Criminal behavior on the other hand is intentional behavior that violates a criminal code. It is termed intentional as it was not accidental or without justification or excuse. For one to be held criminally responsible, he must have known what he or she was doing during the criminal act and must have known that it was wrong. To convict someone of a criminal offense, the prosecution generally must prove that the defendant committed a voluntary act intentionally, or with a guilty state of mind. The statute defining the offense will have to specify what actions and what mental states constitute a particular crime. If a case goes to crime then a jury can convict the defendant only if the prosecutor proves all elements beyond a reasonable doubt. But if a defendant pleads guilty, the prosecutor is spared the burden of doing so, and a conviction is still entered on the record. The spectrum of criminal behavior is extremely wide, ranging from minor traffic violations to even murder. Many people all round from different socioeconomic groups break laws, just a few become persistent offenders who keep committing many serious crimes of violent nature. These are offenders who demonstrate a habitual, or persistent offending history of doing bad crimes.
The Juvenile Offender Juvenile Delinquency
It is an imprecise, social, clinical and also legal part for a wide range of law and norm violating behavior. The term delinquency itself is behavior against the criminal code committed by an individual who is still a minor.
In some states, the legal definition also includes status offending, which is not a behavior to the adult criminal code but is a behavior prohibited only for juveniles. Such examples as violating curfew laws and running away all qualify as status offenses. Social definitions of delinquency entail a broad part of youthful behaviors which are considered inappropriate, such as petty theft, vandalism, drug abuse, and even sexual promiscuity. Its not a must that the behavior is known to the police and in fact often does not. If it is known to the police it is not unusual for social delinquents to be referred to community social service agencies or to juvenile courts. A juvenile delinquent is a person who commits an act against the criminal code and who is pronounced delinquent by an appropriate court.
The legal term definition is normally restricted to people younger than 18 years of age. A very small number of states give criminal courts rather than juvenile courts. But all states allow juvenile to be tries as adults in criminal courts under certain conditions and for certain offenses. Psychology or psychiatric definitions of delinquency include the symptom based labels of conduct disorder. Conduct disorders is a diagnostic designation used to represent a group of behaviors shown by habitual misbehavior, e.g. stealing, setting fires, skipping school, running away from home, frequently telling lies. So as these definition the delinquent may or may not have been taken arrest of due to this behaviors, infect some of the behaviors are even against the criminal law.
The psychological term antisocial behavior is normally kept aside for more serious habitual misconducts and this entails actions which are directly harmful to the well being of other people. Its however to be distinguished from antisocial personality disorder, which is a psychiatric diagnostic label reserved mainly for adults at least 18 years of age who have displayed this conduct disorders as minors and continue to do so well into adulthood. Many psychologists like to own to the fact that the designations of conduct disorder and antisocial behavior, a growing number also approach the issue of crime and delinquency with a strong emphasis on developmental and cognitive process in a try to understand offending behavior. For example a psychologist named Moffitts tries to look at the developmental theory and provides a sketch for explaining crime from a developmental view. Also Hares concept of criminal psychopath offers an intriguing delineation of the cognitive, emotional and even the bio-psychological factors involved in repetitive, serious offending over a lifetime.
The Nature and extent of Juvenile Offending
Looking at the amount of delinquent behavior (i.e. what is reported and what is not reported to the law enforcement departments) is an unknown area. There is no complete data on the national incidences of juvenile delinquency. But still there are some statistics roughly collected by the law enforcement agencies like courts and even juvenile correctional facilities.
Unlawful acts done by juveniles can usually be divided into 5 categories
Unlawful acts against persons, Unlawful acts against property, Drug offenses, Offenses against the public order, Status offenses.
So as the statistics show, most referrals to juvenile court are for crimes committed against property (45), offenses against the public (21), crimes against persons (23) and drug offenses (11), as was carried out by Hartjen and Gibbons (1989). The first four categories are comparable to offenses committed by adults. Status offenses are acts that only juveniles can commit and can only be adjudicated by a juvenile court. Typical status offenses basically range from simple misbehavior such as violations of curfew, underage drinking, running away from home and truancy, to offenses which are interpreted very subjectively as unruliness and un-governable. The most common status offenses referred by the law enforcement agencies are underage drinking (92), running away from home (40), un-governable (11) and truancy (10).
The Juvenile justice system has supported differential treatment of male and female status offenders. Girls, for instance have been detained for maybe running away from home or incorrigibility when the same behavior in boys has always been ignored. As time passed like as we approached the end of the 20th century, about three times as many girls were detained for status offenses as were the boys (this is according to US Department of justice, 1988). In the recent years as a result of suits brought on behalf of Juveniles, many courts have made it clear that this discriminatory approach is unwarranted. A typical example is that of a status offense of running away which has now dropped to a 3 to 2 ratio, i.e. 3 female taken into custody for every 2 male (Farr and Gibbons, 1990). The biggest proportions of the status offenses that involve females are runaways which are 61. The practice of getting offenders to be confined is also diminishing.
It has been on high discussion that because status offenses lend themselves to so much subjectivity, they should be abolished from the purview of all state juvenile courts. There are some states that have clearly moved in this direction already. On the other side, many states dont call status offenders delinquents but do allow their detention and supervision.
Youth crime data are mostly collected from various sources official records of police arrests, reports from victims e.g. National Victimization Survey, self reports of delinquent involvement, in which national samples of youngsters are asked to fill in questionnaires of their own behavior, juvenile court processing, as normally reported by the national center for juvenile justice, juvenile corrections, as reported in the monograph children in custody, and also the probation and parole statistics which is reported in some governmental publications. The major three last sources of information have a major disadvantage of really underestimating the number of actual offenses since, even more than in the criminal system a high proportion of cases are either undetected or are dismissed before getting to the courts. In simpler terms, because of parental involvement and even community programs many offenders are diverted before going to the court. Also adding to problems of getting statistics on juvenile offenders, this court dockets do not reflect serious offending.
The Uniform Crime Reports
The FBIs UCR first compiled a report in the 1930s. This is the most frequently cited source of the US crime statistics. The UCR is a document that is produced annually it has accounts of crime known to law enforcement agencies all over the country, as well as arrests. Mind you that the UCR does not include in its data conviction data. This is strictly law enforcement information.
A term used by the department of Justice and also reported in the UCR is clearance rate, this refers to the proportion of reported crimes that have been dealt with and solved. According to the FBI, they consider a crime cleared when at least one person is arrested, charged with the commission of an offense and also turned to the court for prosecution. For Juveniles, a clearance by arrest is recorded when an offender is cited to appear in a juvenile court or before other juvenile authorities. Crimes may be cleared also by certain exceptional means, for example when circumstances outside the control of law enforcement eliminate the possibility of making an arrest.
Arrests for certain juvenile crimes, especially violent crimes, peaks in 1994 and have been decreasing slowly since then. After over a decade of increases, homicides by juveniles dropped in 2001 by 62 (and for adults it decreased by 29)
Youngsters who engage in habitual stealing even at very elementary levels of schooling also were demonstrating other behaviors such as lying, bullying and even frequent dishonesty.
Developmental Theory
A research conducted by some psychologists show that a very helpful way to understand delinquency is to view it as developing along at least 2 paths of development (Hartjen and Gibbons, 1989). On one path a child is seen developing a lifelong trajectory of delinquency and crime at a very tender age, this is most probably at around 3 or even younger. Its reported that these individuals show changing manifestations of having antisocial behavior. You can realize biting and hitting at the age of 4, shoplifting and truancy at the age of 10, selling drugs and even stealing cars at the age of 16, robbery and raping at the age of 22 and fraud and child abuse at the age of 30. These individuals who can also be termed as life course persistent (LCP) offenders continue their antisocial ways across all kinds of situations. Many of these LCP offenders exhibit neurological problems during their childhood, such as very difficult temperaments as infants, hyperactivity as children and also learning problems in school years.
LCP offenders commit a wide range of violent crimes over their lifetimes. Mostly LCPs as children miss opportunities to acquire and practice pro-social skills at all stages of their development. This is partially as a result of the rejection and avoidance by their childhood peers also because their parents and guardians become frustrated and give up on them.
The great numbers of delinquents are those who start offending during their adolescent times and stop offending at around 18 years. In reality these adolescent delinquent behaviors arise from peers and social environmental reasons. This offending is temporal. These adolescents are labeled as Adolescent Limited (AL). Research shows that a good number of adolescents are involved in forms of antisocial behavior during their teens but this antisocial behavior stops as they approach the responsibilities of young adulthood.
Attention DeficitHyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)
The term ADHD entails a wide variety of terms usually used in mental and educational contexts like minimum brain dysfunction (MBD) or hyperactivity, attention deficit disorder (ADD), or hyperactive-impulsive attention (ADHD). All these terms refer basically to 3 central behaviors
Excessive motor activity (one who cannot sit still heshe fidgets often)
Impulsivity (acts before thinking)
Inattention (does not seem to listen) (Farr and Gibbons, 1990).
The Criminal Psychopath
The term psychopath is used to describe a person who shows a discernible cluster of psychological, interpersonal and neuropsychological features that distinguish himher from the population in general. Psychopath may or may not engage in habitual criminal behavior. Even many of them do not have any history of serious antisocial behavior and also many serious offenders are not necessarily psychopaths. As a group they usually tend to be dominant, manipulative individuals characterized by an impulsive, risk taking and antisocial life style.
General Behavioral Characteristics of Psychopaths
It is identified by Cleckly (1941) the 10 cardinal behavioral features characteristic of the true psychopath (Farr and Gibbons, 1990).
Selfishness (also called egocentricity), An inability to love or real affection to other beings, Frequent deceitfulness or lying, Lack of guilt no matter how cruel the behavior is, Callousness or a lack of empathy, Low anxiety proneness, Poor judgment and failure to learn from experience, Superficial charm, Failure to follow any life plan, Cycle of unreliability.
The actions of a psychopath are driven by an excessive neuropsychological need for thrills and excitement. Its usual to realize that psychopaths are drawn to such interests as race car driving, skydiving and motorcycle stunts.
Antisocial Personality Disorder and psychopathy
Antisocial personality disorder is used to summarize many of the same features found in the criminal psychopath. Antisocial personality disorders refer specifically to a person who shows a pervasive pattern of disregard and violates the rights of others that actually begins in childhood and continues to adulthood.
Many serious assaults committed by non-psychopaths occurred during domestic disputes. On the other hand this pattern of violence is not usual in criminal psychopaths. Criminal psychopaths engage in violence frequently as a form of revenge or retribution. Many of the attacks seen by non-psychopaths are against women that they know well of while any of the attacks made by psychopaths are against men who are total strangers. Psychopaths re-offend faster and violate parole sooner and also commit more institutional violence than non-psychopaths.
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