Juvenile Justice

The five dimensions of law-violating behaviors are age of onset, escalation of offenses, specialization of offenses, desistance from crime and transition to adult crime. These are the behaviors I will discuss and explain how they help provide guides and key patterns to understanding the causes of crime in juveniles.

As a child grows up its parents try to teach them right from wrong. The age of onset is when juveniles begin to break the law. "Studies show that the younger juveniles begin law-violating behaviors the more likely they were to continue such behaviors" [1](Bartollas & Miller, 2011 p.45).

According to Bartollas & Miller (2011) the increase in the number of crimes committed by and individual is called the escalation of offenses.[2] What this means is that as children get older they commit more crimes and sometimes more serious crimes. The different reporting studies have varying statics that make it hard to determine the peak age range of criminal offenses committed by juveniles.

The specialization of offenses is when a juvenile offender commits the same crime over and over again. This could be any type of offense; burglary, robbery, murder or lesser crimes that a juvenile likes to commit or has to commit because of gang involvement. According to Bartollas & Miller (2011) "females specialized in official offense and were referred to court for the same offense."[3]

Desistance from crime is hard to gather accurate numbers because of the gaps in offenses. They cannot accurately keep numbers because they are unaware if the offender has truly stopped offending or there is a lull in the crime. There are five categories to explain the reports. "Maturation and aging accounts of desistance, developmental accounts of desistance, social learning accounts of desistance and life-course account of desistance.[4] (Bartollas & Miller, 2011, p. 46). These categories try to take into account everything from a juveniles desire to change to the removal of situations that caused the offense.

Some juveniles continue to commit crimes into their adult lives. This is the transition to adult crime. As juveniles commit crimes they become bolder and want to commit more crimes for the rush or the thrill of it. The transition to adult crime for some is a way of life, for instance if a juvenile is in a gang he must commit crimes to show that he or she belongs or is a direct order from a gang leader. Other aspects that could determine if a juvenile continues to commit crimes into adulthood are; poor parenting, lifestyle, or family members that commit crimes.

While all of these law-violating behaviors have a way to be traced there is no way they can be complete and 100% accurate.