Multicausality Juvenile Delinquency Is One

Multicausality

Juvenile delinquency is one of the most significant social problems in society today. Not only does it affect the youth and concomitantly teaching and learning, but also the future of society and the future of the country as a whole. Juvenile delinquents more often than not tend to become adult criminals. For several interconnected reasons, delinquency and crime are often the only pathways that such young persons see open for themselves and their future. Part of these reasons are the lack of adequate social services to rehabilitate delinquent youths and/or to prevent delinquency at the earliest possible stage of child development. As delinquency originates from human nature, it is however, as Mandell and Schram (p. 91) suggest, by no means a simple problem.

Cynthia Roberts (2008) substantiates this by noting that there are several possible causes for juvenile delinquency - these can be either external or internal. Roberts for example suggests that failure at school may be a risk factor that indicates a high possibility of future delinquency. This factor makes a learner feel inadequate to meet the increasing demands of law-abiding society, and he or she is driven towards alternative means of acceptance. This could lead to factors such as peer pressure.

Peers could make the otherwise "rejected" child feel accepted within a social setting, and hence encourage actions required to continue such acceptance. This could further exacerbate other possible contributing factors such as a difficult home life, where parents are involved in criminal activities, suffer from poverty or illness, or are abusive. Concomitantly, these factors may lead to drug or alcohol addiction, which further encourages crimes such as theft.

Other factors may include social pressures such as a lack of job opportunities, inadequate school systems, juvenile correctional facilities that do not rehabilitate the youth, or simply a personality that tends towards violence and crime.