Participation of Juveniles in Deviant Behavior Essay

From the very dawn of the formation of civil communities, some types of behavior had been classified as unlawful and had been discouraged. Even the earliest legislations had inflicted punishment for infringement of the extant laws, in wider interests of their society. This practice has continued to this day and it is common knowledge as to what does or does not constitute unacceptable or deviant behavior. Deviance has been described as the breach of the cultural standards and one such instance is crime. An important subset of crime is juvenile delinquency or crimes committed by juveniles. Juvenile deviant behavior occurs due to a number of causes and some of these are a disturbed home environment, difficulty in adjusting to the school environment that results in discontinuing school and in poor academic performance and associating with immoral persons. Traditionally, the perspective of criminology has been restricted to the contravention of laws laid down by society. On the other hand, research in the context of deviancy has adopted a much wider perspective and labels any abnormality that is socially prohibited as being deviant. Accordingly, the use of obscenities in speech, mingling with antisocial element and alcoholism constitute deviant behavior. In other words, the sociological approach to deviance encompasses the restricted perspective of traditional criminology (Deviant Behaviour , 1994). The various steps that culminate in the establishment of deviant identity are ignominy, social rejection, and membership of a subculture that is deviant and assumption of a deviant role. The assumption is that social processes act in such a manner that the individual is compelled to assume a deviant role, because of the exclusion of the more conventional positions. The result of the adoption of such a deviant role is that the individual may become a member of a deviant subculture and may eventually adorn the role of permanent deviancy (Deviant Behaviour , 1994). Some of the major causes for socially deviant behavior amongst juveniles have been identified, by researchers, as childhood abuse, neglect and trauma. The abuse of narcotic substances has been considered to be the root cause of trauma in juveniles and most of the juveniles in detention were either addicted to drugs or had been addicted to drugs prior to incarceration. Furthermore, poverty has been found to be closely associated with violent crime and homicide. It was observed in many ghettos in the US that the crime rate was on the increase wherever there was economic deprivation, whereas there was a reduction in crime rates in areas located outside these ghettos (Blank, 1997. P. 47). It had been opined by the chief of the child development and behavior branch of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development or the NIH that crime, pregnancy amongst teenagers, discontinuation of school and substandard academic performance were caused by the lack of adequate reading skills. Moreover, various research projects that had been conducted in the past, had established that a dearth of reading skills had a direct bearing on the proliferation of juvenile delinquency (Hodges, Giuliotti, & Porpotage, 1994). In 1951, a survey conducted by Melvin Roman, revealed that approximately eighty  ¬Ã¢â‚¬â€œ five percent of those who were receiving treatment in the clinic attached to the New York City Children’s Court, had impaired reading skills. It was also stated by many authorities that detained juveniles were invariably characterized by academic achievement that was unsatisfactory (Hodges, Giuliotti, & Porpotage, 1994). Economic deprivation produces a variety of deviant behavior in juveniles, who fall victim to anger, apathy, ignorance and desperation. Ignorance prevents juveniles from taking advantage of the education system to obtain skills that could prove to be adequately remunerative and this in turn results in discontinuation of schooling. Moreover, some of these juveniles might have parents who indulge in the abuse of drugs and this could embolden them to undertake risks that could prove fatal, in order to experience pleasure for a small duration of time.