Definitions of Juvenile Delinquency

Definition of Juvenile Delinquency

• Criminal behavior committed by minors
  • minors: depending on state laws, persons who fall under the statutory age limit of 17 or 18.
• Separate juvenile court
• charges confidential
• trial records secret
• names sealed

Question: Why is this done?

Status Offenses are additional constraints on minors that do not apply to adults.

• smoking
• drinking
• run away
• truancy
• curfews
• sexual activities
• disobey parents or teachers

Related Sociological Topics

• criminology
• deviance
• social psychology
• family
• law

Other related areas are for example

• criminal justice
• psychology

History of Children's Rights

Check the textbook:

Early History

• Children as second class citizen (cattle)
• self regulation:

British Poor Laws 1500 - 1700

• Children served their caring families as servants or farm laborers
• Apprentice Movement in Great Britain lasted even longer
  • voluntary
  • involuntary up to the age round 21

Voltaire, Rousseau: Children as persons

•Enlightenment, Humanism

Later History in the U.S. Historical Development of the Concept of Juvenile Delinquency

Check the back of the hardcover of our textbook for the timetable.

• What's missing? Drinking age of 21
• Do adolescents have more or less rights today?
• Are they taken too seriously, even to a dangerous extent. The construction or falsification of memories by a psychiatrist might be more severe at young age. What do children report to remember in a court case?

Questions:

• Should the government or the parents set the standards for juvenile misbehavior?
• At what age, if at all, are juveniles fully capable of understanding their actions?
• Should we drop status offenses as a criminal issue and instead offer the offenders help from social services?

   

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  Durkheim (1858-1917)
  
  Division of labor leads to cohesion

  Division of labor (see to Marx) gradually replaces religion as a basis of social cohesion.

  This process of change gives rise to social difficulties that result in anomie (a feeling of normlessness or despair)

  Social factors have a strong influence on suicidal behavior.

   

  Study of suicide

  • Anomic: in states of normlessness (e.g. Anomie)
  • Egoistic: in individualistic cultures (no control by others)
  • Altruistic: for the good of the group
  • Fatalistic: due to excessive social regulations

   

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  Question:

  What are the most likely reasons for the increase of suicide today?

  Is this a better, that means more precise explanation, than the book's "stress" explanation?

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Disclaimer: The documents linked to other sources on the WWW, others than http://www2.tltc.ttu.edu/Schneider2/ and its subdirectories, do not necessarily express the views of Texas Tech University or Dr. Andreas Schneider. @Copyright 2005 Andreas Schneider