Preventing Juvenile Delinquency: A Key to Crime Prevention

Juvenile delinquency affects every person in the country, including parents, families, teachers, victims of crimes, and perpetrators. However, whilst the delinquency rates have been decreasing drastically, the occurrences are still too high (Saminsky, 2010). Thus, the prevention of juvenile delinquency is a critical facet of crime prevention plan in contemporary society. Numerous programs have been instituted to help curb this rate. Markedly, some of these programs have been successful, although others have had minimal impacts. The journal, Preventing Juvenile Delinquency: Early Intervention and Comprehensiveness as Critical Factors, discusses several early intervention programs that currently exist, including the home visitation and Head Start programs. Although the two programs have been with high criticism by some scholars, I ultimately believe that the plans offer the best strategies to mitigate

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The home visitation programs are founded on the premise of a trained nurse or professional meeting with high risk and low-income mothers throughout the pregnancy period until the child is aged 24 months (Saminsky, 2010). Two primary reasons make me believe that this strategy is pivotal in reducing the alarming rates of juvenile delinquency. Firstly, the program provides a chance for nurses to offer mothers parenting skills, which are critical for the healthy development of a child (Saminsky, 2010). Secondly, the programs emphasize on reducing substance abuse and instilling correct holistic behaviors among the parents. Notably, the lack of parenting skills increases the risk of developing adolescent criminal behaviors among teens (Hirschi, 2017). Hirschi (2017) further adds that the skills imparted to the teens by their parents help them to regulate their emotions, which if they lack can increase chances of predicting future delinquency.

Finally, the head start program offers a more holistic approach since it considers critical aspects of the child's life. It provides nutritional guidance, comprehensive guidance, health services, social services, and parental involvement in low-income families (Saminsky, 2010). I believe that this program is effective in minimizing cases of juvenile delinquency since almost half of the people in low-income households are children and they are the ones that are at high risk of developing delinquencies behaviors (Pardini, 2016). Therefore, the ultimate goal of this program is to give the children who are underprivileged a "head start" in their life, a factor that is critical in helping them grow as responsible citizens.

References

Hirschi, T. (2017). Causes and prevention of juvenile delinquency. In The Craft of Criminology (pp. 105-120). Routledge.

Pardini, D. (2016). Empirically based strategies for preventing juvenile delinquency. Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Clinics, 25(2), 257-268.

Saminsky, A. (2010). Preventing juvenile delinquency: early intervention and comprehensiveness as critical factors. Inquiries Journal, 2(02).