Causes and Effects of Juvenile Crime

I feel that one of the biggest problems that the United States is faced with in the present day is juvenile crime. Juvenile crime does not only affect the individuals who commit the crime, it also affects the victim of the crime. This also affects the juvenile in their adult lives as the crime can be on their record as long as they live. Experts still have not found the main reason why juvenile’s commit crimes. However, they have come up with a number of reasons of why juvenile’s commit crimes, which I will be discussing in this paper.. The largest, and most common risk factor is the demise of the family life and the increase in family violence. Many say that how you are raised will make you the person that you are as you grow up. So, doesn’t it make sense to say that if you are raised poorly, you would be more prone to run into problems such as crime as you grow up? Between the 1970’s and early 1990’s, the number of juveniles living in poverty has grown largely for a number of reasons. This factor alone has caused a noticeable increase in crimes by juveniles. Many of these juvenile criminals also said to have been abused or neglected. For the majority, they also grew up in a single-parent household. Resear

The increased availability of guns has also played a big part in escalating the number of crimes committed by juveniles. Drug use can cause the same effects, but also violence can occur as the juvenile needs to support their habit with money. The reasoning for this is that psychologists have determined that the symptoms of child abuse are "high levels of aggression and antisocial behavior". In Los Angeles, juvenile delinquency cases involving weapon violation grew by 86 percent from 1988 to 1992, which was more then any other type of juvenile offense (http:www. In a Philadelphia movie theater, when the movie Scream 2 first came out, a teenager stabbed another teenager while watching it. It is pretty convincing that heavy exposure to televised violence is one of the causes of aggressive behavior, crime and violence in our society today. That movie was based on a serial killer who would stab his victims to death. This problem is not as large now as it was twenty or thirty years ago when there was not as much known about these potential problems, but it still is a major concern when linked to the effects of using these chemicals while pregnant. This is a problem which leads them to be juvenile criminals. I know from experience that this is true.