The burning problem of our time
The problem of juvenile crime is one of the burning problems of our time.
A lot of explanations of juvenile crime can be found. All the reasons are related to each other. One can highlight features of a teenager's personality, his addictions, his relationships with family members, friends. It should be noted that the environment influences the teenagers too.
All offenders are generally characterized by a certain set of anti-social attitudes, skills, habits and aspirations.
Many offenders have such features as absence of aims in life, irascibility, lack of self control, touchiness, a negative attitude to law. Very often, these characteristic features unite them into groups, set specific connections and relationships among offenders. Psychologists, sociologists can infinitely list the causes of juvenile crime, but while thinking about this problem ,I was able to pick out some of the most explicit reasons ,which in my opinion influence directly the growth of juvenile crime. For example, one of the mainreasons is the influence of the family. The family is a social institution. It is here that socially significant qualities of a personality are formed. After reading various works of researchers, I came to the conclusion that most juvenile offenders were brought up in the families where quarrels, scandals, mutual insults, drunkenness were constantly going on. A lot depends on the relationships with parents. Certainly, they influence the teenagers. Parents are people who contribute to the development of the child's personality and besides they must remain the closest friends for their children.
Parents should know how to communicate with teenagers so that their children could be frank with them. Love and understanding must reign in the family.
A special problem is the problem of leisure. Juvenile offenders have much more free time than law-abiding teenagers but unfortunately they can't make proper use of it.
It is common knowledge that educational level affects the offender's personality. As a rule the level of education of juvenile offenders is lower than that of law-abiding teenagers. Among offenders we can frequently see dropouts in schools, pupils studying in corrective schools. Here also belong defects in legal consciousness among juveniles who commit crimes. All this is expressed in a negative attitude to law unwillingness to follow certain rules. Hence significant gaps in legal knowledge lead teens to the thought of "unfairness" of laws.
The place wherethey live also affects teenagers. In large towns social control over teenagers is weak, so they spend their time on addictions, for example, drug addiction or alcohol addiction.
Another global cause of crime is social inequality and stratification of the society. This objective process results in negative consequences, such as social conflicts, protests, which take the form of deviant behavior and crime.
Especially, I would like to point out the problem of information environment. If we analyze TV or radio programs, we can clearly see lack of spirituality in them. Computer games with familiar violence, destruction, phone games, cartoons , movies that break down the teens' nervous system and where there are fights, murders, and blood play a great role nowadays. Mass media practically promote an immoral lifestyle. They constantly advertise alcoholic drinks, tobacco products and so on. Consequently, every day teenagers watch this kind of advertising and theynaturally want to try these products.
Besides nationalism is also one of the most significant factors. You can often see how school children insult their classmates of other nationalities. Sometimes, as they become older abuse can be transformed into physical attacts and aggression. It should be noted that insulted children also fall into the group of potential criminals, because they start looking for ways to assert themselves and to take their place in this society.
In order to take measures for eliminating juvenile crime, it is absolutely necessary to study the environment in which the tendency to commit crimes appears. From my point of view the most suitable measures to eliminate juvenile crime are the following.
Teenagers do not know what to do in their free time, hence they spend it out of doors in the company of similar teenagers. In fact, these companies do not represent a special danger for the society, but if there appears aleader with obvious criminal tendencies, such a group begins to acquire negative features.
So parents have to know exactly where, with whom and how the children spend their free time and if they notice the negative influence of the society, they should try to find out the reason for it and take measures. And there fore, warm relationships between parents and their children are necessary. So sometimes it is necessary to use the help of a psychologist , for example special courses for parents will inform them about the features of a certain age group.
Teenagers from problem families such as those with many children, one parent and poor families have a tendency to crime. So, teachers should pay special attention to children from such families.
Problems at work, tensе relationships with collegues, stressful situations - all these factors affect the climate in the family. After a difficult work day many parents require some relaxation and are simply incapable to go deep into the problems of their children. They can't devote sufficient time to them. I consider that to avoid this problem, some changes have to be made at their workplace ,for example, working schedules should be reviewed, relaxation rooms should be opened and so forth.
In most cases, information environment influences the behavior of teenagers. Mass media deliberately bring up the tendency to crimes in children. It would be a good idea to create a youth channel on TV, which would reflect the most important aspects of teenagers' life.
As for TV it would be useful to remove "all those ads" and to show programms, which will promote a healthy lifestyle.
Organization of leisure activities for children is important too : сreating hobby groups, according to the interests of young people , groups of modern music fans , where teens can discuss new trends in music, video clips, share their impressions about some events andpossibly compose music themselves.
Besides schools should also organize pupils' leasure ,for example discos, contests and other forms of entertainment.
I hope all these measures will help eliminate juvenile crime.