Juvenile Delinquency and Society Throughout time, crime has played in an important part in the function of society. We see crime in the news everyday, in our communities, in our schools, and in some cases, even in our immediate families. Which reaches out and takes a stranglehold on the human-interest angle of the general public's mind, and makes us become enveloped in the thought processes of the modern criminal. Along these lines, the fascination with delinquent behavior and the mind of the delinquent has prompted the development of numerous theories, and the continuous, yet rigorous, study of youth behavior. But only recently has the concept of juvenile delinquency become an issue in the way crime among youth is viewed. Our society tends to hold children in special regards in most cases, and the implementation of the juvenile court system led to the development of specific theories such as neutralization, labeling, and social control theories, by people which had a first-hand interest in these juvenile delinquency cases. These theories help investigators, parents, family, peers, and the community, to better understand why our children do what they do. For years, factors such as gender, race, age, and social class, have been the dominant force in research studies to explain the juvenile delinquent and their actions (Hewitt and Regoli, 2000). The culture that exists today is different than the American culture twenty years ago, and in twenty years from now, American culture will have yet again, undergone a similar reconstruction. Trends in our daily trials and tribulations, affect how a youth will choose to live his or her own life, whether or not they choose what is right or wrong, or stray from the path of being a model citizen. These factors and how they interact with the relation of the theories of neutralization, labeling, and social control, is crucial to our situation, with fifteen year old Matt, who is of lower class status, and has seen himself involved in the theft of an automobile.
