Juvenile Delinquency & Social Class
Juvenile Justice: Juvenile Delinquency & How Perceptions of Social Class Affect Treatment of Young so-called 'Criminals'
It is common to view issues pertaining to justice in purely retributive terms or positivist terms. In other words, conservatives tend to view the system of juvenile justice in terms of crimes that must be morally punished by society. In contrast, liberals often view crimes; particularly crimes committed by juveniles who are presumably less cognizant of societal norms and whom society still has a responsibility to educate, in positivist terms. In other words, if the causes of the crime are alleviated, such as poverty, then it is assumed the crimes that are the result of such poverty will disappear. This paradigm of individual and societal responsibility, eschewing both paradigm's accuracy and efficacy for the moment, indicates how the language used to express concepts of justice affect the way crime and accused criminals are perceived in judicial terms. The class, race, and milieu of the individual in question, and the individual accused of a crime affects the way the individual is classified within the system of juvenile justice and also thus the way the crime is punished or treated, depending on the paradigm used -- of delinquency or mental illness.
The perceptions of the juveniles themselves,...
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