Juvenile Delinquency: What Makes Teens Commit Crimes?

 Juvenile Delinquency:Why do teens commit Juvenile Crimes?

Juvenile delinquency is the act of committing a crime at a very young age. A juvenile delinquent is a young person, particularly a teenager under the age of eighteen, who breaks a state or federal law by committing a crime.

Teens are still immatures and do not think like adults, therefore they are prone to making mistakes or committing crimes that are not fully in their control. Teens can break laws for various reasons, and there are a number of factors that can lead them to juvenile delinquency.

Listed down some of the reasons why teens become juvenile delinquents and what causes them to commit crimes :

• Broken Family :

A teen adopts moral and ethical values from his parents and other family members. It goes without saying that family plays a vital role in shaping a teen’s behavior and grooming his/her personality. However, teens become violent or show signs of juvenile delinquency only when they’re facing disturbance at home. Broken or disturbed families with bad relations can cause teens to go astray and become violent. Single parents are often busy working, therefore they’re not able to spend quality time with their children. This causes teens to seek attention from others, especially their peers.

• Lack of Communication :

Often lack of discourse in the family can lead children to find solace other than homes. When they are not having any communication with their parents or family members at home, they may lose unity, trust, and understanding, which can eventually lower their self-esteem or self-confidence. Once they feel they’re losing their individuality, they tend to do things they shouldn’t do to boost their self-confidence. They blindly follow their peers and adopt their unhealthy lifestyles. They shoplift and consume drugs to look cool in the eyes of their peers.

• Lack of Finances :

Young or adult, may lead to a wrong path to improve their financial conditions. Teens become juvenile delinquents due to lack of finances. When they experience poor economic conditions, they start engaging in the wrong activities. They may start selling drugs or steal things to improve their economic conditions.

• Lack of Social and Moral Training :

Teens who have not given any social or moral training often lead to juvenile delinquency. It is the parent’s duty to teach moral and ethical values to their children. They should teach them the difference between right and wrong behavior. Lack of social and moral values can lead children to poor interaction with others and make them less confident. They may become selfish and arrogant. They would not know how to respect the laws of the state. Parents often neglect their children and pay more focus on working hard to earn money for them. However, while doing so, they forget the importance of spending quality time with their children. In their absence, children tend to spend time with someone who pays attention to them. They may also fall into wrong hands or get involved in a bad company while seeking attention from someone other than their parents.

• Peer Pressure :

As young children reach adolescence, they go through a number of changes. All of a sudden, they wish to become independent and develop their own liking. They want to be known and accepted by their peers and social groups. In order to fit in and be accepted by their peers, they succumb to peer pressure. Peer pressure comes with both positive and negative influences. Research in the past has proved that many teens cite peer pressure as one of the major reasons for engaging in risky behaviors such as reckless driving, substance abuse, alcohol, teen sex, teen gang, and criminal activity.

Getting influenced by their peers’ behavior, most teens get involved in a risky activity and put themselves in huge problems. If teens are taught to differentiate between right and wrong, they can be more careful towards choosing the path for themselves.

• Poor Education :

One of the major contributing factors to juvenile crimes is lack of education. Children who do not pay attention towards their studies and spend time in leisure activity tend to remain ignorant of important aspects of life. School is the place where they get their primary education from and if they are skipping their classes frequently, they would remain ill-informed.

Many schools offer courses, seminars, and lectures on teen involvement in gangs, sex, and criminal behaviors. These seminars open up their eyes and make them closely see reality. When they will not attend these seminars, they won’t understand their importance. Parents should pay strong attention towards their child’s academics and make sure they attend their school regularly.

• Substance Abuse :

Substance abuse can be extremely dangerous for the teens. As mentioned before, substance abuse may derive from the influence of peers. The excess use of drugs can affect cognitive development of a teen, lowering his inhibitions and ability to evaluate risks. Drugs and alcohol have been regarded as powerful contributors to juvenile crime.

The use of drugs and absenteeism from school are interlinked, as one causes the other. Teens who are addicted to alcohol and drugs are more likely to skip their classes than those who don’t. Students who skip school are more likely to try alcohol and drugs for the first time. Absenteeism can negatively impact school grades, which can lead to poor education, low self-esteem, and low expectations for their future career development. When teens fail at school, they shift to other risky activity, get involved in juvenile crimes and then face incarceration.

• Negligent Parents :

Teens having negligent parents tend to become careless towards their academics, house chores, diet routine and overall physical appearance. When parents do not pay any heed towards the personal and social development of their teens, they think they have become independent and take up the most important decisions of their lives on their own. Poor socioeconomic status can also become a contributing factor to juvenile crime, urging teens for burglary.  

Parents teach their children to differentiate right from wrong by giving them examples. When parents do not play their role, teens follow examples from their other family members, peers, and social groups. When none of these concerned positive influences are present, they may suffer from moral poverty which would most likely follow teens into their adulthood. If moral values are not instilled in them in the formative years, they may later turn to juvenile crime simply because to them the act won’t seem immoral or wrong.

Juvenile Delinquency 

》Effects of Juvenile Delinquency on Teens and their Parents

Usually when a teen commits a small offense, people, especially parents, just show momentary disapproval and then forget about it. They just think of it as a one-time mistake made by a child who doesn’t really know what he’s doing, and that he must have learned his lesson and will not attempt the same thing again. However, quite often this doesn’t turn out to be the case. Failing to show due concern over a teen’s delinquent behavior and taking necessary measures to discourage it can have serious consequences not just for the teen, but also their parents.

• Sinking into a Life of Crime

Ignoring a teen’s crime, be it a minor one, only serves to encourage them to repeat their behavior, which can eventually lead them into committing more crimes. As they continue to tread this path, they grow more confident in their ability to get away with anything and hence start raising the level of their criminal offenses.

Once they reach this stage, it becomes really difficult to pull them out of it and make them responsible and law-abiding citizens again. They always have this desire to commit crimes. The scale doesn’t matter. They just want to go out there and break the rules. It could be stealing something, drugs, arson, grand theft auto, or anything that helps them get their fill of thrill.

A Parent’s Worst Nightmare :-

The parents of such teens suffer in this scenario as well because no matter how much they disapprove of their delinquent child’s actions, they are the ones who have to face the law enforcements. Furthermore, deep down they realize that their child turned out this way due to their failed parenting, a guilt that they have an extremely hard time shaking off.

They also have to live with the fact that their child is a criminal and have to bear the looks given to them by everyone else.

The worst part is, they can’t kick their child out because they are still underage and have to remain under the custody of their parents. It doesn’t matter how much children are making their parents suffer, they cannot do anything about it because they are bound to take care of them unless they reach the age of 18. It is not a smooth ride by any means but they have to live through it.

Delinquent Teens Become Selfish and Insensitive

One of the worst things that happen because of habitually committing crimes is that such teens stop caring about almost everything. They neither realize nor care that their actions are hurting so many people, including their own family. They become completely emotionless and just care about themselves. If something or someone serves them the right way, then they are all in for them, but if things or people are not in their favor, they completely disregard them.

Knowing all this, it’s extremely important that parents and even teachers for that matter should keep their eyes peeled to take notice of any delinquent tendencies shown by kids and address them immediately instead of dismissing them as an immature or one-time mistake. The very future of a child may depend on it.

- Anjali Agrawal