A Case Study On Juvenile Delinquency

Juvenile delinquency seems to be a huge factor in today’s society. Many of the youths that commit crimes are “at-risk”. At-risk is a term frequently used to describe children. The term really has no definitive answer to what at-risk is, other than a child who faces a much higher risk than other children. This could be in the form of abuse, being disabled, or even having a low self-esteem (Moore, 2006). Being at-risk may have some repercussions and may cause the individual to commit crimes, this is not a fact, but rather a probability. To get these answers and look into delinquency we need to think of the causation, correction, and prevention of crime in general. To make things even more difficult when trying to discover why a child does what

Abby is a 13-year-old Caucasian female who was recently picked up by the police for running away. This is not the first time Abby has run away, but it is the first time the police have found her. In past runaways, Abbey’s parents were the ones to find her and would bring her home. Abby lives in an upper middle class neighborhood with her mother and stepfather. She attends a great school, but her studies are lagging. She has been getting poor grades, has dropped out of all her extracurricular activities, and has become very withdrawn. In this particular instance, the police find her and she is under the influence of drugs and alcohol. When questioned by the police, she reports she ran away because her stepfather has been sexually abusing her for several years, and she cannot take it anymore. In this particular case we can deduce that the best theory to associate with it would be the theory on child abuse and neglect having an adverse effect on a child. child abuse and neglect are important causal factors in delinquency. In fact, numerous studies over the past 50 years have suggested links between delinquency and child abuse and neglect. Research has also shown suggested that children who break the law, especially through acts of violence, often have a history of maltreatment as children. As many as 10 million children are exposed to domestic violence in their homes annually (Cox, Allen & Hanser,

Examples of intervention in child maltreatment include the investigation of child abuse reports by state child protection agencies, clinical treatment of physical and psychological injuries, family counseling, self-help services, the provision of goods and services such as homemaker or respite care, legal action against the perpetrator, and removal of the child or the offender from the home (National Research Council, 1993). The officers receiving the outcry need to fully investigate the allegations and possibly seek legal actions against the step-father. The mother needs to be made aware so that bonding between the two can begin to heal and the child can start to feel safe again with the step-father gone from the residence. In this case, counseling would also be a superb idea and can help Abby start to heal emotionally as well with the trauma she has been exposed