Juvenile Delinquency Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Juvenile Delinquency - Essay Example These offenses range from status offenses like smoking while young, to property and violent crimes. The high percentage of juvenile offenses is a major concern of the society because, the behavior the youths develop in their adolescence affects their adult life if not corrected in advance. The research work that follows will look at some of the causes of juvenile delinquency, prevention methods, and the history of juvenile justice, that is, the handling of juvenile offenses during the early history days and at present, the statistics of juvenile justice in different countries, and the importance of the study. The History of Juvenile Justice For years, law has successfully defined juvenile and adult offenders by drawing a line at different places as well as different reasons. Juvenile crime policy history through the 20th century is a narration of how the conception of young offenders has been transformed by law. Before the juvenile court era, by the end of 20th century, young offende rs were tried and punished in the same way as adults were. Although the law was greatly influenced by common law of England, different countries had different methods of handling juvenile delinquency cases in the early history days. In Greece and Rome, age made no difference on criminal responsibility (Binder, Geis and Bruce, 2001). The young people accused to law breaking received the same treatment as the adults. According to the Roman law, the Twelve Tables, law breaking of underage children and adults got the same treatment, that is, the treatment given to the adults applied to children (Binder, Geis and Bruce, 2001). In the criminal justice system, juvenile offenders got treated the same way as adults, although they differed in the punishment given. The Roman law considered only the children under the age of seven years to be exempted form criminal liability, but girls from 12 years and boys from 14 years were as adults in regard to crimes. Those in between received judgment ac cording to their capability of distinguishing between right and wrong (Binder, Geis and Bruce, 2001). The English Common Law took judgment of juvenile cases like those of Greece and Rome. Although their law termed children as responsible for any crime right from birth, few children under the age of 7 years faced legal penalties for their crimes (Binder, Geis and Bruce, 2001). The rising crimes in early days of history in the United States led to the formation of institutions to treat the wayward youths who developed anti-social behaviors due to social changes in Europe (Krisberg, 2005). The changes affected almost all the fields of life for the people of Europe, for example, increased population due to urbanization led to increased fees paid by farmers who worked on the farms. The living standard of the farmers dropped leading them to migrate to towns and cities to look for means of survival (Krisberg, 2005). This immigration of these farmers into towns caused an increase in crimes that brought unrest in the towns. To control the effects of this immigration, the town leaders enacted laws to prevent immigration and also invented other laws like the ‘Poor Laws’ as it was their name, to prevent the migrants from obtaining citizenship. Although they tried to discourage migration to