Till recently, the community I live in was primarily a residential,
middle class neighborhood that enjoyed a feeling of peace and security in
what was seen as a safe district. Today, that same community is
increasingly worried about a growing problem of juvenile delinquency caused
by the commercial and low cost residential developments in next-door areas.
While the community is concerned about juvenile delinquency leading to a
higher crime rate, there is also worry over negative influences impacting
younger members given the inevitable intermingling of children in schools
The signs of juvenile delinquency first manifested itself in the
appearance of graffiti in what was earlier a green, pristinely clean
neighborhood; the seemingly aimless loitering of congregations of youth
(youth gangs) at street corners, in malls and parks; and stray incidents of
reported burglaries. At first, the tendency was to ignore the signs of
change but when the frequency of such incidents began rising, disturbing
the historically safe and peaceful pattern of community life, the community
collectively began to perceive that it was faced with the problem of
juvenile delinquency. In fact, it would be of interest to note that though
there is no official definition, the situation nevertheless meets three out
of the six criteria that are commonly used to identify a community problem:
frequency; duration; scope or range; disruption of personal or community
life; deprivation of legal and moral rights; and problem perception
Having said that, while there was enough tangible evidence to define
loss of safety as a community problem, there was reason to doubt the
veracity of the worry over younger community members getting negatively
impacted by the juvenile delinquents in district schools and surrounding
neighborhoods. However, here too, scholarly literature on the subject
indicated that the grounds for such concerns are unfortunately all too
real: 'aˆone must understand the pre-delinquent, as well as the
delinquentaˆdelinquency is merely one of a wide variety of youthful
maladjustmentsaˆchild's becoming a delinquent is largely determined
byaˆcommunity practice.' (Bloch & Flynn, 16)
To date, any community effort to solve the problem has been in the
area of police complaints, setting up of neighborhood watches and advising
children to stay away from kids not from the immediate vicinity. While, no
doubt, the need to protect the community from crime is of undeniable
importance, the fact of the matter is that neither police nor watch dog
patrols are going to solve the core problem. If anything, such measures are
only likely to cause resentment and a further widening of the gap between
different branches of a growing community. In other words, the first step
to a long-term solution is to accept that the definition of the community
has now changed and has expanded to include the newcomers.
Secondly, any solution needs to take cognizance of the fact that the
social and behavioral sciences have clearly established that community
problems focused on people creating the problems as the root cause only
leads to victim-blaming and less to effective solutions. Advances in the
fields of human and community development have also further revealed that
the only effective approach to achieving commonly shared goals lies in
changing the behavior of entire populations and thereby building a healthy
Leading from the aforesaid, it is evident that part of the solution
lies in recognizing that the new families in the expanded neighborhood
will, without doubt, share some goals common to humanity and society at
large. This, in turn, will lead to a deeper understanding of the problems
of the figurative other group,' from which will emerge 'effective
collaborative partnershipsaˆbringing about community changeaˆdefined as those
that are new or have been modifiedaˆafter school activitiesaˆpoliciesaˆfamily-
friendly policies in businesses; and practicesaˆincreased opportunities for
academic achievementaˆrelate to community determined goals.' (Bremby &
Key to the success of any overall community effort then is an
understanding of the above as well as an understanding of the adolescent
need for social autonomy yet a sense of relatedness to the adult world.
This last was identified as an important factor in the documented success
of the Teen Outreach program in reducing teenage pregnancies, drop out
rates and school failures (Allen et al.).
Naturally, any solution to the problem of juvenile delinquency will
involve multiple approaches and processes, the details of which cannot be
described here owing to limitations of space. However, an overall framework
to the solution i.e. prevention of juvenile delinquency would be: the sum
total of all activities that contribute to healthy personalities in
children; the addressing of particular environmental conditions believed to
contribute to juvenile delinquency; and specific preventive services
provided to individual children or groups of children (Bloch & Flynn, 512).
In summation, the solution to this particular community problem lies in
Bibliography: Allen, Joseph P., et al. 'Programmatic prevention of adolescent problem behaviors: the role of autonomy, relatedness, and volunteer service in the teen outreach program.' American Journal of Community Psychology 22.5 (1994): 617+. Questia. 6 Oct. 2003 . 'Analyzing Community Problems: What is a community problem'' Contributed: Berkowitz, Bill. Ed. Rabinowitz, Phil. Community Tool Box. University of Kansas Web site. 6 Oct. 2003: http://ctb.ku.edu/tools/en/sub_section_main_1017.htm Bloch, Herbert A., and Frank T. Flynn. Delinquency: The Juvenile Offender in America Today. New York: Random House, 1956. Francisco, Vincent T., and Roderick Bremby. 'Promoting Community Change for Juvenile Justice: Collaborative Change and Community Partnerships.' Corrections Today Dec. 2001: 64+. Questia. 6 Oct. 2003 .