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Реферат: Law Enforcement and the Youthful Offender

Реферат: Law Enforcement and the Youthful Offender

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Law Enforcement and The Youthful Offender

Juvenile delinquency is not a new invention; it is old as time. Socrates is

alleged to have observe: ”The children now love luxury. They have bad

manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders love chatter

in place of exercise. They no longer rise when their elders enter the room.

They contradict their parents. Chatter before company. Gobble up dainties at

the table, and tyrannize over their teachers.”

History also suggest that the separation of juvenile and adult offenders

dates back almost 2500 years, as early as fifth century B.C. under Roman Law.

The Twelve Tables of Roman Law, for example, made the theft of crops, when

perpetrated at night a capital crime. An offender under the age of puberty,

however, was usually fined and, on some occasions, flogged. Thus, as far back

as 451 B.C., juvenile crimes existed. Although juvenile delinquency has a

long history, youthful crime is now so alarming in extent and kind that we

must modify our approach to juvenile offenders.

Just how serious is the problem.

In the last ten years, crime in the United States has increased four times

faster than the national population! The problem is much more chilling when

one refers to statistics relating to juvenile crime. More crimes are now

committed by children under fifteen – by our more precious asset, the youth

of the United States – than by over twenty five! Reports from the National

Council on Crime and Delinquency and from the Federal Bureau of Investigation

show a staggering upsurge in the number of juveniles arrested foe serious

crimes.

So and what is juvenile delinquency? Juvenile delinquency means different things

to different people. To some, a juvenile delinquent is a boy or girl arrested

for a law violation. To others, a single appearance in juvenile court

identifies the delinquent. To many, the term covers a variety of antisocial

behaviors that offends them, whether or not the law is violated. Juvenile

delinquency is a blanket term that obscures rather than clarifies our

understanding of human behavior. It describes a large variety of youths in

trouble or on the verge of trouble. The delinquent may be anything

from a normal mischievous youngster to a youth that is involved in a law

violation by accidents. Or he may be a vicious assaultive person who is

habitual offender and is recipient of some gratification from his conduct. As a

blanket term, delinquency is like the concept of illness. A person maybe ill

and have polio or measles. The illness is different, the cause is different,

and the treatment is different. The same is true of delinquency. Like illness,

delinquency describes many problems that develop from varied causes and require

different kinds of treatment. So legally speaking, then, a juvenile delinquent

is a child (age defined by statue) who commits any act that would constitute a

crime if done by an adult and who is adjudicated as such by an appropriate

court.

The police concept classifies the delinquent as the statistical delinquent

and personality-disordered delinquent. The statistical delinquent is a

youngster who is involved in a delinquent act through impulsiveness or

immaturity. As an example, he is involved in an automobile theft without, at

that time, realizing the consequence of his actions. Such actions usually

occur “on the spur of the moment” while the individual is involved with other

youngsters. This youngster is not a recidivist and responds to agency

services provided. However he is a “statistic” because this impulsive

delinquent act is reported by the arresting agency and, in some cases, in a

subsequent referral to the juvenile court.

On the other hand, the personality-disordered delinquent is the youth who is

often involved in a series of antisocial acts that necessitates, in most

instances, a referral to the juvenile court and, in most cases, custodial

care or some type of official help.

So attempting to define a delinquent is extremely difficult. Juvenile

delinquency is not a simple term. It is very elusive and means many different

things to different individuals, and it means many different things to

different groups. When using the term ‘juvenile delinquency’ properly, one

realizes that almost everything a youngster does that does not meet with the

approval of individuals or groups may be referred to as a delinquent act. For

purposes of research, evaluation, or statistical records, such popular usage

is not acceptable.

There are ambiguities and variations in definitions of delinquency in the

United States. Many of the states do not agree on the description of a

juvenile delinquent. Statutory language is extremely broad and covers

virtually any form of antisocial conduct by juveniles. In virtually all

states, moral judgements of the community are an important ingredient in

defining a delinquent. Many children may be tried for not only violations of

sate statues or municipal ordinances but also for ‘ noncriminal behavior’

such as incorrigibility, truancy, and the use of obscene language. This are

crimes which, if committed by an adult, would result neither in arrest nor

court appearance. Age limitations here are a major problem because the states

set various and arbitrary upper-age limits on behavior deemed to be

delinquent.

Delinquency is often the result of a combination of factors, some of which

may be founded in environment of the child and others within the child

himself.

So before turning to the various theories of delinquency causation that are

discussed before, it is important to point out the correlative factors of

delinquency. Correlative factors relative not only to the physical contexts

of delinquency, but to the social-psychological climates closely associated

with delinquency.

The correlatives of delinquency are: age, sex, poverty, and social class

membership, primary group and schools.

And now I’d like to tell about this factors more closely. So the first is age

factor. If the causal roots of delinquency are debatable, there can be no

argument about the age factor. No matter what the category of time or

delinquency statistics – and they are both highly variable and both open to

serious question – one striking trend appears again and again: there is an

ever higher proportion of offenders among those of young age. The statistics

do seem to justify the following sets of conclusions: (1) the crime rate is

highest during or shortly before adolescence. (2) The age of maximum

criminally varies with the type of the crime (the age group of fifteen to

nineteen years has the highest official rate for theft auto; the age group

twenty to twenty-four has the highest official rate of robbery, forgery and

rape; and the age group thirty-five to thirty-nine has the highest rate for

gambling and violation of narcotic drug laws). (3) The age of first

delinquency and the type of crime typically committed at various age varies

from the area to area in cities, the age of first criminality is low in areas

of high rather than low delinquency (boys aged ten to twelve commit robberies

in some areas of large cities, while the boys of the same age commit only

petty thefts in less delinquent areas). And (4) The age of maximum general

criminality for most specific offences is higher for females than for males.

This trend is growing in many states and the importance of early

rehabilitative procedures before the individual is remanded to adult penal

custody is gaining wide support. Individualized treatment can best be

accomplished, it is being recognized, when individual is still young.

The second is sex factor. Boys are apprehended for offences approximately 3.5

times more frequently than are girls. The underlying reasons are not

difficult to locate. It is because of role-behavior difference and status

distinctions accorded to adolescence in the American culture, the society

expects girls to act differently tan boys, and surrounds their behavior with

restrictions that act as barriers to delinquent activity. Delinquency among

boys is induced largely by opportunities presented by the environment, while

among girls delinquency is due more often to emotional maladjustments and

personal inadequacies.

The third factor is poverty. Now few of the variables associated with crime

and delinquency have been more misunderstood than that of poverty. Contrary

to early investigations, recent studies indicate almost “null” relationship

between poverty and delinquency. This does not mean, however, that conditions

of poverty no longer breed crime and delinquency. Low economic status is not

a direct cause of delinquency. It is rather one of many variables that more

or less automatically “go together,” (including broken families, suicide,

certain types of psychosis, and alcoholism). But correlations and cause-and-

effect relationships are not necessarily synonymous. We can safely assert,

then, that although poverty and low economic standards are concomitant with

delinquency, they are not indispensable characteristics. To be “poor but

hones” is, in fact, the rule than the exception.

The forth factor is social-class membership: middle-class and lower-class

delinquency. Despite the professed democratic idea of a “classless” society,

a realistic appraisal of the contemporary social-economic map dictates an

irrefutable fact: Americans are stratified into hierarchical system of power,

prestige, and value-oriented groupings. Awareness of social stratification

groupings is unnecessary so long as people’s life styles, values, ideals,

motivations, and social intercourse are limited to sets of clique of like-

minded, similarly oriented people. American lower-class and middle-class

subcultures differ from one another at highly significant points. But the

most crucial differences, in terms of delinquency, relate to the vastly

different child–rearing techniques and social values instilled in children by

the two classes. At the risk of generalizing, it can be asserted that where

the middle class typically stresses parent/children relationship geared to

love and dependence through late adolescence, the lower class tend to give

their children physical and psychological freedom well before the adolescence

years. It is far from surprising, then, that delinquency finds far more

fertile ground in the lower class sectors of the typical city – and

particularly in those that are situated in slum areas. Bearing in mind what

we have already observed about the adolescent rejection of parental values

and need for peer-group identification, we can readily see the intense grip

that the gang – delinquent or “legitimate” – holds on the lower class

adolescent’s loyalties. More frequently - almost typically, in fact – the

middle class delinquent is a diametric counterpart of the lower class

delinquent. Where the lower class delinquent is smoothly socialized and well-

liked by hi peers, the former middle-class delinquent is often seriously

maladjusted ant at odds with his fellow adolescents.

So as one can see, the juvenile justice system has many segments. Police,

courts, correctional institutes, and aftercare services (the correctional

process that deals with the juvenile after institutionalization has taken

place is referred to as aftercare services). The interrelationship between

various segments of the system is, apparently, the most significant problem

in the juvenile justice system. In other words, the system is no more

systematic than the relationship between police and court, court and

probation, probation and correctional institutes, correctional institutes and

aftercare services. In the absence of functional relationship between

segments, the juvenile justice system is vulnerable to fragmentation and

ineffectiveness.

As previously noted, delinquency is a phenomena as old as history and as

complex as nuclear physics. Its causes are multiply, and the emphasis shifts

with the changes in society. Nor are all delinquents cast from the same mold

– they are individual human beings with all their differences. Because there

are so many possible causes of delinquency, a wide variety of factors tend to

be held responsible – separately or in combination. The individual himself,

his family, his neighbors, his school, his church, his place of residence,

his government – an endless list which is, thus, the reason for ambiguities

in theories. The result: everyone is responsible for delinquency and, of

course, when everyone is responsible for something, no one really is.

Traditionally, all efforts in prevention have been aimed toward containing

and repressing incipient delinquents through law enforcement agencies. In

recent years, there have been strong efforts to improve rehabilitative

processes for already identified delinquents so that the amount of recidivism

might be reduced. So the way to solve the delinquency problem is to prevent

boys and girls from becoming delinquents in the first place. Society is not

solving that problem because the emphasis is not placed on that all-important

job: prevention. Moreover, it appears that society is blocked by a

psychological wall of fallacies which keep everyone busy with impractical

plans that are doomed to fail right from the start. The correctional program

in the United States seems to be content with treating individual delinquents

after they have already committed delinquent acts, while such programs

overlook most entirely the factors that contribute to delinquency. Society

must find a way to correct the faulty home and environment before child

becomes a police case. It is both unfair and impractical to rely upon a few

private a agencies to do this large-scale, complex public job.

The primary responsibility of law enforcement is the control and prevention

of crime and delinquency through the enforcement of laws that are necessary

for the good order of society. Since many criminal are committed by minors

under the age of eighteen years, a large proportion of police works involves

the detection, investigation, apprehension, and referral of these juveniles.

In addition, law enforcement agencies are concerned with minors who come to

their attention for noncriminal reasons. The initial handing of neglected

children, for example, is often a police matter; and police officers also

have the responsibility of dealing with runaway, incorrigible, and wayward

youngsters.

In almost every aspect of their work with juveniles, the police must have

contact with at least one other agency in the community. It must be

recognized that the police services are only a part of the total community

effort to promote the welfare of children and young people. For police

services to be made more effective, then, they must be planned in

relationship to the overall community program as well as to the services

offered by individual agencies. Although police officers, and particularly

special juvenile officers, should be familiar with the contribution and

operation of all agencies in the community (an up-to-date directory of

agencies can be of great value), it is clear that the major part of their

work with children will involve contact with only a limited number of

agencies. This contact should normally be close and continuous and,

therefore, the relationship should be based on a clear understanding and

amicable acceptance of the role of each of the participants. But in

conclusion I want to say that there is often a lack of communication between

the police and other young serving agencies in the community resulting in

mutual criticism and feelings of hostility. Police sometimes say such

agencies fail to advise them of action taken concerning juveniles brought to

their attention. Agency personnel, on the other hand, often attribute the

hostility and bad behavior of the juveniles turned over to them by the police

to the unsympathetic “treatment” given them by the police. Social agencies

personnel, including probation officers and even some judges, see only

effective treatment. On the other side, some police see such agency

personnel as unrealistically soft and permissive even to the extent of being

“played for suckers” by cunning, worldly wise “young punks.” Feelings such as

these on both sides are certainly not conducive to effective communication to

say nothing of real cooperation.

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