Juvenile Delinquency Social Sciences Research Paper

Juvenile Delinquency
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Executive Summary
Juvenile delinquency refers to the conviction of persons under the age of 18 for the crimes they have committed. The number of juvenile convictions has been increasing in the past decade, and the rate at which these individuals are being arrested is almost at par with that of adults. Consequently, a number of deterrent programs to help curb the problem have been developed, some in the 1990s and others in recent times. Most of the currently available deterrent programs lack the element of prosocial skills and are confrontational in nature. DARE is a program aimed at deterring participants from abusing substances such as alcohol, bang, and other hard drugs. The program has been criticized for its lack of a positive impact on participants. The other program used is Scared Straight that involves organized visits to correctional institutions by juveniles who have been engaging in crimes with the hope that they will get scared of committing crimes in the future after seeing what life in prison is like. Nevertheless, these programs are administered when children have already committed several crimes or incarcerated severally, making them ineffective in deterring individuals from committing crimes. In the current report, I recommend a family-based policy/program that involves the adoption of practices that prevent a child from committing crimes in the future. It involves taking care of the physical health of the mother and child during pregnancy to ensure the child is born physically, emotionally, and cognitively normal, boosting their social skills. The policy also involves the promotion of the best parenting styles.
Juvenile Delinquency
Introduction
Juvenile delinquency is the habitual committing of criminal offenses by young people, particularly ones under the age of 18 years in the United States. The common perception among the members of the society is that the crimes committed by individuals in this age bracket hurt the society and children themselves. The issue of juvenile delinquency has long been considered a huge problem in various countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, and most of other developed countries across the world. According to the findings of a study conducted by Snyder et al. (2012), more than 1,642,646 individuals under the age of 18 years were arrested in 2010 only. Since then, the cases of juvenile delinquency have been gradually increasing and accounts for approximately 9% of all apprehensions in the US (Puzzanchera and Kang, 2017). In addition, the high rate of arrests among children aged between 10 and 17 is another disturbing fact regarding juvenile delinquency. For instance, in 2014, about 3000 out of 100,000 children aged between 10 and 17 were arrested, a number slightly lower than 4,151 out 100,000 adults arrested during the same period (Puzzanchera & Kang, 2017). Notably, the early years of an individual play a crucial role in shaping the rest of their life. Moffitt (2017) and Zara and Farrington (2016) suggest that juvenile delinquency results in chronic offending behavior extended into adulthood. After being ensnared in the justice system, a significant number of children and teenagers continue living a miserable life characterized by inadequate prosocial skills, school dropout, and lack of employment skills, which are all crucial for living a crime-free life. Annually, about 44% of the 630,000 convicts released from state and federal prisons are rearrested during their first release (Carson, 2018). Another study by Alper, Durose, and Joshua (2018) states that more than 80% of these inmates are more likely to be rearrested within the decade of their release. Thus, it is evident that chronic criminals with a high number of convictions have a high likelihood of having behavioral problems during their juvenile age (Alper, Durose, and Joshua, 2018). In this report, I provide a comprehensive analysis of some of the programs used to reduce the rate of crimes among juveniles and provide recommendations of the most effective interventions in addressing juvenile delinquency.
Current Deterrent Programs
In the 1980s and 1990s, several policies aimed at reducing cases of juvenile delinquency through discipline and education were formulated. Nevertheless, there is adequate evidence that most of the programs launched during this time, including Scared Straight, Boot Camps, and Drug Resistance Abuse Resistance Education (DARE), are not effective in deterring children from deviant behavior and sometimes are even harmful. Some of the reasons why these programs are ineffective include their inadequate rehabilitative elements such as prosocial skills training and confrontational nature (Klenowski, Bell, & Dodson, 2010).
Insights obtained from the analyzed articles indicate that DARE is ineffective in the prevention of drug use among juveniles and suggests that individuals graduating from the program are not distinguishable from non-participants (West and O’Neal, 2004). Other scholars state DARE is not effective in combating alcohol and drug use problem among juveniles and has less long-term impact. The program has also been criticized for its role in increasing drug abuse among the enrollees. Research indicates that instead of the program reducing the number of individuals using drugs, it results in an increase in the percentage of persons abusing more drugs. The study conducted by Rosenbaum and Hanson (1998) indicated that suburb individuals who enrolled in the DARE program were more likely to abuse substances compared to non-participants. The fact that various studies confirm the association between an increase in drug abuse among enrollees and DARE program reveals its ineffectiveness in dealing with drug abuse problem among teenagers. There is also enough evidence suggesting that individuals participating in the DARE program do not show any improvement in gaining knowledge concerning drug abuse (Ahmed et al., 2002). This research indicates that people participating in the DARE program do not show positive attitudes towards substance abuse in the long term (Ahmed et al., 2002). They emphasize that although it could have short-term benefits on participants, the impact on substance abuse behaviors is minimal, and when present, it is usually small in size and disappears quickly.
Another ineffective program for rectifying juvenile behavior is the Scared Straight procedure, a policy introduced to discourage individuals from committing crimes in the future. The program is designed in a way that allows participants to visit convicts and witness life of imprisonment. Scared Straight programs have been implemented in different countries across the world. The main aim of the program is to scare juveniles by letting them witness what prison life is like with the hope of deterring them from committing criminal offenses in the future. The program emphasizes the severity of the punishment of committing crimes. Petrosino et al. (2002) conducted a study to investigate the effects of the Scared Straight program on juveniles who have been convicted or adjudicated by juvenile court and individuals in trouble but have not been officially adjudged as delinquents. They performed a meta-analysis study and reviewed nine scholarly articles that contained studies on the impact of programs involving juveniles visiting penal institutions. The findings of the study indicated that the Scared Straight program was not only ineffective but could be more harmful. In another study by Lilienefeld (2005), Scared Straight interventions were found to impact participants negatively. In addition, Aos et al. (2001) revealed that Scared Straight resulted in a significant increase in recidivism. Thus, there is enough evidence that Scared Straight and other similar interventions are ineffective in reducing criminal acts among juveniles. As various studies suggest, these interventions are not beneficial, and instead of deterring criminal acts, they could increase the rate of crime among children. These interventions rely on the deterrence-based approach that does not take into account the driving mechanisms of deterrence, such as negative stimuli following a behavior or certainty of receiving a punishment and swiftness of punishment. These criminal policies are usually based on intuition instead of scientific evidence. To create an effective criminal policy, forming a relationship between researchers and policymakers is crucial. Therefore, it is apparent that DARE and Scared Straight programs are ineffective in preventing juvenile delinquency. In addition, most of the school-based programs have drawbacks associated with insufficient resources ...