Homework Question on JUVENILE JUSTICE
Read “Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice: Female Juvenile Delinquency and Gender Bias in Punishment and Behavior in the Juvenile Courts,” by Jennifer Thibodeau at http://scholarship.law.wm.edu/wmjowl/vol8/iss3/5 . What characteristic (social, physical, psychological) do you consider to have the most influence upon female juvenile delinquency?
Please cite page numbers when quoting the readings.
Homework Answer on JUVENILE JUSTICE
Social Characteristics have the most impact on juvenile delinquency as compared to physical or psychological. In fact, social characteristics trigger or enhance the other characteristics. The genesis stems from association with peers and their male counterparts. Once similarities are stuck, girls will either learn from their peers or study other members of the society to establish their favorite criminal activity.
A worrying trend is the ability to study laws and regulations during their first time offence (Thibodeau, 2001, p. 489). Socialization with radicalized peers provides an avenue to maneuver the court system for release. Furthermore, the knowledge accessed is often not intended for rehabilitation but to enhance their evasion of law enforcers for repeat offences. Therefore, social characteristics allow girls to be better criminals that will assess and approach a criminal activity from a cautious angle. This is unlike boys who test extremes in establishing authority amongst their admirers.
The society has also propagated a soft-approach that considers female criminal acts as superficial and easy to straighten. In fact, such behavior is perceived to be way-ward as an implication of the temporary nature that does not constitute to crime (Thibodeau, 2001, p. 491).