I feel that one of the biggest problems that the United States is faced with in the present day is juvenile crime. Juvenile crime does not only affect the individuals who commit the crime; it also affects the victim of the crime. This also affects the juvenile in their adult lives as the crime can be on their record as long as they live. Experts still have not found the main reason why juveniles commit crimes. However, they have come up with a number of reasons of why juveniles commit crimes, which I will be discussing in this paper.
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One of the major causes of juvenile crimes is violence in the home. It has been said that how you are raised can affect the person you become. So, doesn't it make sense to say that if you were raised poorly, you would be more prone to run into problems such as crime as you grow up? Many of these juvenile criminals have said to have been abused or neglected at their home. For the majority, they also grew up in a single-parent home with a low income. This causes the child to live in poverty. Research has found that the most of these children are more likely to be arrested, and are much more likely to commit a violent crime. .
Also, peer pressure causes the child to do things they might not really want to do, but they do it to fit in or be cool. Drugs and Alcohol use affects juveniles themselves which leads to higher crime; this is the major cause of peer pressure. Alcohol use is widely known to cause certain people to become violent and change their personalities, which leads to crimes. Drug use can cause the same effects, but also violence can occur as the juvenile needs to support their habit with money. .
Another reason for juvenile crime is media violence. In America, the average child will witness over 200,000 acts of violence on television, including 16,000 murders before the age of 18. It is pretty convincing that heavy exposure to televised violence is one of the causes of aggressive behavior, crime and violence in our society today.
