Juvenile Delinquency Essay

Some of the dissonance between the federal agenda and what was happening in the states at that time may have been caused by significant changes in legal procedures that made juvenile court processes more similar—though not identical—to those in criminal (adult) court.When a community works to prevent juvenile delinquency, people point to varying opinions as solutions.The two opposing views are boot camps and intervention facilities.The boot camps are military style arrangements with strict routines and focus on discipline whereas the interventions involve rehabilitation centers and counseling.Boot camps are not effective in the long run as they are simply providing kids with a tough image, and the rehabilitation centers along with detention facilities aim to fix the problem at its roots.Criminal acts must be suppressed, condemned, and punished.Nevertheless, children and adolescents who commit criminal acts must be educated and supported in a growth process that should be the objective of government policy for all young people, including young offenders.In 1997, 40 percent of all those living below the poverty level in the United States were under the age of 18 (Snyder and Sickmund, 1999).Structural changes in society, including fewer two-parent homes and more maternal employment, have contributed to a lack of resources for the supervision of children's and adolescents' free time.Many such changes were enacted after the juvenile violent crime rate had already begun to fall.The rehabilitative model embodied in the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974, focusing on the needs of the young offender, has lost ever more ground over the past 20 years to punitive models that focus mainly on the offense committed.