Article Type : Review Article
Authors : Franjic S
Keywords : Juvenile Delinquency; Schools; Criminal Responsibility; Prevention
Juvenile delinquency is a very big problem which is present
in today’s modern society. The delinquent behavior of young people has always
attracted serious public attention. This is a problem that many scientific
disciplines deal with. Juvenile delinquency has recently become an increasingly
common topic discussed in public. Recently, juvenile delinquency has
increasingly become the subject of various scientific studies of this issue in
which scientists are trying to determine the causes that lead to delinquent
behavior of young people. Prevention of juvenile delinquency is one of the most
important tasks of modern society. The aim of this paper is to point out a
model of juvenile delinquency prevention that could be applied in schools.
Delinquency is a
community problem [1]. In the final analysis the means for its prevention and
control must be built into the fabric of community life. This can happen only
if the community accepts its share of responsibility for having generated and
perpetuated paths of socialization that lead to sporadic criminal episodes for
some youth and careers in crime for others. Studies of the causes of crime
point to many individual and social pathologies that may find expression in
deviant and criminal behavior. In a competent community, however, the
opportunities and motivations for crime are controlled by the way its
institutions are organized to respond to such threats to public safety. There
is a willingness to experiment and improve the responsiveness of individual and
family services, religious organizations, neighborhood groups, schools,
recreational agencies, housing associations, employment markets, and juvenile
justice agencies. The result is a communal context that is sensitive to the
problems of growing up and possessed of the institutional capacity to respond
appropriately.
School?based delinquency
prevention broadly refers to strategies that take place in a school building,
or under the authority of school personnel, designed to reduce or prevent the
occurrence of problem behavior [2]. One meta?analysis integrated results from
165 experimental or quasiexperimental studies of school?based prevention
interventions. Outcomes of interest were alcohol and drug use, dropout and
non?attendance, delinquency, and other conduct problems. Strategies were
partitioned into environmentally and individually focused, and then categorized
by the presence of 11 treatment components or activities. Interventions with an
environmental focus may alter the organizational structure of the school,
increase the safety of the school building, improve teacher classroom
management, or adjust the disciplinary practices used by administrators.
Individually focused strategies consist mostly of psychosocial programs that
utilize individual counseling, behavior modification, skills?based learning,
and the like.
School?based prevention
strategies were generally effective for reducing alcohol and drug use, dropout
and non?attendance, and other conduct problems. For delinquency, mean effect
sizes across all program types were positive but had a 95% confidence interval
that included zero. Three out of four environmental approaches were found to be
effective for reducing delinquency: school and discipline management; classroom
or instructional management; and reorganization of grades or classes.
Establishing norms or expectations for behavior was the only environmentally
focused intervention strategy that did not achieve a statistically significant
effect size. Conversely, only one of the seven individually focused
interventions had a significant and positive effect on reducing delinquency.
This was an instructional approach to self?control or social competency with
cognitive–behavioral or behavioral instructional methods. Without the
cognitive–behavioral component, self?control and competency instruction had a
null to negative effect size.
The school has come to be
seen as a prime actor in the development and prevention of delinquent/criminal
behavior [3]. This ascendance to prominence is reflected in research focusing
on the correlates and causes of behavior, government and private reports
linking schools and education to delinquency, and the advent of prevention
programs intimately tied to schools and education. The ability to use school problems
and concerns to predict possible problems later in life places school personnel
in the midst of prevention. Schools are also prime locations for implementing
prevention programs. Many interventions often deal with pre-delinquent youths
and youths having problems in school.
Commitment addresses the
extent to which individuals are invested in conventionality or have a “stake in
conformity” [4]. School commitment is conveyed by the priority the school holds
for the student, as well as the student’s investment in school activities. Students
who are highly committed to the school accept the goals, norms, and values of
the school. The mechanism that drives an individual’s conformity is the desire
to adhere to the ascribed rules to maintain the value of the school and school
related activities. Highly committed students do not wish to jeopardize what
they have or could have by engaging in delinquency or other antisocial
behaviors.
Involvement refers to an
individual’s participation in conventional activities as they are related to
school. In many instances measures of school involvement are operationalized in
terms of frequency of attendance at school events such as sporting events.
Another measure of school involvement is the number of hours a student spends
in extracurricular activities such as yearbook, band, or other school-sponsored
clubs.
When students are
spending their time under adult supervision, as in the case of involvement in
school activities, they have less time to engage in delinquent behaviors. These
conventional activities, and the adult supervision that is present in school-based
activities, preclude time for delinquency. When students are involved in school
activities they spend more pro-social time with their peers under the
supervision of the faculty advisors or coaches, increasing the level of school
bonding.
Belief is the acceptance
of the values and norms of the school. When an individual endorses the rules of
society as legitimate and valid, he or she is less likely to act in a
delinquent manner. Belief in school is the most difficult component of the bond
to develop, primarily because of the low levels of empirical support for this
dimension in the study of school bonding.
There is growing concern
that the increased incarceration rates, especially the unprecedented rates in
the United States today, may affect other institutions such as families,
communities, and schools in a manner that increases crime and social disruption
or that at minimum offsets any crime reduction effect of increased
incarceration [5]. The argument goes this way: Social institutions such as
families, neighborhoods, communities, education, and labor markets provide and
enforce norms of behavior that keep most people from engaging in criminal
activity. When the ties or bonds to these institutions are weakened or lost,
individuals become more marginalized, and such individuals have higher levels
of violence and crime.
School officials must
make daily decisions about discipline and crime prevention, something they may
not have thought much about when they decided on a career in education [6]!
Because so much of an adolescent’s time is spent in school, it would seem
logical that some relationship exists between delinquent behavior and what is
happening—or not happening—in classrooms. Numerous studies have confirmed that
delinquency is related to academic achievement, and experts have concluded that
many of the underlying problems of delinquency, as well as their prevention and
control, are intimately connected with the nature and quality of the school
experience. Although there are differences of opinion, most experts agree that
problems associated with the educational system bear some responsibility for
the relatively high rate of juvenile crime.
The school has become a
primary determinant of economic and social status. In this technological age,
education is the key to a job that will mark its holder as successful. No
longer can parents ensure the status of their children through social class
alone. Educational achievement has become of equal, if not greater, importance
as a determinant of economic success. This emphasis on the value of education
is fostered by parents, the media, and the schools themselves. Regardless of
their social or economic background, most children grow up believing education
is the key to success. However, many youths do not meet acceptable standards of
school achievement.
Schools are also
important in the development of protective factors [7]. Clear rules and
consistent enforcement are important but so is reinforcement of positive
behaviors. Teaching stress management, problem-solving, and self-control is
important to the prevention of delinquency. Schoolbased probation programs can
in?uence the kinds of programs delivered by educators and provide more contact
and better monitoring of juveniles on probation.
Additionally, the community
can provide protective factors. Positive opportunities, mentoring programs, and
afterschool activities promote positive behavior and association with prosocial
peers. Probation agencies can work closely with community leaders to encourage
the development of protective programs. In some cases, they may directly offer
the services through such programs as day reporting centers where juveniles and
their families may receive a variety of educational and family services not
offered elsewhere by the schools or community.
Given the evidence that
habitual aggression emerges early in life, preventive intervention programs
should target young children [8]. The extant intervention literature suggests
that such programs should focus on enhancing the physical, cognitive, and
social development of children by providing broad-based services during the
early years. Such interventions may be child-centered, such as preschool
enrichment programs, or they can focus on providing families with the support
and skills needed to maximize their child's development. Children and families
who can be identified based on known risk factors should also receive targeted
intervention programs to prevent further escalation of risk.
Because children spend a
significant amount of time in schools, continued efforts should be made to
provide child-centered programs in schools, those that give children
opportunities to learn and practice effective social relations skills.
Schools may prevent
delinquency if they successfully socialize people to ?t into the society, yet
the schools cause delinquency in those who reject that socialization [9]. If
the economy and society demand that most people engage in alienating labor and
exhibit obedience to authority, the schools will try to prepare them for such a
life. Those students who refuse the precast mold and react with anger,
resistance, and rebellion become “delinquents.” The very refusal to ?t is
delinquency.
Even without parental
support, the net effect of the school must be positive. As a result of the
school experience, some students learn better to appreciate the advantages and
opportunities associated with self-control and are thus effectively socialized
regardless of their familial experiences. One of the major school correlates of
crime has always been the mundane homework. Those who do it are by de?nition
thinking about tomorrow. Those who do not do it have a shorter time frame. One
mark of socialization is considering the consequences of today’s activities for
tomorrow. Homework thus indexes and perhaps contributes to socialization.
The traditional informal
ways in which schools and parents dealt with problem behaviors in schools have
given way to reliance on school resource officers: sworn law enforcement on
school campuses [10]. The shifting institutional arrangements have the
potential to “criminalize” more juvenile misconduct, for example, through
formal charges of disorderly conduct. The threats of drugs and of violence from
students or against students that have institutionalized the role of the school
resource officer have also affected procedural rules for processing juveniles.
For example, traditional standards of probable cause and warrants under search
and seizure law are compromised in the school context because of the “special needs”
of schools in maintaining discipline and teaching children. The warrantless
searches and seizures extend beyond those where individualized suspicion can be
established and into random drug?testing for school extra?curricular
activities. The differences between children and adults are recognized in law
and practice; the responsibility of parents to discipline and control their
children is increasingly shared with schools and now sworn law enforcement
officers in schools. These changes can lead to formal processing in
“criminalized” due process oriented courts where punishment may displace
treatment and help.
Criminal justice
officials must be convinced that juveniles are not amenable to treatment in
juvenile court before assigning the JO (Juvenile Offender) label or before
sentencing the convicted juvenile offender to a secure facility [11]. The
criteria for deciding which juveniles are amenable to treatment or to transfer
to the juvenile court can appear vague to persons outside of the criminal
justice system. Individualized justice is a principle that contains "many
more items in its framework of relevance". It requires officials to
consider "a full understanding of the client's personal and social
character". Yet individualized justice does not preclude consideration of
offense characteristics, because it allows officials to use the offense as just
one of many aspects of the eligible offender's case. Offense, like many other
forms of behavior, is to be taken as an indication or "symptom" of
the juvenile's personal and social disorder.
In extreme cases of
violence, such as murder, offense becomes especially relevant; there is little
need to look beyond the offense at the juvenile's characteristics. Discretion
is limited by law; for example, juveniles charged with murder are not eligible
for youthful offender (YO) status. In such acts, officials have no other choice
but to charge juveniles in criminal court as juvenile offenders. In offenses
less serious than murder, however, such as robbery and assaults, which are
listed as B or C felonies, individualized justice is more likely to come into
play to assist officials in their determination of criminal responsibility.
With these less serious JO offenses, officials may refer to the juvenile's
personal background. Indicators of support in the family, school, and places of
work enter as relevant factors to assist the official assessment of "moral
character" and juvenile offender status. In other words, legal officials
do what countless criminology textbooks recommend in looking to parents and
schools as indicators of social control and future delinquent or criminal
behaviors.
School factors play an
important role in the understanding of delinquency, from a variety of
perspectives [12]. For one, schools serve as an important setting for student
interactions with peers. Schools also serve as the most important source of
evaluation of student performance. Within this context, schools can be sources
of either positive or negative emotions and experiences for youths. Academic
performance is a major factor in how students perceive themselves. Low or poor
academic performance can lead to delinquency through a series of connections.
Significant negative outcomes in school include droppingout, bullying, and
school shootings.
Violence in schools has
been declining since the mid-1990s. However, school violence is still of
concern to school administrators and the public, and many school districts have
implemented anti-violence measures for their schools. One issue related to
school violence that is receiving increased attention is school bullying. There
are now several bully-prevention efforts in place in schools, such as the Olweus
Bullying Prevention Program.
Three major risk factors
for adult antisocial behaviour become observable in individuals in school
settings during the elementary grades [13].These include persistent physically
aggressive behaviour (including ?ghting and bullying), academic failure, and
low commitment to school. All three of these risks can be affected by
intentional alterations in schools and schooling. As students move from
elementary to secondary schools, social in?uences and behavioural norms of
school peers also contribute to risk for antisocial behaviour. Several effective
curricula for students ages 11–16 focus on confronting and reducing these later
appearing risks.
Good teaching begins with good classroom management. There is a long history of strong experimental evidence demonstrating that behavioural techniques for classroom management, such as the establishment of clear rules and directions, the use of contingent approval and reinforcement, and the involvement of students in specifying contingencies and reinforcing themselves can reduce antisocial behaviour in schools. Intervention studies have shown that the use of proactive classroom management practices produces less student misbehaviour in class and more on-task academically focused behaviour.
Students are taught at
the school and their educational progress is regularly monitored and evaluated,
in order to ensure the necessary education that suits their needs and
abilities. Parents, preschool institutions, schools and society as a whole
should take constant care, educate and implement prevention from the earliest
childhood. School, as an obligatory and indispensable educational institution
in every modern society, is most often the place where for the first time some
forms of behavior begin to manifest in children. Thus, in addition to prosocial
behavior, a small number of children may also exhibit risky forms of behavior
which may not be socially unacceptable, but may develop into them. Therefore,
the school is an important place for early detection of risky behaviors of the
child, which opens the possibility of adequate and successful intervention, and
thus the prevention of severe behavioral disorders. The school should establish
good cooperation with parents and provide them with appropriate assistance, in
order to respond as successfully as possible to the tasks set before parents
and the school in terms of educational work and prevention of juvenile
delinquency.