It can be said that among various social problems faced by contemporary society aspiring to a welfare state, such as disease, poverty, crime, environment pollution, etc., juvenile delinquency that has failed to adapt to reality, is the most serious.
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It can be said that among various social problems faced by contemporary society aspiring to a welfare state, such as disease, poverty, crime, environment pollution, etc., juvenile delinquency that has failed to adapt to reality, is the most serious.
The early stages of adolescence is an important period since it decides the existence or not of juvenile delinquency or adulthood crime. Therefore, this study examined the correlation of the first misconduct period of juvenile status offense and juvenile delinquency due to the tendency of early juvenile offenses.
It tried to define juvenile status offense within the areas of juvenile offenses as a normative behavioral problem, to consider and classify the social environment into psychological, domestic, school and peers and to examine suitable improvement programs. In addition, it materialized the types of status offense that have not yet been generalized, classified the systems of status offense and concretely described subsystems.
In order to make the argument of the classification of types of status offense coincide with the research purpose, this study was based on the classification of Jong Won Lee, adding Young Eun Moon's four groups of status offense: entertainment/custom type, authority/resistance type, expression type and group type.
Based on the above classification system, a total of 191 male and female high school students and 237 male and female youthful offenders were surveyed, and the results suggested that in all types the first experience of prominently early status offense for youthful offenders was a sign of delinquency.
Therefore, the seriousness of status offense should be identified as early as elementary school age, which is the period when status offenses are most likely to occur, and make adolescents understand that the values and necessity of social norms are not merely persistent demands. Additionally the fact that status offense does not originate only from the environment surrounding adolescents but also from their own problems should be made understood and if they become conscious of this responsibility, the juvenile delinquency should decrease in numbers.
It should be noted that this study has many limitations. Firstly, the high school students and youthful offenders surveyed were restricted from one region and therefore the results obtained cannot be generalized nationwide. Secondly, according to various researchers, the classification per type of status offense cannot be generalized. Thirdly, longitudinal data could not be used when researching the first experience period of status offense.
This research demonstrated the necessity of establishing areas of status offense to explain juvenile delinquency and if the above mentioned limitations were taken into consideration in future researches it could provide valuable foundations to theories of juvenile delinquency.