What Are Some Contributing Factors to Juvenile Delinquency?

     

     Teenage period is the transition between childhood and adulthood. They grow and develop both physically and psychically. A teenager is a young individual whose age falls within the range from 13 to 21 years old. He or she is experiencing some developments, so have to know more about a lot of things.

However, problems can appear because of their curiosity that is sometimes beyond the limit. Problems associated with teens are what we call "Juvenile Delinquency". Juvenile delinquency is an activity which breaks the norms, rules, and laws in a community often performed by the teenagers. 

      It covers all behaviors that deviate from the norms committed by them. It is bad behaviors and activities that may harm themselves and the people around them, and it is quite dangerous for them. Juvenile delinquency can be caused from several reasons such as weak self-control, family, and community or environment.

     The first reason why they do it is because they have weak self-control. Teenagers often have bad temper that they can't control it  when they express it with an act usually or sometimes a form of a negative behavior. As an example of the act, when there is someone who is annoying them, they can't control their emotion to fight back. Sometimes the act is quite violent such as punching the enemy when they are angry without thinking of the consequence. Teenagers who can't learn and distinguish the behavior will be dragged into bad behavior. The reasons of such behavior can be varied. They may lack of knowledge about religion and weak self-control. If the teenagers have good knowledge about religion, they can easily control their emotions. And teenagers who have weak self-control can easily be influenced by bad behavior because they don't have a strong principle in life. They usually get influenced because they don't know whether something is good or bad. Although they know that something is bad, they often do it without feeling guilty.

     The second reason of juvenile delinquency is family. Family is the important key to children's personalities and development. Basically, family is the place where a child can grow and develop properly both physically and spiritually.  The children can get attention and affection, as well as moral supports and lessons from parents. On the contrary, if they can't get all those things at home, they might express their emotion outside their home.  So it is not surprising that they will look for attention and affection from others such as friends or other people. For that reason, parents are responsible to always pay attention to their children. However, parents are not encouraged to give excessive expectations. The family is the smallest social unit that provides the primary foundation for the development of the children while the school environment helps provides the feeling of the child’s development. Family relationship provides a good or bad influence to the growth of the child's personality. While family circumstances which may be the cause of juvenile delinquency may start from a broken family. The death of the dear ones such as father or mother, family conflicts, economic problems of the family are also some reasons why juvenile delinquency takes place.

     The third reason of juvenile delinquency is from the communities or environments. Environment is one of the causes where the child’s characters are built because it is the most influential factor of the adolescent behaviors and characters. If they live in a bad neighborhood their behavior may be bad because a child usually imitates the behavior from a community. On the contrary, if  they live in a good  neighborhood, then their behavior will be good as well. Teenagers often do mischief and disrupt the peace the community. As we know,  teenagers are generally very curious with the new lifestyle without paying attention to the negative factors, assuming that they will be outdated if they don’t follow the such lifestyle. Friends can also affect the teenager's characters, either positively or negatively. If they make friends with people with bad attitude (bad boys), the bad boys can affect everyone in their surroundings. Good friends will only make them people with good attitude. For example, when the praying time comes, good friends always invite to pray while bad friends invite them to use drugs, to smoking, or to do some criminal actions.

     In conclusion, it is a bad behavior that will harm themselves and people around them. To overcome the problems, teenagers should be able to get a figure of adults who are wise and mature or someone who has become a better person. Motivation and supports from family, teachers, and peers can also help solve the problems of juvenile delinquency.

By : Toby Athallah Desriko