Prevention Of Juvenile Crimes A Jurisprudential Study

We are guilty of many errors and many faults, but our worst crime is abandoning the children, neglecting the foundation of life.

- Lawz Bureau

Many of the things we need can wait, the child cannot, right now is the time his bones are being formed, his blood is being made and his senses are being developed. To him we cannot answer ‘tomorrow’. His name is ‘today’.” In the final chapter of “Folk Devils and Moral Panics”, Stanley Cohen states:

“The intellectual poverty and total lack of imagination in our society’s response to its adolescent trouble makers during the last twenty years, is manifest in the way this response compulsively repeats itself and fails each time to come to terms with the real ‘problem’ that confronts it.”

The real ‘problem’ which is confronting the guardians of juvenile justice is ‘why juveniles cannot be stopped at committing crimes in the first place?’ In this context prevention of juvenile crimes should be the prime focus and organising theme at all stages of the juvenile justice system. The present paper after analysing the concept of juvenile delinquency and theories of its causation seeks to highlight the way in which an effort can be made to facilitate the prevention of juvenile crimes.

The Concept of Juvenile Delinquency