Juvenile Delinquency
Juvenile
Delinquency
C
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hild is the father of Man. This line by William Wordsworth
is so profound that it has made its way to the list of cherished English
idioms. A paradox at first sight, but an ocean of wisdom in its import! Every
person on earth is here to develop his personality. What he eventually makes of
himself is a product of years and years of internal and external influences-
right from his childhood to his adolescence to his youth to his greying years.
Of these, it is his formative years- those during his adolescence- which prove
most decisive. It is during these years that a person usually embarks upon his
future path- the path that either leads him to eternal bliss or one that leads him
to infernal doom.
Any deviation in this age can be compared to an angular
deviation- the farther the line goes, the more it distances itself from the
straight path. Adolescence is a period of internal conflict... a phase wherein
he is neither boy nor man. He is struggling to shed his image of a child and
trying to reach out and touch the threshold of adulthood. This internal
conflict is then influenced by external factors. If this conflict occurs in a
healthy environment, he turns out into a fine gentleman. But if his environment
is polluted, he finds himself sinking into a quagmire that renders him delinquent.
What are these external factors? The first and most
important factor is his upbringing. Children growing up in broken and disturbed
families or those with single parents are more prone to develop criminal
tendencies. An absolute lack of parental supervision and neglect can have a
disastrous effect on the child. Parents in today’s age are so busy with their
careers and social obligations that they are completely oblivious of their
children’s activities. Who are their friends? What have they been doing so late
in the night? What are their habits, their hobbies, their interests? The same
holds true for overindulgent and unreasonably strict parents. If a child does
not have his parents to confide with, to share his concerns with, to play and
laugh and weep with, he would find someone else to fulfil his emotional needs. This
‘someone else’ could be anyone- his teachers, his relatives, his friends....
And while we can be a tad assured that his teachers and relatives would guide
him right, it is his friend circle that is the cause of concern... and a major
concern at that.
The environment a child grows up in is also a determining
factor. The behaviour and habits of his father, his older siblings and his
acquaintances condition the child. Your child might not listen to you, but he
observes you and would emulate you. If the father is given to expletives and
swear words, if the elder brother is neck deep in obscenities, if immorality is
rampant in his locality, if evil is pervasive and entrenched in his society, there
is very little hope of the child coming out clean. Peer pressure more often
than not compels a young man to adopt habits that he might otherwise be averse
to. The addiction to cigarettes, gutka, alcohol and pornography is a vivid
example of peer influence. Easy, unrestricted and unguided access to the internet
has raised such an unprecedented storm in recent years that child psychologists
are at their wits’ end to cope with this crisis.
The crimes that juveniles commit can be broadly classified
into four categories- status offences, sexual offences, property crimes and
violent crimes.
Status
offences are those that are specific to their age group
and would not be counted as an offence if an older person were to commit it.
Smoking and drinking below the age of 18 or truancy or running away from home
are included in this category. They are characteristic of the adolescent rebellion
we have discussed above, and although seemingly innocuous, they can lead to
graver manifestations if not nipped in the bud.
Sexual
offences take up maximum space in the list of juvenile
delinquencies. The spurt of puberty and the urge to experiment with one’s
sexuality makes an adolescent vulnerable to pornography and sexual encounters
with peers of both genders to varying extents. Given the rising cases of
premature puberty being witnessed these days- thanks to the moral degeneration of
society and ready access to pornography- sexual offences are now being noted among
age groups hitherto untouched by this menace. Although a certain level of
experimentation can be condoned as inquisitiveness and curiosity, it is the
line of approach and the lengths to which the person goes that decide the
severity of the offence. From casual fondling and flirting to passing lewd
remarks to getting physical and from consensual encounters to paedophilia and
even rape, juveniles have been guilty of everything under the sun. The seeds of
licentiousness, homosexuality and other deviant sexual inclinations are sown in
the early teenage and they can develop into ugly weeds by the time their teenage
ends, leaving their future absolutely marred and tarnished for life.
Property
crimes involve burglary, theft, arson, larceny,
shoplifting etc. The motive in these cases is to obtain money by illicit means.
These can either be directed at funding status offences (beg, borrow, steal) or
they signify something much more ominous.
Violent
crimes include assault, murder, abduction, extortion,
harassment, rape and other such crimes where the victim is physically harmed.
They are usually suggestive of the child being involved in a gang or antisocial
outfit that exploits the gullibility of youngsters to meet its own objectives.
Solutions:
Preventive:
Preventing juvenile delinquency not only benefits the society (the potential victim)
but also the child himself. If not checked at the right time, the negative
tendencies developing within a child can become firm, rigid and irreversible
later in his life. Providing a healthy environment at home, optimal parental guidance
and regulation, proper education, a good friend circle and a civilized society
alone can nurture and nourish the child to grow up into a responsible law-abiding
citizen. The role of religion and spirituality is very important here. A
cognizance of the rights of God and the rights of fellow human beings, respect
for mankind and other forms of creation and a firm sense of accountability in
the hereafter are those values that make a man worthy of the honour he has been
accorded in the Qur’an. If these things are absent, no baton of law can keep
them from falling to the ‘lowest of the low’. A resurgence of religiosity among
the youth in recent times is indeed having its positive effects. Various
religious organizations have begun directing their efforts towards the youth to
make them more productive and make their life more meaningful. A life without a
purpose is the vacuum that delinquency tends to fill.
Corrective: Arresting juvenile offenders and putting them behind bars
with other such offenders having negative and criminal predilections is doing
more harm than good, making matters worse. This should be avoided in all but
extreme cases like rape and murder where offenders above the age of 16 are
required to be punished at par with adult criminals to serve as a deterrent to
potential delinquents. For all other cases, proper counselling and
rehabilitation centres are required. Tender Loving Care (TLC) is the keyword here.
This should be coupled with the counselling of parents, relocation, fosterage
and other such subjective approaches as per individual needs and indications.
-Dr.
Parvez Mandviwala
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