Juveniles and Crime

Juveniles and Crimes Brandi Haney CJS/200 Sean Wallace March 3, 2013 Juveniles and Crimes Information Juveniles commit a lot of crimes and much of it is because of influences and or surrounded lifestyles. Majority of the crimes committed by juveniles are violent crimes but the main ones involve drug abuse and simple assault. Juveniles account for 17 percent of all arrest according to the FBI and 15 percent of those arrest were due to violent crimes. ( Juvenile Crime, 2001 2003)Overall the crimes rates have decreased, but the females who were under 18 and minorities had higher crime rats than men did and they were the contributing factor to the majority of the arrest. In 2001 there was an increase in drug abuse violations. Increase of violations would mean an increase arrest rate and also no decrease in the crime rate. It would only add to it. The all time high for simple assault was in 2001 and females made up 28 percent of all juvenile arrest. Males were only 8 percent of the overal l juvenile arrest.The juvenile arrest that happened involved primarily white youth. The y accounted many Hispanics as white youth as well. JUVENILE AND ADULTS COURTS Juveniles Court Juveniles courts vary majorly from adults courts. Juveniles process is as listed; detention hearing then fact finding hearing, after that they have the petition and respondent and next they have the adjudication and finally the involved/ delinquent. The juveniles usually and generally will not get a jury. Their court hearings are closed off to the public for the convenience of their privacy and mainly due to their age.Bails are generally not allowed nor set for juveniles/minors. For minors to get out of jail before their entire process is over they must prove to the judge that they are not a flight risk and that they are not a danger or threat to society and their community. When juveniles commit smaller mes a lot of the time they are punished worse than an adult would be for the exact same crime/offense . When a juvenile is punished by probation they are usually put on probation for a longer period than an adult would be.The stipulations to their probation would be a longer list as well. For example they would have to follow a curfew and they would have to respect their parents, and keep their grades up, attend one or more extra curricular activity, and they would have to possibly attend counseling. If they were to break these stipulations than they would have to report to their judge once again and possibly have their probation sentence lengthened or they would get what they call a probation violation and have to just serve their length of a sentence.For many of the cases on minors and juveniles being found delinquent and serving your time with no breaks it a lot of the time is better for them because while their sentence may be long their sentence is only until the are approximately in their twenties and as an adult they would serve a life sentence for some things and â€Å"plea s† may have been even worse. There are time when a juvenile may be tried as an adult. The circumstances would be a felony drug offense, sex crimes, murders, and attempted murders. Between the ages 13 and 17 you can be and have the potential to be tried as an adult and serve an adult term.DELIQUENCY AND STATUS OFFENSES Delinquency is a minor crime committed by the youth (young people). This definition is directed towards the young people but this does not mean that an adult can not be caught or punished for the same crime that a minor will be in trouble for. A status offense is an action prohibited to a specific class of people and mostly is applied to crimes omitted by minors. VARIABLES THAT CORRELATE TO JUVENILE CRIMES While there are many things that correlate to juveniles committing crimes there is in my opinion still no excuses. One thing that correlates to the crimes is child maltreatment.When they child is not taken care of they tend to veer off and find other means of l iving and making ends meet. Another variable is alcoholism and drug use. A parent or parents is a child’s biggest role model and so are their siblings and any other older siblings. If a child grows up always seeing nothing but alcohol around the house and their family getting high off of pills and smoking than they are naturally going to take that lifestyle in and think that it is normal and okay and they will think that everyone else around them lives the same lifestyle.Bullying has in my world been a major variable. Whens someone is bullied they think that they need to find their own happy place and they claim that committing crimes does that for them. For example when a person gets in a fight or steals something and all the attention is turned on them, that is the highlight of their lives because everyone always bullied them. Single or no parent homes is probably one of the biggest variables. Like I mentioned before a parent or parents are a child’s biggest role mod els. A child’s mind is like a sponge and they always play the game of monkey see monkey do.This will never go away even when they are all grown up and moved out. I was a child that was in a single family home and there was nothing I would of ever wanted more than a multi parent home. I needed both of them for different reasons and I never had the choice, which led me in to depression and lack in schooling. There are a few more variables too and they are poverty, gang membership, idolizing criminals, trauma, school dropouts, and truancy. RECOMMENDATION I have many recommendations but the one I want to start with is â€Å"stop letting the juveniles get away with breaks and shorter punishments†.Now that I am all grown up I know that I hated to be punished but in all reality the longer I was punished the more I replayed why I was punished and told myself not to do it anymore. We need consistency. They need to make sure they stick to exactly what they say they are going to do to the child. We need to have better structured probation officers and counselors. Many of them do not care about the well being of the child they are just there to get paid and â€Å"claim† they helped the child. REFRENCES Google. com Studymode. com My step mother a criminal rehabilitator counselor