Juvenile Delinquency In The United States

Local, state, and federal governments (for years) have debated about what is the main cause of juvenile delinquency, they have also debated what they can do to help reduce the problem. Governments have argued that poverty is the main cause to juvenile delinquency, because it is one of the most commonly seen results. A juvenile delinquent is a young adult (usually ranging from the ages ten to eighteen) who commits an act that violates a law. Juvenile delinquency is not just a problem in the United States, juvenile delinquency is a problem all around the world. Joan Forbes, degree from the University of Sterling, and Daniela Sima, degree from the University of Strathclyde, discovered in their research that “around one in five children in the …show more content…
The act was established in 1974 by the Committee on Education and Labor U.S. House of Representatives. The act had eight purposes including; being able to provide thorough and ongoing evaluation of juvenile delinquency programs and assisting state and local governments remove juveniles from adult jails and lockups. Another known code is the one that the United States Department of Justice created, called the Federal Juvenile Delinquency Code. The act allows federal delinquency proceedings where state courts cannot or will not accept jurisdiction (United States Department of Justice). This means that the if a state court will not prosecute a juvenile, the act will make it possible for the juvenile to be prosecuted elsewhere. Anyone who is under the age of eighteen can benefit from the act until they reach the age twenty-one: however, if the person who committed the crime is eighteen then they are not able to benefit from the act and will be tried as an …show more content…
After many publicized teen suicides, “state legislators have vowed to eradicate bullying by enacting specific anti bullying statutes or amending existing criminal codes to encompass bullying,” (Harvard Law). However, state legislators have had little success while trying to eradicate bullying and amending existing codes. If a bully who is under the age of eighteen goes to jail for breaking the law, they are considered juvenile delinquents. A bully can break the law in several ways; for example, harassment (physical and verbal), death threats, and leading someone to commit suicide (involuntary or voluntary manslaughter) are ways that a bully could break the law and go to prison. The Iowa code indicates that, “a person [who] commits harassment when the person, purposefully and without legitimate purpose, has personal contact with another person, with the intent to threaten, intimidate, or alarm that other person,” (Harvard