Juvenile Delinquency Prevention and Treatment

Juvenile Delinquency Prevention and Treatment Name: Course: Instructor: Institution: Date: Juvenile Delinquency Prevention and Treatment Juvenile delinquency refers, also known as youth crime, refers to minor’s participation in illegal or unlawful behaviors and practices. Minors, in this context, refer to people under the age of 18 years. Individuals, under the age of 18, but commit crimes that would be chargeable and punishable if done by adults, are referred to as juvenile delinquents. The age makes it a controversy on whether to handle juvenile delinquents in courts as adults as some nations lack a proper system of handing youth criminal offenders. Youth nowadays, irrespective of gender, country of residence or gender are exposed to individual risks as well as new individual opportunities. Some of these opportunities are beneficial; others are harmful. Mostly, advantages are taken over the harmful opportunities and most young people commit different crimes. Such crimes include drug abuse, use of violence against their peers and theft. Statistical data show that virtually all countries in the world, except the US, the rate or increase in the number of juvenile delinquents has been high since 1990s. In the Western Europe, research reveals that arrest of under-age offenders and juvenile delinquents has been on the verge of increased by approximately 50% between 1980 and 1990 ( Dishion, 2006). Further researches show that many of these offences have close relationship excessive alcohol use and drug abuse. Several programs and studies that deal with juvenile delinquencies have their focus on the youth as the only offenders. Nonetheless, adolescents are also prone victims of delinquent and criminal acts. Based on the crime data produced by the police, it is evidenced that over 80% of violent actions are never reported by the victims. Studies and information from this gives a leeway for coming up with a conclusion that most of these unreported offen...