Throughout the stage of adolescence, they face many social, emotional and physical changes. Adolescents are going through a stage of identity verses role confusion, trying to find out who they are. Some adolescents go down the wrong path in life possibly dealing with peer pressure, drugs, alcohol, sexual intercourse and violent behaviors. A main factor that can affect adolescent social and emotional development is their lifestyle and or environment. Adolescent coming from poverty background, tend to have a higher risk of juvenile delinquency. .
Juvenile delinquency is said to be "a broad range of child and adolescent behaviors, including social behaviors, status offenses and criminal acts." Juvenile delinquencies are stereotyped as being bad teenagers, but people don't full understand juvenile delinquents reasoning for doing that act or behaving in such ways. There is said that juvenile delinquency has a small percentage of violent acts. Most juvenile delinquents are charged for doing something unnecessary or totally uncalled for, but mostly not a violent act. African American or Hispanics are mostly stereotyped as being juvenile delinquency because of the way they look, their particular age, appearance or for just being a minority. The assumption for minorities to have this stereotype of juvenile justices is because they are known to live in poverty. And schools districts within the poverty areas are having budget cuts, which cut out counselors in high schools resulting in adolescents not receiving support or help emotionally or socially. The cause of the shortage of counselors may increase the juvenile delinquency because they are not given the support that they need to survive within their neighborhood. Also within some researches, there are larger numbers of cases with juvenile justice such as shooting in suburban middle / high class areas. "Because racial bias continues to permeate all aspects of the judicial process, it is critical that states continue to be push to address this serious problem.