Essay
Many young adults have difficulties within their home environment. This can stem from a traumatic event that has taken place within their family unit. They may experience communication problems and sometimes strike out due to frustration. The crimes they commit can vary, from stealing money out of the parent’s purse/wallet to violence and vandalism, sometimes causing death. Some young adults can become quiet and withdrawn and quite possibly lead to drug abuse.
Some possible signs of criminal activities can be a sudden change in appearance, for instance they might have new and expensive clothes like trainers and jeans. They might have other things like MP3 players and the latest games consoles. But bear in mind that they are also going through puberty and the hormonal changes do contribute to their behaviour. Secrecy is another sign.
There social environment contributes greatly as this is the place they hang around in groups / gangs therefore peer pressure is there. They feel they have to impress the other gang members. This is also a breeding ground for violence towards similar gangs within their community. This leads to crimes such as shootings and knife crimes which sometimes lead to death, mugging, car theft, vandalism, burglary’s and often rape.
Most families that live on council housing estates are on benefits and most are out of work due to ill health, being a single parent with young children. Living on benefits does not mean that all the families are trouble. There are some families that like to
keep themselves to themselves. Each and every household has family issues both good and bad. More often than not children that come from single parent families turn to crime. The young men in the family tend to take on the role of the father figure and will often lack behind in education and will take on a job that might not have any career prospects.
Teenage pregnancy is high within council housing estates; therefore they end up on benefits. You’ll also find that the parents are involved in criminal activities and their children see this as acceptable behaviour and will follow their foot steps.
In some families there are children that either have been or are still being abused whether it is verbally, mentally or physically. They tend to have so much anger inside them that they want to lash out and make another person feel how they are feeling. This form of neglect is very damaging and has ongoing long term effects and more often then not the abused becomes the abuser.
Within most community’s there is available help in the form of youth centres, the young adults can come here to meet up with other young adults and play pool, table tennis etc. Some centres even have their own pool competition; they arrange day trips to places at an affordable cost. In the youth centres there are people that you can talk to if you are experiencing trouble at school or at home and they are generally good listeners and will often give good advise and guidance. Some young adults find trust an issue, especially if there is abuse going on in the family and will take a very long time trusting someone. When they have built up a good relation with a confider it’s important to maintain it. Young adults have trouble trusting the police therefore see them as a threat. But in some cases the police officers do go to the youth centres to have chats with the young adults as a group. It is also made aware that there are other options out there. A lot of young offenders become councillors later in life especially if they have served some time in prison.
Conclusion
It is vital that we find out the young adults background as early as we possibly can, this way we can try and tackle crime head on. Understanding young adults is not an easy task and we will probably never come to fully understand them but we can try and turn a bad situation into a good situation. Yes they need to be aware that they are fully accountable for their own actions and should be dealt with accordingly and along with the punishment there should be sufficient rehabilitation programmes that will boost their moral and help them proceed in their future.
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