ED PSYCH 321 Lecture Notes - Lecture 21: Truancy, Status Offense, Shoplifting
26 Apr 2018
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Lecture 2/26
Psychological Problems Lecture 2
Juvenile Offending
●Legal term and means breaking the law.
●Delinquency: crimes committed by minors addressed in juvenile justice system.
●Criminal behavior: crimes addressed in criminal justice system regardless of age.
●Status offense: delinquent acts that are NOT against the law for adults, but do violate
laws or codes of conducts for juveniles (truancy, buying alcohol under age ext.)
Many adolescents who are aggressive and violent that aren’t caught.
●Can include violence (assault, raper, robbery, and murder), and property crimes
(burglary, theft, arson)
○Increases in frequency between preadolescent and adolescent years.
○Peaks during high school then declines in young adulthood.
●Patterns within broader categories for juvenile offending:
○Authority conflicts (running away, truancy, ext.) Appear first as stubborn
behavior which escalates to defiance and disobedience and then running away.
○Covert antisocial behavior (stealing). Begins with lying, shoplifting. Then can
lead to property damage.
○Overt antisocial behavior (attacking someone with a weapon). Starts as bullying,
fighting. Escalates to gang fighting and then violent criminal activity.
○Doesn’t mean that every adolescent that indicates the beginning behaviors will go
through the whole cycle and will get to the worst stage, but can be reflected upon.
●Trends in rates of arrests over time:
○1993 highest point, dropping ever since.
○Reduction of the gender gap between males and females, 8:1 to 4:1 males to
females.
■More likely that less males are committing crimes rather than more
females.
■May indicate a difference in arrest practices.
●Adolescents are the most likely group to be victimized by theft, robbery, assault, and
rape. These numbers are even more intense in impoverished areas.
●Onset of serious delinquency begins between 13 and 16.
Two types of adolescent offenders:
●Life-course persistent offenders: Demonstrate antisocial behavior before adolescence,
typically are involved in delinquency during adolescence, at great risk for continuing
criminal activity into adulthood.
●Adolescent-limited offenders: engage in antisocial behavior only during adolescence.
