a young age. Some pedagogical practices may exacerbate these problems. The available research on grade retention and tracking and the disciplinary practices of suspension and expulsion reveal that such policies have more negative than positive effects.

For students already experiencing academic difficulty, tracking and grade retention have been found to further impair their academic performance. Furthermore, tracking does not appear to improve the academic performance of students in high tracks compared with similar students in schools that do not use tracking.

Suspension and expulsion deny education in the name of discipline, yet these practices have not been shown to be effective in reducing school misbehavior. Little is known about the effects of these policies on other students in the school. Given the fact that the policies disproportionately affect minorities, such policies may unintentionally reinforce negative stereotypes. Recommendation: Federal programs should be developed to promote alternatives to grade retention and tracking in schools.

Given that school failure has been found to be a precursor to delinquency, not enough research to date has specifically examined school policies, such as tracking, grade retention, suspension, and expulsion in terms of their effects on delinquent behavior in general. It is important that evaluations of school practices and policies consider their effects on aggressive and antisocial behavior, incuding delinquency.

This type of research is particularly salient given the concern over school violence. Research on tracking should examine the effects on children and adolescents in all tracks, not only on those in low tracks.

Recommendation: A thorough review of the effects of school policies and pedagogical practices, such as grade retention, tracking, suspension, and expulsion, should be undertaken.

This review should include the effects of such policies on delinquency, as well as the effects on educational attainment and school atmosphere and environment. Prenatal exposure to alcohol, cocaine, heroin, and nicotine is associated with hyperactivity, attention deficit, and impulsiveness, which are risk factors for later antisocial behavior and delinquency.

Biological insults suffered during the prenatal period may have some devastating effects on development. Consequently, preventive efforts during the pre-. Reducing alcohol and drug abuse among expectant parents may also improve their ability to parent, thus reducing family-related risk factors for delinquency.

Recommendation: Federal, state, and local governments should act to provide treatment for drug abuse including alcohol and tobacco use among pregnant women, particularly, adolescents.

Most longitudinal studies of delinquent behavior have begun after children enter school. Yet earlier development appears to contribute to problems that become apparent during the early school years. Much remains to be known about the extent to which potential problems can be identified at an early age.

Recommendation: Prospective longitudinal studies should be used to increase the understanding of the role of factors in prenatal, perinatal, and early infant development on mechanisms that increase the likelihood of healthy development, as well as the development of antisocial behavior.

Research has shown that the greater the number of risk factors that are present, the higher the likelihood of delinquency. It is not clear, however, whether some risk factors or combinations of risk factors are more important than other risk factors or combinations in the development of delinquency. Furthermore, the timing, severity, and duration of risk factors, in interaction with the age, gender, and the environment in which the individual lives undoubtedly affect the behavioral outcomes.

A better understanding of how risk factors interact is important for the development of prevention efforts, especially efforts in communities in which risk factors are concentrated. Recommendation: Research on risk factors for delinquency needs to focus on effects of interactions among various risk factors.

In particular, research on effects of differences in neighborhoods and their interactions with individual and family conditions should be expanded. The panel recommends the following areas as needing particular research attention to increase understanding of the development of delinquency:. Research on the development of language skills and the impact of delayed or poor language skills on the development of aggressive and antisocial behavior, including delinquency;.

Research on children's and adolescents' access to guns, in particular handguns, and whether that access influences attitudes toward or fear of crime;. Research on ways to increase children's and adolescents' protective factors; and. Research on the development of physical aggression regulation in early childhood. Research on delinquency has traditionally focused on boys. Although boys are more likely to be arrested than girls, the rate of increase in arrest and incarceration has been much larger in recent years for girls than boys, and the seriousness of the crimes committed by girls has increased.

Recommendation: The Department of Justice should develop and fund a systematic research program on female juvenile offending. At a minimum, this program should include:. Research on etiology, life course, and societal consequences of female juvenile offending;.

In Sweden, imprisonment may only be imposed on juveniles under exceptional circumstances, and even then, the sentences imposed are shorter than for adults. The United States has a very high overall rate of incarceration.

At per ,, the U. Although adequate juvenile incarceration figures do not exist in the United States, the incarceration rate for homicides committed by juveniles is illustrative of the difference in incarceration rates. In , Comparable numbers in other countries are 2.

Some of the differences in juvenile homicide incarceration rates are likely to be due to differences in homicide commission rates. In none of the 15 countries surveyed by Weitekamp et al.

The Panel on Juvenile Crime: Prevention, Treatment, and Control was asked to identify and analyze the full range of research studies and datasets that bear on the nature of juvenile crime, highlighting key issues and data sources that can provide evidence of prevalence and seriousness; race, gender, and class bias; and impacts of deterrence, punishment, and prevention strategies. The panel was further asked to analyze the factors that contribute to delinquent behavior, including a review of the knowledge on child and adolescent development and its implications for prevention and control; to assess the current practices of the juvenile justice system, including the implementation of constitutional safeguards; to examine adjudication, detention and waiver practices; to explore the role of community and institutional settings; to assess the quality of data sources on the clients of both public and private juvenile justice facilities; and to assess the impact of the deinstitutionalization mandates of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of on delinquency and community safety.

To meet this charge, the study panel and staff gathered information in a number of ways. Relevant research studies were identified through. The panel met six times between June and October to discuss data availability and research findings, identify critical issues, analyze the data and issues, seek additional information on specific concerns, formulate conclusions and recommendations, and develop this report.

Four of these meetings were preceded by workshops at which experts presented information on selected topics and engaged in discussions with panel members. Workshops were held on education and delinquency, juvenile justice system issues, developmental issues relevant to delinquency, and racial disparity in the juvenile justice system.

See Appendix E for workshop agendas. In addition to the workshops, Howard Snyder, research director of the National Center for Juvenile Justice, spent part of one meeting discussing relevant datasets with the panel members. Several members of the panel made site visits to juvenile detention and correctional facilities in Texas and New York.

Study panel members and staff also consulted informally with various experts between meetings. The charge to the panel was extremely broad, covering many topics that merit books unto themselves, and indeed some of the areas have been the subject of more than one recent book. The panel chose to provide a broad overview of juvenile crime and the juvenile justice system, touching on all the topics in its charge, but going into various levels of depth depending on the amount and quality of data available.

In organizing its plan for the study, the panel focused on answering several questions:. What have been the major trends in juvenile crime over the past 20 to 30 years, and what can be predicted about future trends? What is the role of developmental factors in delinquent behavior and how do families, peers, communities, and social influences contribute to or inhibit that behavior?

What responses are in place to deal with juvenile crime today, are they developmentally appropriate, and do they work? This report reviews the data and research available to answer these questions, suggests areas that require additional research, and makes recommendations about policies for dealing with child and adolescent offenders.

The terms juvenile and delinquency or delinquent have specific legal meanings in state and federal law. In this report, however, the panel uses the term juvenile 3 in its general sense, referring to anyone under the age of 18, unless otherwise specified.

The terms young person, youngster, youth, and child and adolescent are used synonymously with juvenile. For many of the analyses of crime trends in Chapter 2 , juvenile refers to those between the ages of 10 and 17, because those under the age of 10 are seldom arrested.

We use the term adolescent to refer specifically to young people between the ages of 13 and The term delinquency 4 in this report refers to acts by a juvenile that would be considered a crime if committed by an adult, as well as to actions that are illegal only because of the age of the offender.

The report uses the term criminal delinquency to refer specifically to the former and status delinquency to refer specifically to the latter. Criminal delinquency offenses include, for example, homicide, robbery, assault, burglary, and theft. The term juvenile crime is used synonymously with criminal delinquency.

Status delinquency offenses include truancy, running away from home, incorrigibility i. In some states, status delinquents are referred to the child welfare or social service systems, while in others status delinquents are dealt with in the juvenile justice system. Following this introduction, Chapter 2 discusses the datasets commonly used to measure juvenile crime rates, examining the relative strengths and weaknesses of each.

The chapter then discusses the trends in juvenile crime rates over the past several decades and how trends differ depending on the dataset employed. Differences in crime rates and. In the context of crime, juveniles are defined as those under a specified age, which differs from state to state, who are not subject to criminal sanctions when they commit behavior that would be considered criminal for someone over that age. Depending on the state, the age at which a young person is considered a juvenile may end at 15, 16, or This makes the legal use of the term juvenile difficult when discussing multiple jurisdictions.

The use of the term delinquency differs from state to state. In some states it refers only to offenses that would be criminal if committed by an adult; in others it also includes status offenses. The chapter ends with a discussion of forecasting juvenile crime rates.

Chapter 3 examines factors related to the development of antisocial behavior and delinquency. Several other recent reports Loeber et al. In this report we have attempted to supplement these other reports rather than duplicate their literature reviews. In addition, this report does not confine its discussion to serious, violent offending. Chapters 4 and 5 cover responses to the problem of youth crime.