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Juvenile Delinquency & Prevention

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A child's social, community, and environmental relations are thought to exert a powerful influence on their involvement in delinquent activities. Kids who fail at home, at school, and in the neighborhood are considered prone to sustaining delinquent careers over the life course. Research indicates that chronic, persistent offenders are the ones most likely to experience educational failure, poor home life, substance abuse, and unsatisfactory peer relations.

Social, community, and environmental relations can also have a positive influence and shield or insulate at-risk children from involvement in a delinquent lifestyle. Consequently, many delinquency prevention efforts focus on improving family relations, supporting educational achievement, and utilizing community resources. If the family is believed to be the cause of delinquency, family counseling and therapy may be used to prevent it. Similarly, gang control efforts have been made to counteract the influence of peer group pressure toward delinquency.

QUESTIONS:

1. Since there are so many factors that can influence a juvenile's behavior, what can you do to prevent delinquency?

2. Consider all of the factors in this unit that influence delinquency: gender, family, peers, and schools. If you were responsible for juvenile prevention in your hometown, where would you start?

3. Come up with a proposal to present to the mayor of your town on how to prevent juvenile delinquency. Be sure to support your ideas with references from the book and other sources.

Thank you.

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Solution Summary

This is in reference to the scenario. Since there are so many factors that can influence a juvenile's behavior, this solution discusses what can be done to prevent delinquency. It also examines where to begin in creating a juvenile prevention program and what to include in a proposal to the major of a town including: gender, family, peers, and schools. Supplemented with an article on Juvenile Justice and references are also provided.

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Please see response attached for best formatting and active links (which is also presented below), including one supporting article.

RESPONSE:

1. Since there are so many factors that can influence a juvenile's behavior, what can you do to prevent delinquency? Consider all of the factors in this unit that influence delinquency: gender, family, peers, and schools. If you were responsible for juvenile prevention in your hometown, where would you start? Come up with a proposal to present to the mayor of your town on how to prevent juvenile delinquency. Be sure to support your ideas with references from the book and other sources.

Response:

Often, the first place to start is with a comprehensive community assessment to determine the factors that are prevalent in your community. For example, gangs may be a factor in some communities, but not in yours; likewise, your youth may have an extensive drug and alcohol problem as a risk factor that will therefore need to be part of the solution (e.g. prevention program). In other words, offering the right help at the right time. If gangs are not a problem, your focus will not be on gangs as a main risk factor, when your community does not have any gang's related delinquency. It might be part of a comprehensive prevention campaign (brief education component), but would have less time and resources allotted to this risk factor, than let's say a drug and alcohol prevention component if your needs assessment (e.g., interviewing, focus groups, or questionnaire data, or in combination from teachers, parents, community members, etc.) found to be highly prevalent in your community (see http://www.ncjrs.gov/jjdp.htm).

Often, school in a safe place to introduce prevention programs (e.g., education through speakers, etc) to educate and discuss risk factors that are linked to juvenile delinquency in your community. Youth, teacher, parent and community involvement is essential. Welcome groups where everyone's opinion is welcome encourages problem ownership, which is very important to get people on board to help address the problem through prevention measures. In other words, intervention at the action level is also important. Getting kids interested in sports, future oriented as the career options, community involvement is also imperative, to give them a sense of belonging and ...

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