Criminology is the scientific study of crime and deviant behaviors (Jones 2021). It studies the root causes of crime how to prevent and correct them from many diverse disciplines. The disciplines include biology, anthropology, psychology and psychiatry, sociology, statistics, and economics. The different fields give a better viewpoint and enable people to understand crime in diverse ways. The main goal of criminology is not to identify criminal behaviors and lock them up while passing judgments after a crime have been done. The aim is to identify illegal or deviant behaviors and develop humane and effective ways to address the issue. Criminologists, just like psychiatrists, try to understand the bad behavior and find ways of redeeming the person.
The interest of criminologists is to study and understand the crime, the etiology of crime, how people react to crime when it has happened or when they hear about crime. Criminologists also study the criminal law and law enforcement agencies and how they operate when making and passing laws. People react differently when they hear about crimes or when something that the society uncouth has been done. Some may decide to take matters into their own hands and punish the person for the behavior, and others may call law enforcement officers. How people react in times of crime is another aspect studied by criminologists understanding human behavior when it comes to crime (Ilan 2019). The article, therefore, will focus on crime prevention and juvenile delinquency and how to support programs on crime prevention.
To understand crime, the root causes of crime must be looked at, starting with children. Children under 18 who commit crimes are known as juvenile delinquents. The act of committing a crime at a young age is known as juvenile delinquency. Preventing crime, thus, starts by teaching the children what is right and wrong, being role models to them, and trying to understand them, so they do not get to become rebels. What the children see when growing up is what they consider suitable, and they follow it later. Therefore, crime prevention starts with children as they grow up doing what they think is right or solace to them at a young age.
There are many causes of juvenile delinquency, the first one being broken homes. Family plays a vital role in shaping children’s behavior and priming their personalities. Children from a very young age need a lot of love and attention. In the Maslow hierarchy of needs, the feeling of being loved, appreciated, and needed is an affiliate need and a fundamental need to every individual. These feelings are essential for the development of children, especially teenagers, as they tend to need more attention during puberty. When children fail to get this, they end up going to find solace among their peers. Teenagers pick up morals and ethical values from their family members and parents, not offered in broken homes.
During puberty, the children tend to be very experimental. With the lack of love and attention back home, they find solace and comfort with their peers, where they feel more valuable than at home, where the parents are always quarreling. The child feels happy when they are with their peers, and they deem worthy and appreciated in their peer group. Tending to be very adventurous during this stage, they tend to look for something thrilling, which is when they go for adventurous and risky plots. The dangerous schemes may begin by bullying other students as they release their anger and get satisfaction by seeing others sad as they are. They break into the classrooms and offices for the thrill, which gets to be bigger crimes. Broken families are, therefore, one of the biggest causes of juvenile delinquencies.
Lack of finances is another cause of juvenile delinquencies. Lack of finances may be a motivating factor for teens to become delinquents to improve their financial conditions. When young adults fail to get money to acquire their needs, they may follow the wrong direction to get the cash to get the things they need. Sometimes this may be due to a lack of money at home where the parents or guardians cannot meet the needs of the child. When they cannot afford the lifestyle they want, they turn to other things to get the money they need to finance their needs. In the 21st century, technology has been seen as one of the major causes of crimes among youth. It is majorly because of what is aired, and the children pick them thinking it is a good thing and probably excellent, leading them to go deep into early crime (Anjaswarni et al.,2019).
Lack of social and moral training may lead teens to be juvenile delinquents. As said in the earlier paragraphs, the family is the primary trainer of children’s moral and social training. Parents should take the lead in teaching the children what is right and wrong. When the parents are there but are not present to the child, they may become delinquent as there is nobody to hold their hands and show them the way. Some parents are often too busy with work till they forget about their children, they may be physically present, but they are not emotional there to support their children. Male children need motherly affection and the father’s guidance as somebody to look up to. The children need a father figure to look up to as a role model and guide them through life, and it is the same way girls need their mothers for direction too and their fathers for the role model.
Finally, lack of communication in families is another cause of juvenile delinquencies. When parents fail to communicate with their children, they go to other places to find solace among their peers or other families. Parents who often travel from one place to another and leave kids with nannies are a significant percentage of emotionally unavailable parents. The parents may be helping the children financially, but the children need a boost of self-esteem and self-confidence. Even when it does not look like it, the presence of parents alone is not enough for the children. Through the family gatherings, the child can talk and express themselves, building their confidence and feeling valued when their opinions are appreciated. In homes where this is not done, the child does other things to boost their confidence and self-esteem. They end up taking part in delinquent activities to feel powerful and confident. All this still goes back to the family being available to support their child through the growth process (Mwangangi 2019).
With every problem, there is always a solution. To prevent the prevalence of crime now and in the future, things have to be done differently and better. As mentioned in the earlier paragraphs, the root causes of juvenile deliquescence have been mentioned, and solutions have to be found. It all begins from the upbringing of the children in the society and how they can distinguish right from wrong. The upbringing of a child is the parents’ responsibility and society as a whole. The children see what other people are doing, copying it from there. It is the role of society to see something that is not appropriate and point it out and not just pass judgments. Prevention is better than cure. If we can intervene and prevent criminal activities in the future, then it has to be done now.
According to Jackson et al., 2020, society has its way of dealing with deviant behaviors and correcting them, which are very harsh. They do not look at the causes of the behavior and try to fix them the best way they know how to. There are several ways that society put in place to correct these behaviors, including punishment, rehabilitation, retribution, and incapacitation, imprisoning them. The community often decides to punish the law offender by stoning them to death without listening or another chance to redeem themselves. That is the idea of taking the law into their own hands and doing whatever seems right to them. Retribution which is the idea of an eye for an eye is also encouraged by society. Rehabilitation is the better way that society does to the juvenile deviants where they go to rehabilitation centers to reverse and change the behaviors.
Before these crimes occur, why not do something to prevent them from happening. Prevent the children from learning the behaviors that will make the crime and drug lords in the future. Before all these things come back to eat society, they are not able to do anything about it. When they have to wait to punish the behavior after their occurrence, the idea of preventing them from happening should be the first consideration. Poverty is the key contributor to youth crime, as most crimes are often spearheaded towards getting money. Now that the problem is in the open, all we need is a solution for it, a prevention strategy to solve the issues.
With the problems known to us, preventive measures have to be taken and not the punishment after the problem has occurred. That is why youth developmental programs were invented to prevent the problems before they occurred. Youth developmental programs are plans set aside to facilitate skills opportunities for national societies to achieve a more focused and initiative and responsive youth program by backing up relevant organizations of the member society. The youth organizations aim to support youth in many ways, be it financial, emotional support, or skills. The program supports the child as it paves the way for intervention against criminal activities in the future (Delcea et al., 2019).
The main aim of the youth development program is to promote positive development for young teenagers while preventing deviant behaviors in society. The program helps navigate adolescence in healthy ways and prepare them for the future. Young people are taught skills that are necessary for their everyday lives. These skills could enable them to do things and earn their own money; therefore, they do not have to engage in deviant behaviors. Other than skill acquisition, the youths are also talked to and motivated; consequently, they know about crimes and everything about society. Children need to express themselves, be heard, and listen to build their confidence and self-esteem. The program offers a platform where they can be heard and listened to, boosting their confidence.
According to Thulin et al., 2022, the youth programs also aim at educating society on how to deal with teenagers. The art of paying attention to them and the significance of doing this. When the community learns this, they understand their kids and do not wait to do something wrong then punish it. Society as a whole is educated, and they can prevent crimes. More job opportunities are created for the youth who can do part-time or during the holidays to earn extra cash. Parents get to be more free and communicate with their children to bring out the best in them. They learn the art of communication and get to hear their children’s opinions, which boosts a child’s confidence. The youth programs are, therefore, are very important in preventing deviant behaviors in society.
In conclusion, they need to be funded to enable these support programs to work efficiently. The program needs to employ people to teach the young people the required skills; therefore, funds are needed. When the youths go for camps and meetings, there needs to be food, and officiators and people run the program. Money is necessary for running these programs and officiating them. Parents should motivate their children to attend the talks and programs for youth to enable their growth. The parents themselves should also participate in the activities aimed towards educating them on what to do as that is a way of supporting the development of the programs. Finally, people should volunteer to teach the children what they need to know (Mikytuck et al.,2019).
References
Anjaswarni, T., Nursalam, N., Widati, S., & Yusuf, A. (2019). Analysis of the Risk Factors Related to the Occurrence of Juvenile Delinquency Behavior. Jurnal Ners, 14(2).
Delcea, C., Fabian, A. M., Radu, C. C., & Dumbravă, D. P. (2019). Juvenile delinquency within the forensic context. Rom J Leg Med27 (4), 366-372.
Ilan, J. (2019). Cultural criminology: The time is now. Critical Criminology, 27(1), 5-20.
Mikytuck, A., Woolard, J. L., & Umpierre, M. (2019). Improving engagement, empowerment, and support in juvenile corrections through research. Translational Issues in Psychological Science, 5(2), 182.
Mwangangi, R. K. (2019). The role of family in dealing with juvenile delinquency. Open Journal of Social Sciences, 7(3), 52-63.
Thulin, E. J., Lee, D. B., Eisman, A. B., Reischl, T. M., Hutchison, P., Franzen, S., & Zimmerman, M. A. (2022). Longitudinal effects of Youth Empowerment Solutions: preventing youth aggression and increasing prosocial behavior. American journal of community psychology.
Jackson, J. C., Gelfand, M., & Ember, C. R. (2020). A global analysis of cultural tightness in non-industrial societies. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 287(1930), 20201036.
Jones, S. (2021). Criminology. Oxford University Press.
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