Juvenile Delinquency and Reasons That Lead to It

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Drug Abuse
Drugs Correlation with Youth Crimes
Conclusion
References

Introduction

There are various reasons why there exists crime in various parts of this world. Juvenile delinquency is a term that is commonly used to describe illegal or antisocial behavior portrayed by children especially adolescents. Various issues can be attributed towards juvenile delinquency for example bipolar or more commonly known as stress attributed to a post-traumatic experience or peer pressure. Irrespective of the cause of juvenile delinquency, juvenile drug abuse is certainly most commonly related directly to either an increase or a decrease in any form of juvenile delinquency. Using existing databases as the main research method, we are going to prove the validity of this hypothesis.

Drug Abuse

Drug or substance abuse is a maladaptive system or pattern in the use of a certain substance that can hardly be considered as a dependent substance. Abuse of drugs does not however always entirely exclude dependency. In the United States of America, the most commonly abused drugs are cocaine, alcohol, methaqualone, benzodiazepines, and barbiturates. However, the UN (United Nations) estimates the existence of over 0.5 Billion people in the world who knowingly and without any medical reason abuse cocaine, heroin, and even synthetic drugs. The most commonly abused drugs in the USA by juveniles are marijuana and alcohol (Puzzanchera, 2008).

Drugs Correlation with Youth Crimes

Since the early 1990s, the high use of illegal drugs has been steadily rising amongst youth especially in the United States. According to Dickson (1997), the use of tobacco, alcohol, and other types of drugs among those children in the 12th grade has been on the rise statistically since 1981. By this time over 65 % of students in senior classes had already admitted to once having used these illicit drugs. Though the figures dropped slightly by 1992 to just slightly over 40 %, the figures again started increasing past 1993. By 1996, more than 50% of all seniors in high school had reported that they had used some illicit drugs (Dickson, 1997).

Concurrent with the rise in drug abuse among juveniles is the rise in several total arrests in the United States of America by the Federal Bureau of Investigations (Douglas, 2008). There has generally been a steady increase in the number of persons arrested in the USA since 1992 due to various crimes committed. This correlates to the increase in the use of drugs in this country. In 1992, there were slightly more than 13,898,234 arrests documented by the FBI. This was a drop from 14, 195, 100 documented arrest in 1990., these figures again correlates to the drop in drug use up to 40% by the youth in this same period. These figures of arrest have also been on a gradual increase in response to the gradual increase in drug use (Douglas, 2008).

One might question these findings since they affect the whole population but yet there has been documentation of 195,700 youth arrested for violations relating to drug abuse. This rate is known to have hit a 145% increase since 1990. Even though this represents only a fraction of the over 2,180,500 arrested juveniles for various other crimes, more often than not, they are charged with having committed more than one crime. If the first crime far outweighs the second crime, then it is usually recorded that they have been arrested for the serious crime only. Consequently, research into data of the arrested Juveniles has shown that besides their original charge, they are usually charged together with having abused drugs.

Drug Use Forecasting (DUF) is a program that is normally carried out by the Institute of National Justice. This program has previously measured drug abuse prevalence in male juvenile detainees. This study has also portrayed an increase in the use of drugs among juvenile males since 1993. It should also be interesting to note that there has also0 been an increase in the number of juvenile youth in detention centers since 1993. A substantial drug use rate was also found in juveniles that had committed serious criminal violations.

A more substantial data source for this claim might perhaps be found from one finding of Beck Kline in 1988 who after examining juvenile detainees, found out that 39 percent whose ages were below 18 years were under drug influence. 9 years later, a study by Defrancesco of 113 youth who were considered delinquent in a detention facility of the state found that up to 82 % of them all were daily alcohol users and other drugs (Douglas, A). Interestingly, another separate study was done in 1988 in the Washington District of the USA statistically showed that youth who were involved in peddling and using drugs most likely did commit other crimes more than those who only peddled the drugs.

Conclusion

It is therefore from the data discussed above that a conclusion portraying this hypothesis to be true is reached. Drug abuse is directly related to Juvenile delinquency as noted above. This is albeit the fact that further research needs to be conducted to find out whether drug abuse leads to juvenile delinquency or vice versa.

References

Dickinson, T. & Crowe, A. (1997). Juvenile Delinquency and Substance Abuse. Web.

Douglas, A. (2008). Drug War Facts.Web.

Puzzanchera, C. (2009). Juvenile Justice Bulletin. Washington D.C: U.S. Government Printing Office.

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Juvenile Delinquency and Reasons That Lead to It

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