Delinquency and Juvenile Crime

Delinquency and Juvenile Crime

Definitions of Delinquency and Status Offenses

Delinquency also referred to juvenile offending or youth crimes, which is basically known as the participation of youth in illegal behavior by juveniles (minor). A person who is under the age of 18 and involved in any act that considered to be as a crime if he or she would be adult, than the person presented in juvenile courts. Secondly, depending on the severity and type of the committed offense, scenario could be different because one could be charged as adult depending on the committed crime (UN, n.d.).

On the other hand, status offense is known as the illegal behavior of child who is below the age of 18, which might not be a criminal behavior, if the same behavior adopted by adult. The behavior that fall under the category of status offense is alcohol consumption, sexual behavior, truancy and running away. However, status offenses and the treatments for juvenile offenders have been debated for long because of the juvenile courts role that played in determining the punishments for the status offenders (Rose, n.d.).

Comparison of Juvenile Courts and Adult Courts

The criminal justice system in the United States for the adults and juveniles differ in many ways, therefore, some of the differences are highlighted below for the comparison;

Juveniles are not prosecuted for the crimes committed by them, rather more focus is on delinquent acts. However, if the delinquent acts considered being really serious, than it are up to the judge to give a verdict in association to crime and juvenile may be tried in adult system.

In the same way, juveniles do not possess the right to go for a public trial by jury. For juvenile, simple hearing followed in a way that juvenile who charged by the crime brought to the court and trail portion of the case based on the judge that carry out hearing evidence and giving the ruling on the basis of evidence whether or not the minor is delinquent. This phenomenon is known as adjudication hearing.

In this regard, if the court gave the ruling that juvenile deemed delinquent, than court has the right to decide what action should be taken. At this point, the juvenile system is different from adults because in adults' case, the main motive is to punish, whereas, in juvenile system, the goal is to rehabilitate and motivate the minor to overcome the negative points.

At last, the juvenile courts are comparatively informal as compared to adult courts. For instance, in juvenile courts, the rules about the admissibility of evidence may be lenient (LaMance, 2013).

One could compare both the systems through the overall aim because for the juvenile justice system, the aim is to recuperate and reform juvenile offender, so that they can resume functioning normally in the society. Therefore, the focus is on providing different alternative sentences that keep juvenile out of jail environment by passing ruling of parole, probation or other diversionary ...