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With the increase in number of crimes permitted by young people, there has been more effort put into finding out why teenagers and young adults turn to delinquent behavior. Understanding the reason behind delinquent behavior and the contributing causes to it helps to develop anti-delinquency programs and deter future bad behavior that can lead to criminal activity.
More than 50 percent of violent acts are committed by people under the age of 25 and 15 percent of those arrested are under the age of 18, according to the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. So what causes young people to be involved in criminal acts?
The answer, according to a Journal of Research in Crime & Delinquency article, may be social pressure. Research has identified that there is a small percentage of adolescents that don’t engage in any sort of criminal or delinquent behavior. When trying to identify the reasons that these teenagers were able to refrain from such activities, it was proposed that the young people who don’t participate in any delinquency are introverted.
However, the normal behavioral patterns of introverts – including being susceptible to peer pressure – don’t apply to this subset of adolescents. This may be because they are ostracized from their peers because of behavior or physical characteristics that make them unpopular. Because of their social exclusion, these young people have fewer of the negative influences that more popular teenagers get involved with.
A new research paper in the Journal of Research in Crime & Delinquency suggests that more research is necessary, however. The associations between social inclusion and delinquency are complex.
