To combat juvenile delinquency, some elements can be adopted. Juvenile programs have been put in place in our community to reduced delinquency among youths. Over the recent years, there has been increased substance abuse and rising cases of school dropout. The primary drug used was cocaine which had significantly affected the lives of the youth. The drugs have been established to be the primary cause for students dropping from school. The surprising aspect was the fact that the females were the most affected raising a lot of concerns from the parents and the entire community. The local authority in collaboration with the national government had to come in and enforce many programs within the community to manage drug abuse and school dropout cases. The Pace Center for Girls offers non-residential criminal behavior deterrence program and specifically targets to address the cases of school drop outs. The program targets exclusively the needs of the young females of ages between 12 to 18 identified as dependent, malingerer, fugitive, aberrant, or even those in need of academic skills but could not continue with their education (Home, 2017). The program’s goal is to offer the young females with fostering and conducive surroundings and aid them in reducing dropping from schools, adolescent law-breaking, teenage pregnancy and drug misuse. The program has been successful based on the reduced cases of teenage pregnancy and school dropping. The majority of the female students have successfully pursued their education and studies have shown that the number of female students in the school had increased rapidly.
Another program that has been put in place in my community is PACE Youth Programs, Inc. established to focus primarily on the substance abuse among the adolescents and enhance the at-risk youth’s lives, refurbish family bond, and stop youth incarceration caused by drug abuse. To target the problem of adolescent substance abuse, the program provides the teens with specific services such as substance abuse education, life management curriculum that is gender-specific, parental involvement and even therapeutic support services (PACE Youth Programs, Inc., 2017). The program also has been shown to utilize a holistic model that are receptive to girl’s necessities to sustain them as they switch from PACE to the real word of education and career.
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Several sociological theories have been established focusing on illegal behavior among the youths that could also shape the particular public policy of the community for the deterrence of delinquency. The theories can be adopted to manage the problem of drug abuse and school dropout. One of the sociological theories is social disorganization theory (Hoffmann, 2002). The theory focuses on the incapability of the community members and the overall social organizations to attain shared values or even to resolve drug abuse and school dropouts challenges experienced in my community. The theory of social disorganization states that there are specific elements, for instance, locals’ volatility, diversity in race, disruptions in the families and even economic position that influence the capacity of the community to establish and uphold robust systems that can target and manage drug abuse and school dropout. When the society’s components are unstable, there emerges inadequacy and disagreement among the youths that makes them engage in substance use that results in cases of dropping out from school.
The other theory is strain theory, and this can be used to explain the problem of drug abuse and school dropout in my community. The strain that often results from an inability to meet positively cherished objectives among the youths such as performing well in academics leads them to engage in drug abuse with the hope that their hopelessness would be solved but cause them to drop out of school. According to Hoffmann (2002), strain can be seen as the elimination of optimistically treasured stimulus, and this will result into delinquency among youth as they try to avert the failure, recover what have been lost, acquire alternates, or even seek vengeance to those accountable for the loss (Hoffmann, 2002). Substance abuse becomes the only solution for them to manage academic pressure from their teachers and parents. The youth who are associated with stress as caused by failure to perform well at school have the higher chances of interacting with other groups of their peers and take part in various criminal activities as they try to seek solace. To relieve their increased level of frustration the youths would be tempted to drop from schools and participate in gang activities such as drug tracking and using drugs. To address this problem, the first step should be to focus on the root cause of the problem which in this case is the pressure from their teachers and parents to perform. It is important to understand the student’s capability and competency rather than putting pressure on them to perform without offering a perpetual student- specific solution.
To improve my community’s juvenile delinquency prevention efforts, I would propose for the creation of a juvenile delinquency prevention program and name it Success for Youths. The program will ensure that the youths have a positive environment to visit rather than idle in the community and engage in crimes such as drug abuse that causes increased cases of school dropout. Using this program, I would be able to divert the youth’s attention from criminal activities and focus their attention on other activities that would benefit them in the future. In most societies, these programs have been put in place and have successfully minimized the rates of drug abuse and school dropout in addition to various juvenile crimes (Fagan, 1987). At these centers, the youths are trained in music, arts and playing musical instruments which keep them busy hence might not have the time to engage in substance abuse.
References
Fagan, J. (1987). Neighborhood education, mobilization, and organization for juvenile crime prevention. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science , 494 (1), 54-70.
Hoffmann, J. P. (2002). A contextual analysis of differential association, social control, and strain theories of delinquency. Soc. F. , 81 , 753.
Home . (2017). Pacecenter.org . Retrieved 10 February 2017, from http://www.pacecenter.org/
PACE Youth Programs, Inc. . (2017). Paceyouth.org . Retrieved 10 February 2017, from http://www.paceyouth.org/
