Juvenile delinquency in the United States

This page is primarily concerned with juvenile delinquency in the United States. For information on juvenile delinquency in general, see juvenile delinquency. In addition, although the term juvenile delinquency often refers to juvenile as both the victims and the aggressors, this page only refers to juveniles as the actual delinquents. The information and statistics for juveniles as victims rather than offenders is much different. For information about juveniles as the victims of violent attacks, see trafficking of children, child abuse, child sexual abuse, or prostitution of children.

Juvenile Delinquency refers to criminal acts committed by children or teenagers, specifically anyone below the age of eighteen. Common sentiment on this issue is that the crimes they commit hurt society and hurt the children themselves. Much research and debate revolves around the problem of juvenile delinquency in the US. The research is mainly focused on the causes of juvenile delinquency and which strategies have successfully diminished crime rates among the youth population. Though the causes are debated and controversial as well, much of the debate revolves around the punishment and rehabilitation of juveniles in a youth detention center or elsewhere.

Ever since the evolution of radios and television gave us the ability to project music, sports, news, etcetera, the world has been able to tune in to what is happening halfway across the world from their location. The 1950s boomed with increases in income, scientific and medical increases, entertainment, and a tremendous media increase starting with the portable radio. After World War II, couples who had put off having children either before or during the war finally had the chance to start a family and live normal lives. Hence, the baby boom initiated the start of a very busy decade. After the first portable radio came out, media rapidly increased. People could advertise themselves to people all around the country and even to people driving in their cars. This media evolution gave birth to a whole new way of living for the generations to come and for the first time ever there was a generation gap. Media was reaching everyone and molding people's lives like never before. Anyone could access comical, frightening, romantic, or sarcastic information, movies, music and so on with the click of a button. A rise in juvenile delinquency was one of the main causes of the baby boom and media increase. Teenagers could access more information at their age than any other generation. As a result, teenagers witnessed crime, murder, stealing, cheating, lying, and so on to be "cool" like how they saw in the media. This led to a high rise in juvenile delinquency because more children and teens were implanted with the thought that carrying out bad actions was okay. Lead has also been linked to juvenile delinquency, it was added to gasoline from the 1920s through 1979, however it was not widely understood to be neurologically harmful in minute amounts until the 1950s. For further information on this topic, and more, please see the references below or the juvenile delinquency page.

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