Delinquency, the name commonly given to youth criminals is defined as ‘antisocial or violent behaviour in young people often involving criminal acts’ (Doob 1996)
The construction of youth crime emerged through many factors…
- Decline of child mortality, I’m not sure how this is a factor. Maybe the reasoning being that children who are usually brought up on run down council estates who only have a life expectancy of say three years old, are living longer and growing up into a bad environment where youth crime is the norm and therefore following in siblings foot steps and committing crime.
- The introduction and extensions of compulsory education. Suppose this factor takes on the saying, ‘if you’re made to do something, the less you want to do it’. Forcing children into going to school for longer than what some of their older peers had to attend for, this new law of longer compulsory education gives youths the feeling of being short changed. Many may take the attitude that ‘well if they didn’t have to go why should I go, I’m not going to go’. The enforcement of longer compulsory education had the effect of making youths wanting to play truant, therefore bored youth hanging around, firstly get themselves into petty crimes then may and will eventually move on to harder crimes.
- Also intelligence, attainment and poor performance. Although important statically predictions of offending, are difficult to disentangle from each other. One possible plausible explanation of the link between low intelligence and crime is its association with poor ability to manipulate abstract concepts and to appreciate the feelings of victims.
- Socio-economic status and delinquent friends, social and economic deprivation are important predictors of antisocial behaviour and crime, but low family income and poor housing are better measurements than the prestige of parents occupations. Delinquents tend to have delinquent friends, but it not certain whether membership of a delinquent peer groups to offending or whether delinquents simply gravitate towards each other’s company (or both). Also breaking up with delinquent friends often coincides with desisting from crime.
Why are images of youth crime so influential? This question is answered in four stages.
*Visibility of youth crime, Young lifestyles make their offending more visible, more often meet in streets or public places therefore more likely to get caught by public, police etc.
*Public concerns over wider social factors. The break up of the family. Dissolution of community. Dwindling influence of key figures pf socialisation – parents, teachers and police. The effects of popular entrainment.
*Mass media and youth crime, studies of relation between the media representations of youth and crime have identified a number of points.
Media create moral panic, media exaggerate ideas. Personal violent crimes account for less than 10% of all recorded crime and the British papers devote 60% of material to crime. Stereotypical images released to society, groups become labelled. Typical crime events are contrasted with visions of the normal world. Media do not simply reflect reality but define it in a particular way – to prolong events. Creates a moral panic by sensationalising youth crime. Emotive language is used. In much media and political debate the terms ‘teenage’, ‘adolescence’, ‘youth’ and ‘generation’ have been trapped in a negative discourse to describe a condition, or period of transition, which is considered both troubled and troublesome. These images in the main derive from a predominantly bio-psychological literature dating back to the first decade of the twentieth century but persist as a successful news line for the press, television and radio and as a potential vote winner for politicians. (Muncie 1999)
*The luminosity of youth. Youth is period of transition. Fray innocent childhood to the social maturity of adulthood. Liminal describes something that is at the borders, in either, thing nor another. Youth is positioned in grey border between childhood and adulthood, such border areas are seen as parts of potential threat. Youth find themselves in an area outside of both groups this can be very threatening.
I have spent a lot of time talking about youth, but what is youth, the first issue I should of addressed in my essay about youth and crime is that to be aware of the problems involved in reaching and adequate definition of youth. At what age do people suddenly become adult? Traditionally ‘youth’ has been associated with adolescence and the ‘teenager’, meaning everybody between the ages of 12 and 20, but by no means all of this age group share the same interests or concerns. Most notably, growing up male, growing up female and growing up in different communities involve different activities, different constraints and different opportunities. (Muncie1999)
Muncie also explains that, similar problems arise when trying to reach an adequate definition of crime. Legal definitions reflect only what is sanctioned by the criminal law and fail to recognise other more serious ‘social harm’. Conversely, in the case of youth, the concept of ‘delinquency’ extends the parameters of crime to include a host of trivial ‘nuisances’ and ‘misconducts’. (1999)
From looking back on what I have written, it is clear that social construction is basically the way and what we are brought up in. many factors contribute to the social construction of youth crime and many of them are to do with housing, family etc.
Here I’m going to look at the Myth of youth crime, but before I look into deeply I’m going to answer some questions that were suggested in a lecture when talking about the myth of youth crime.
Does youth crime differ from crime committed by other age groups?
The main difference is obviously the age, some argue that the youth are impressional and immature therefore they don’t really understand the true meaning of what s/he is doing. Others argue that the youth no matter what age should know the difference between right and wrong, and should know exactly what s/he is doing. When committing a crime you know whatever age you are that it you are breaking the law. Some say that younger criminals are easier to reform; whereas older criminals are set in their ways are often harder to reform. Suppose you could say that youths can be saved, as they are not fully formed adults therefore they may be rehabilitated. Also their justifications for committing the crime are usually far from the same. For example, an adult offender could be committing the crime such as burglary to get money for drugs etc whereas a youth could be doing for fun or out of boredom.
The youth crime wave is a myth. Only 3.9% of young people are involved in the juvenile justice system. Seventy percent of those never re-offend but the 30% that do re-offend do it within 2 years. (gov2001)
Contrary to the popular opinion being manufactured by the media, young people do not constitute the largest category of serious offenders.
The myth of crime wave is part of a broader ideological offensive that aims to promote the family as solely responsible for the social security of young people, the unemployed, the elderly and the sick. This further justifies cuts to the funding of public social welfare programs.
Youth crime is supposedly the result of ‘moral decay’ and the erosion of ‘family values’. The social problems that lead to crime, such as unemployment, poverty homelessness and alienation are blamed on individuals.
In a time of economic instability and polarisation in society, the youth crime wave myth is aimed at further convincing working people that they have to accept a tightening of social control through attacks on civil liberties and greater powers being given to police.
Solutions to youth crimes are far from being found. Many have been suggested; real solutions to crime will only come with real solutions to the problems that cause it. A starting point would be creating real jobs, significantly, increasing publicly funded youth and community services and providing a guaranteed living income for all.
Bibliography
McLaughlin,E. (eds) (2001) the problem of crime. 2nd ed. London:sage Publications.
Muncie,J.Huges,G.McLaughlin,E. (EDS) (2002) youth justice : Critical Readings.London:sage
Muncie,J. (1999) youth and crime.London:sage
(2001)