Juvenile Delinquency and Case Plan
Juvenile delinquency is not a new thing in Australia and around the world, and it has been an issue of concern to the countries and the government for years. Juvenile delinquency can be termed as a habitual committing of crimes and offensive acts by the young people at the age where the criminal prosecutions cannot be taken against them (Shoemaker 5). This may start from the young ages of pre-school, with children as young as five years being involved in juvenile delinquency. Juveniles who are involved in such criminal acts may end up practicing the same behaviour as they grow up to the adult age and thus, it is critically important to curb the behaviour at the young stages by employing preventive and corrective measures, which may either be done by the parents, the police or peers, through mentorship programs. This reduces continued crime at the adult age. Over the years, the rate of juvenile delinquency has been reducing in around the world. Since the year 2006, the rate of juvenile crimes in Australia has reduced by about 70 percent, which is a progressively good number (Thompson 12). This has all resulted from such interventions as diversion programs that are meant to reduce the crime rate.
In this case, a case of the growth of a young Negro boy, Joe, is presented. The boy ended up in Juvenile delinquency with abuse and petty theft. From the background, the boy was brought up through challenges, especially social status and parenting, which resulted in a major shift in his behaviours as he was growing up. The delinquency cases started while he was still in pre-school, at the age of six, and it continued to escalate as he grew up, becoming worse at 14 years. At his current age of 15 years, he has proven to be uncontrollable. This necessitates an action plan to help him handle the situation and avoid further indulgence into criminal activities as he grows into adulthood. In this case, the Adolescent Diversion Program would help bring him back to the track if well managed. This will change his view of the world and induce the urge to change into a better person in the future. If adequately run and coordinated, this program bears the best results in dealing with the case of Joe.
Case: Examining the issue of Juvenile Delinquency: Case of Joe, Negro Boy
Joe is a 15 years Negro boy living with his parents in Australia. He was born and brought up in a low-class family and a low-class area. He grew up as a vulnerable child in an area where little care was taken for the children. His father and mother were both casual workers, and they spent most of their time out of the house, and they gave little concentration on the growth of Joe. The father was an alcoholic, which made him very violent and authoritative every time he came into the house. These were the initial environments that Joe was introduced to as a young child. The father would use harsh disciplinary measures on him, giving him thorough beatings when he committed an offense, however small the offense was. He also could not justify the reasons for the kind of punishments he gave to Joe. As a result of their work, the parents were really absent from their son’s growth, and thus, as a young and growing boy, he was left unsupervised in most of the circumstances. This gave him a lot of space to engage with his peers.
When Joe joined pre-school, the impacts of the upbringing was felt. Just one month into the school, the teacher summoned the parents of Joe to give them their child’s progress. The teacher noted that Joe, who was six years at the time, was very aggressive towards the other students and the teacher as well. This made him be feared by the other students and also not associate with them. The parents did not take measures to curb the situation, and this made Joe subsequently offensive with time. At the age of ten, Joe and his peers in the area of residence were first reported to be involved in petty theft cases, and since the parents were very busy to handle the cases, Joe did not have a person to guide him on revolving and change of his character. This made him a repeated offender in the area of residence and also in school, which raised concerns over his character.
Joe was first arrested at the age of twelve years for criminal offenses. His parents raised the bond and were able to secure his release on condition that they would ensure that he is well guided and enrolled in a program that would help him change the behaviour he was exhibiting. The parents punished him, and they did not take any further steps to ensure the changes. He thus, under the influence of his peers, continued with his criminal activities. This was attributed to the poor living conditions that the family was undergoing and the lack of basic necessities. It was also attributed to the parents’ characters and their constant absence from his life, which would have been a boost to change his character. As a result of the resumption of crime, Joe was arrested again at 15 years and the police, following the previous crime and lack of a proper program for change as a juvenile, had to hold him up and have a proper program initiated on him to ensure that he is able to change and avoid crime in the future times. This necessitated the initiation of the best program to ensure that he changes as if not well handled. The juveniles end up committing more crime in their adult stages and thus become a threat to the security of their areas of residence.
Alternative Approaches for Joe
Aggressive Replacement Training
Aggressive Replacement Training is one of the mechanisms or approaches used in the control of juvenile delinquency. The approach has been proven to work well in dealing with aggression among the juveniles. Aggressive replacement training involves a multidimensional psychological education intervention designed to promote prosocial behaviour in chronically aggressive and violent adolescents using techniques to develop social skills and control their moral and emotional characters (McGuire 3). This method is important in the reduction of aggression among the juveniles. The method deals with three major components: social skills advancement and training, anger control training, and teenagers’ training on moral reasoning. Training the adolescent on social skills exposes the client to behavioural change and teaches them on different fair approaches to reduce aggressive behaviour. This includes how to make complaints in the right way without causing emotional arousal, understanding the feelings of others so as to avoid judging their acts harshly, and also keeping off fights with each other (Siegel 5). Social skills training is also important in reducing the impacts of peer pressure on the juveniles and ensuring that their peers do not perpetrate their crime.
In anger control training, adolescents are taught how to avoid anger-related consequences and react out of anger. Anger is one of the leading reasons why juveniles enter into crime. Thus, the clients need to be taught how to treat their anger and how to avoid what causes them anger. They are taught on the triggers of anger, the cues of anger, anger reduction, and thinking ahead of the things that happen due to anger (Shoemaker 8). When they think ahead, the adolescents consider the far-reaching consequences of acting out of anger, and they are thus in a position to control their behaviour. The training on moral reasoning is critical for Juvenile Delinquency. Moral reasoning is a cognitive component of Aggressive Replacement Training, which provides adolescents opportunities to take other perspectives other than their own, thereby learning to view their world more fairly and equitably (Siegel 8). This gives alternative ways of thinking and gaining what these juveniles get from their criminalized activities. This could be helpful in the reduction of aggression in the life of Joe and can thus be applied in changing his behavior. The challenge with the method is that it majorly concentrates on aggression and not on the client’s all roundness once the training has been completed, which makes it a challenge in handling the other characters in a client who has multiple offensive behaviors.
Adolescent Diversion Project (ADP)
Adolescent Diversion project aims to divert the arrested youths from the formal processing of their cases in the juvenile justices systems and provide them with community-based services that help them change their behaviours (Mackin 171). This method of dealing with Juvenile Delinquency is very effective, and it helps in getting back the juvenile on the right track, both academically, career, and behaviour wise. The delinquency of the future is prevented using this method by strengthening youths’ access to resources in communication and keeping them away from potentially stigmatizing social context. Most of the youths undergo a lot of stigmas once they realize that the community knows what they do. As a result, this makes their condition even worse, and this makes it important to have the intervention to help them in order to avoid the stigma or learn to live with it as they continue changing their character and name in the community.
Adolescent Diversion Project utilizes volunteer students from the university levels of education to help the youths change their characters and regain their community position. The students are selected from the psychology department, and they must have a proper understanding of these youths’ psychology, and thus, they can easily handle them well. The volunteer students are first trained well on diversion work in psychology and then assigned the juveniles who are criminal offenders. The volunteers are expected to spend 8 hours every week with these juveniles and explain to them the importance of changing their lives and how they can do it (Gearing 1115). These volunteers are used as mentors for the youths, and they show them the path to follow in life, how to avoid crime, how to manage their emotions as well as how to succeed and replace their bad behaviour with helpful behaviour for their future. This is an easy way of reaching these youths as they will be seeing role models in the people who are guiding them, and thus, they can closely and easily follow their footsteps. This becomes an easier way to convince them to change and adopt new ways to live.
This approach works by utilizing three different theoretical perspectives. These theoretical perspectives applied are the social control and bonding theory, social learning theory, and the social interactionist theory. The social control theory emphasizes the importance of social bonds in preventing delinquency behaviour (Mackin 167). It is the belief that people hold when combined with their relationships with others and with society and their commitment to doing their work that helps people move away from crime. The norms that a person adopts as well as their believes contributes immensely into the behaviour that they exhibit in the outer environment when dealing with the other people. Thus, it is important to work on these aspects of the juveniles to change their perspectives of the entire criminal process and induce a different objective purpose on them that they can exercise in their adulthood. This theory believes that if moral codes are internalized, and individuals are tied in their communities to have a wider stake in it, they voluntarily limit their propensity to commit deviant acts (Gearing 1118). This theory is thus very effective in this intervention measure.
The social learning theory is another theory utilized in the Adolescent Diversion Project. This theory suggests that delinquency is learned through interactions with the family, peers, and others, and thus, the bad character can be unlearned through a similar learning process (Shoemaker 18). Learning can effectively be achieved through learning and observing others and their behaviour. The volunteers, in this case, show the best characters which can be emulated by the juveniles. Since learning is a cognitive process and it takes place in the social context, it is possible to acquire it by observation as well as direct instruction even when there is no direct reinforcement (Siegel 12). This is a cognitive learning process, and it thus has to be embraced in the Adolescent Diversion Project. This theory shows the possibilities of juveniles learning to change their behaviours by looking at the mentors who have done well in life and admiring their lifestyles as well as their behaviours. When the peers thus talk about the character change and its advantages in society, the juveniles can understand well what they mean.
The third theory used in the Adolescent Diversion Project is the social interactionist theory. Social Interactionist theory believes that it is the labeling of a behaviour as delinquent that results in further social interactions that intentionally or unintentionally label the youths as delinquent (Mackin 170). This theory believes in the use of language as a major boost to the change in juveniles. The kind of language that is used in bringing up a child determines their behaviour as they grow up. Here, the language indicates both the verbal and action-oriented behaviours of the community and the parents. Most of the children involved in delinquency issues have faced a fierce upbringing since their childhood, which plants the behaviour constantly from time to time, and thus, in the end, the child cannot stand on his own to defend the moral values. This gets these children into crime. The theory emphasizes the role of social interactions between the developing child and the linguistically knowledgeable adults (Felson 9). These adults, who are the volunteer students, work to ensure that there is a complete change of the mentality of the children. Also, they get to perceive the matter from a perspective which is helpful and thus, in the end, the goal of changing their lives for the better is achieved. The goal enables the children to adapt to the ways away from crime.
Juvenile Justice System
The other possible alternative is to have Joe going through the juvenile justice system and undergo trials. The juvenile courts are responsible for the hearing of criminal cases involving minors in Australia and ensure that they receive the form of punishment or intervention necessary for their future lives. One of the possible options in the justice system of the juveniles in incarceration. This involves the imprisonment of these juveniles in the juvenile prisons for corrective punishments (Hirschfield 23). The juveniles are exposed to different forms of work, which they partake in the process of their imprisonment. Custodial sentencing is also an option in the juvenile criminal courts. Having been convicted before, this measure may be used to tame Joe’s behaviour. It is used to give the juveniles some sense of rethinking about their lives in the communities they are assigned under the justice system’s constant watch. This, combined with the kind of work they are assigned, helps in reforming the criminal behaviour. This method may not work well as there is little concentration on the child’s state, and directing the child towards behaviour change may not be available in this case.
Recommended Alternative
The case of repeated crime exhibited by Joe requires a constant and a well-guided intervention to reduce the impacts of what may be termed as poor parenting and instilling in him the best alternative behaviours. This is the only possible way to have Joe back to the good line of behaviour. As a result, the Adolescent Diversion Project is highly recommended in this case. This is because it will focus on showing the importance of behaviour change in him through the peers. The peers who work in the home, the community as well as in the school will show him how to interact with the different groups of people in these institutions and, thus, avoid any further criminal activities and stigmatization. The community will also be able to witness the changing aspects in Joe’s life, and thus, they will have less stigma towards him as opposed to the previous circumstances where he was viewed as a criminal. This intervention method stands out over the juvenile justice system’s use since it is a guiding corrective measure, and it uses good moral examples to show Joe how to behave. The method also stands out when compared with Aggressive Replacement Training because Aggressive Replacement Training will deals primarily with reducing the aggressive nature of Joe and not concentrate on the other aspects of life in him which were negatively impacted on by the bringing up and thus, it will not be an all-rounded perspective.
Conclusion
Juvenile delinquency is indeed an important issue that needs to be addressed to ensure that young people live a life that is beneficial to them in the future and avoids crime. The case of Joe shows that Juvenile Delinquency results from different factors, including parenting, mainly arising from abusive and absent parenting, and also the peer interactions of these children. If they are not well supervised in their doings, then it becomes hard for the children to have a change of their behaviours once they are in the adult stages. Different techniques and methodologies are useful in correcting Joe’s behaviour and include the Aggressive Replacement Training, use of juvenile justice systems, and the adolescent diversion project. In the case of Joe, the adolescent diversion project serves as the best option in changing his behaviour in a guided way, using the volunteer mentors’ skills.
References
Felson, Richard B. “A social interactionist approach to violent crime.” Oxford research encyclopedia of criminology and criminal justice. 2018.
Gearing, Robin E., et al. “C-FIT adolescent diversion program: A behavioral intervention pilot test for delinquent offenders.” International Social Work 60.5 (2017): 1111-1125.
Hirschfield, Paul J. “The role of schools in sustaining juvenile justice system inequality.” The future of children 28.1 (2018): 11-36.
Mackin, Juliette R., et al. “Integrating the ivory tower and the community: The adolescent diversion project.” Teaching About Adolescence. Routledge, 2019. 167-186.
McGuire, James. “Aggression Replacement Training for Juveniles.” The Encyclopedia of Corrections (2017): 1-4.
Shoemaker, Donald J. Juvenile delinquency. Rowman & Littlefield, 2017.
Siegel, Larry J., and Brandon C. Welsh. Juvenile delinquency: The core. Nelson Education, 2016.
Thompson, William E., and Jack E. Bynum. Juvenile delinquency: A sociological approach. Rowman & Littlefield, 2016.