McGrath (2015). Exploring patterns of offending by juvenile offenders in Australia: What is the evidence for a specialist violent offender? Journal of Developmental and Life-Course Criminology , 1 (3), 304-324.
Summary of the Major Tenets
The objective of the researcher was to determine whether specific juvenile offenders specialize in violent crimes. Precisely, the study wanted to establish the correlation between violent offending and reoffending profiles, criminal histories, and demographics of the persons involved. In the context of the research, especially in Australia, the study establishes that violent crimes are only a trivial proportion of all the offenses that juveniles commit in the course of their criminal careers. Furthermore, it is established that only so much exists in literature to suggest that specific juvenile offenders are specialist violent offenders and that the aggregate rate of violent recidivism is low among the study population (McGrath, 2015). The reviewed literature also suggests that violent offenders tend to have relatively short careers and that they are not easily distinguished from the rest of the offenders using most of the risk factors for offending. Therefore, the researcher concludes that violent juvenile offending mostly occurs among individuals who have extensive criminal careers, and that indigenous male youth are more frequent offenders than the rest of the groups.
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A Psychological Theory of Juvenile Violent Offending
The behavior theory, one of the most widely applied perspectives of explaining juvenile violent offending, holds that humans learn all their behavior, including violent conduct, is a product of an interaction of individuals and their environments (Wortley et al., 2016). The theorists, as the latter study indicates, no one is born with violent dispositions, and that their actions and thoughts result from their daily experiences. The experiences could include observing family and friends being rewarded for being violent and the glorification of violent behavior in popular media. For example, according to the theory, violent juvenile offenders model the characters of their parents. Therefore, based on the tenets of the behavior theory, specific environmental and social factors are predispositions of violent offending among juveniles.
Personal Reaction Statement
The article gives important insight into the dispositions for violent offending among adolescents. One of the most important findings is the fact that literature does not exclusively label specific individuals as violent offenders. According to this perspective, everyone could develop into a violent offender as an adolescent or young adult and several factors could contribute to this behavior. First, it is importantly reported in the literature that developing violent offending tendencies will rely on the duration of criminal careers—the longer the career, the higher the chances that one may become a violent criminal. Second, the rate occurrence and reoffending for violent crimes committed by juvenile offenders is relatively low, which is why one cannot sufficiently provide a framework for identifying violent juvenile offenders.
Much as the authors advise against generalizing that specific groups of individuals are more susceptible to violent offending, they establish that such types of offending correlates with gender and racial characteristics of the population. This finding coincides with others, especially from international literature (not the Australian context), which report that crime offending follows demographic characteristics of a population, such as (Ryan, Abrams, & Huang, 2014). In relation to this finding, the behavior theory of violent crimes among the youth would adequately explain that such tendencies follow demographic patterns. Therefore, I find that while the article offers new insights into juvenile offending, it reports ideas that are consistent with other literatures.
References
McGrath, A. (2015). Exploring patterns of offending by juvenile offenders in Australia: What is the evidence for a specialist violent offender?. Journal of Developmental and Life-Course Criminology , 1 (3), 304-324.
Ryan, J. P., Abrams, L. S., & Huang, H. (2014). First-time violent juvenile offenders: Probation, placement, and recidivism. Social Work Research , 38 (1), 7-18.
Wortley, S., Seepersad, R., Mcalla, A., Singh, R., Mandon, N., Greene, C., ... & Roswell, T. (2016). Review of the roots of youth violence: Literature reviews. Ministry of Children and Youth Services .
