1. Introduction
Juvenile delinquency is a complex social problem that has attracted the attention of scholars, government workers, and the community for a long time. It refers to situations in which minors are involved in illegal or antisocial behavior, such as theft, drug abuse, violence, vandalism, or illicit sex, and its prevalence can be attributed to a variety of underlying causes. While individual factors such as genetics or psychological conditions may play a role, the impact of the surrounding environment on adolescents is often the most significant. Social factors, including family status, peer relationships, socioeconomic status, level of education, and exposure to violence, all influence the likelihood that adolescents will engage in criminal behavior. Similarly, peer influence, school culture, and media exposure are all powerful forces that can encourage or deter criminal behavior. In addition, broader social issues such as inequality, discrimination, and social disintegration can create an environment conducive to criminal behavior [1].
Understanding the social factors that contribute to juvenile delinquency is not only critical to addressing the root causes of juvenile delinquency, but is also a prerequisite for developing effective prevention, intervention, and rehabilitation programs. This paper aims to explore the social determinants of juvenile delinquency to reveal the complex ways in which family structure, the education system, peer relationships, and the community environment interact and -how these factors influence the behavior of young individuals. By delving more deeply into these factors, human beings can better understand the social context in which juvenile delinquency occurs, ultimately creating a more supportive and protective environment for younger generations to thrive manifestation and influence of juvenile delinquency.
2. Cause: Social Factors
2.1. Family Relationship and Juvenile Delinquency
Family relationships are one of the important factors in teenage crimes, disharmony in a family environment, lack of love from parents, or even domestic violence could lead to juvenile delinquency [2].
One research group made a controlled study from January 2009 to December 2009. Adolescents present in the Government-run Special Observation Home were cases, while boys of 10, 11, and 12 standards in a government school served as controls. Totally 60 boys were under the study. Most offenders are charged with theft, while murder and causing injury are other offences; A boy was accused of marrying an underage girl. Of these, two-thirds (63%) were first-time, 27% were second, 8% were third and 2% were fourth. Forty-nine (82%) were over the age of 15 and only 11 (18%) were under the age of 15. They're all boys. Fifty-four cases (90%) were from urban areas and the rest from rural areas [3]. According to the research, there were no cases in both studies whose mother had negative habits like smoking, alcohol abuse, substance abuse, and involvement in crimes. However, the situation of their fathers, the marital status of their parents, and the job of their mothers seem to be the most important causes of juvenile delinquency.
Research has shown poor parental supervision to be the strongest predictor of juvenile delinquency. Factors like advanced paternal age, employment, and single parenthood result in poor parental supervision making them more prone to juvenile delinquency.
The atmosphere of a disharmonious family will also have a certain orientation to juvenile delinquency. Xiujuan Wang, a Chinese professor, has claimed that psychologically incompatible families and families with deteriorating parental relations could cause juvenile delinquency easily [4]. If family members ask each other cannot understand, and timely communication, between parents and children due to the above reasons, is easy to cause psychological non-integration or mutual closure. Children seek psychological balance, blind from the social riffraff, and even produce a vicious cycle, and finally slip into the swamp of crime. In addition, some parents cause conflicts due to their children's attitudes, education methods, caressing degrees, etc., which will put children at a loss; Some parents often quarrel with each other because of emotional discord or other aspects of the problem, and even the child as a punching bag, often beat, scold, scold. In the long run, young people are traumatized and polluted psychologically, and some of them can't bear it and run away from home, thus committing crimes.
2.2. Socio-Economic Factors and Juvenile Delinquency
Social economic issues also could be one of the important factors in juvenile delinquency. Below is a detailed breakdown of the socioeconomic factors that influence juvenile delinquency. Children from low-income families may have limited opportunities for quality education, extra activities, or healthcare, all of which can contribute to delinquency. These individuals may lack the necessary tools for personal development, leading to frustration and criminal activities. In impoverished environments, some youth may resort to theft, drug dealing, or other criminal activities as a means to survive or to attain material goods that they cannot afford through legitimate means. Also, people who grow up in a poor environment may have seen the view of violence and drug dealing a lot, which affects them to be involved in illegal activities within their neighborhood with peers.
Xiao conducted a study on how the economy affects the behavior of teenagers. He used questionnaires to investigate the relationship between personality, self-control as a mediating variable, and socioeconomic status on adolescent risky behavior. In a study of 1,198 respondents, he found that teenagers who lack self-control may be more likely to engage in risky behavior when faced with economic difficulties or low social status. Subjective socioeconomic status can directly predict adolescent risky behavior, but when adolescents have a clear objective and subjective understanding of their or their family's socioeconomic status (i.e., subjective socioeconomic status), it will directly affect whether they will engage in criminal behavior. Further experiments found that adolescents are more likely to commit crimes when they feel their socioeconomic status has declined, while crime rates are lower when they feel their socioeconomic status has improved. In summary, the study found that the adolescent's socioeconomic status (whether subjectively felt or objectively measured) has a significant impact on whether they engage in risky behavior, and self-control plays an important role in this process [5].
2.3. Education and Juvenile Delinquency
There are two conditions when delinquency works with education. One is how education causes juvenile delinquency and the other one is how committing crimes influences teenagers' future education.
For the first condition, poor education really could lead a child into illegal activities. In some backward cities, schools can't offer well education, teachers and staff do not care about how students behave or they don't have proper solutions to stop student's bad behaviors. This gives students chances to do a lot of wrong things: school bullying, smoking, sexual crime, and even drug selling.
When some students are behaving badly, teachers may just simply call them 'bad students' and punish them publicly [6]. Such tags may lead students to self-identify as "bad students," which in turn increases their sense of alienation from the school and increases the likelihood of involvement in crime.
The theory that may fit the bullying victimization-delinquency relationship best is Agnew's general strain theory. According to this model, the stress and strain created by certain environmental events leads to negative affect which, in turn, leads to delinquency. Several studies have tested this hypothesis and found mixed support for the theory. School violence, bullying, or social exclusion are among the triggers for juvenile delinquency., this is also a serious global event. Students who are frequently bullied may choose to fight back violently or engage in illegal behavior under peer pressure, as retaliation or self-defense.
Students are easily influenced by their peer groups in school, especially if these groups promote antisocial behavior (such as gang culture, drug use, fighting, etc.). The culture of undesirable groups in schools may encourage members to engage in illegal activities, leading to juvenile delinquency, and unluckily, most schools can't stop students from this.
Also, juvenile delinquency could harm students' future development. Their illegal behaviors left them with a negative criminal record, which made them lose their chances of having a good education. By using information on males from the extremely rich National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, it can find strong evidence that delinquency by age 16 reduces the likelihood of graduating from high school and college. Further analysis suggests that a channel through which delinquency impacts education is expected crime returns, as reflected by subjective beliefs about the probability of arrest for a property crime [7].
3. Suggestion
Juvenile delinquency is a complex problem involving many factors, which requires the joint efforts of the whole society, from family, and school to all sectors of society. Only through comprehensive and long-term prevention and intervention measures can effectively reduce the occurrence of juvenile delinquency and promote social harmony and progress.
3.1. Countermeasures to Prevent Juvenile Delinquency at Family Level
Building a good family relationship is the most important way to prevent teenagers from carrying out crimes. According to the social control theory, establishing a strong social bond between family and youth can prevent juvenile delinquency, because such a bond will make teenagers strengthen their sense of social responsibility and conform to traditional social norms. Practice shows that children's sincere love, good and evil clear, hard work, ready to help the quality, is often in the parents of good moral character under the model and the family harmonious atmosphere under the influence of the formation [8]. With healthy psychology, children can easily form self-acceptance and self-affirmation, a positive attitude toward life, easy to form a strong self-control ability, and the spirit of cooperation with others, to have a sound socialized personality. Therefore, parents should pay special attention to solving the problems of care and help, communication and understanding, trust and encouragement, autonomy and discipline, and create an environment for children to grow up in care, learn, and live in a happy environment, they will find their ability, to accept themselves, affirm themselves, and gradually form the ability to control and care for others in the family and Teenagers build a strong social bond with each other.
Social control theory also clearly shows that the parent-child relationship in the family is the key to preventing juvenile delinquency. The reason why teenagers have problems, although there is a "gravity" from the outside world, but to a large extent it is from the "push" within the family. In family education, the success or failure of education often depends on the quality of parents. High-quality parents can not only give children meticulous care of life but also pay attention to the child's personality and psychological development, timely find and correct the child's bad psychological tendencies, and cultivate the child's correct outlook on life, to this end, shape healthy teenagers, it must further improve the quality of parents, reshape and strengthen the family's responsibility for the discipline of teenagers. Second, parents should be careful to guide their children to invest their personal time and energy in the pursuit of lofty goals and the expectation of future success. From the reality of China, many parents are very concerned about their children, hoping that they will become a dragon, but often miss the point, the result is counterproductive [9]. It can be seen that it is necessary to improve the education level of parents. To this end, various social organizations should timely set up parent schools, tutoring lectures, tutoring consultations, and other forms of various activities to help parents improve their tutoring ability and reduce deviation and error in tutoring.
3.2. School Prevention
The government must strengthen the legal education of young people. School is a field for teaching books and educating people, its own body should not only on the achievement of learning, but also should be a healthy person, To guide young people to establish a correct view of human life, value, and the world, in the aspect of preventing young people from violating the law, schools should generally set up law courses. More attention should also be paid to the examination of the quality and deviance of young people, and rich and colorful classroom models should be developed in the teaching and learning style. So that students can be happy to receive and willing to learn, they can employ relevant public prosecutors or well-known legal personnel to make on-the-spot explanations and report and publicize the formula, the goal is to keep in mind that the achievement is greater than a complete idea in the school, and the legal system is flowing in the form and passing through the scene. There is no true fall to the actual place, many young people from the beginning of the deviant behavior to the end of the development of crime the road, which shows that the road to the legal education of students is still a long way. Education departments and schools at all levels have not had a sufficient review [10]. To strengthen the legal education of students, a complete system of examination and monitoring should be established. It should also be used as the assessment standard for students to continue their studies.
An effective suggestion is that schools should set up their professional mental guidance teams. Most of the students have been in school during this time, and the young period is the time when the health and mind fly fast, facing heavy learning pressure, living pressure [11]. It is easy to produce psychological problems, such as anxiety, irritability, autism, depression, etc. so the timely resolution and resolution of young people's psychological pressure and mental diseases have important implications for young people's growth. The Education Department should plan and adjust the formation of teacher teams promptly, set up or recruit some professional teams in psychology, social work, etc., and set a fixed period for young people's psychological guidance.
3.3. Social Prevention
It is a social construction work that must be completed to establish a good social governance and safety bureau [12]. The social governance of peace and stability is the first step to being overthrown, and it is also the root of people's sense of happiness and well-being. The crime committed by young people is not only a problem for the family and the school, but also a problem for the whole society, which is governed by the stability of the society, and what kind of democratic education and education the family has. What kind of legal system is preached in schools, young people may go on the road of breaking the law and committing crimes because of the influence of the external environment, because young people are not yet mature, blind, and easy to rush, So it is important for the society to govern the environment in such a way as to be able to influence the activities of young people, and the influence of the outer boundary on young people is not fundamental. However, it is impossible to deny the use of unscrupulous environmental factors to promote and facilitate the crime of juvenile delinquency. The establishment of a good social security administration requires the participation of the whole community, which is a long and difficult task.
At the same time, governments should increase the supervision and inspection of entertainment venues to purify the air of society. When the previous unhealthy information persists in society, the unwholesome information, such as violence, fear, and color, will easily stain young people with unwholesome habits. It is necessary to purify the social environment and strengthen the supervision and overall strength of cultural entertainment venues. At the same time governance, each department should also accumulate to publicize the culture and atmosphere of health upward, and the development and extension of various ugly phenomena.
4. Conclusion
In recent years, more and more attention has been paid to juvenile delinquency, which has gradually become a social problem affecting every family. The social factors of juvenile delinquency are various, and there are still many problems to be developed and solved. This social hot issue not only affects the future trend of young people but also has a certain influence on the social stability and development of various countries.
This paper discusses and summarizes the factors and suggestions of juvenile delinquency through the analysis of specific cases, the analysis of data results of former researchers, and the reference to sociology, criminology, psychology, and other disciplines. Maybe this paper can provide constructive suggestions on juvenile delinquency and also hope that the future of teenagers is bright.
References
[1]. Jiang, S., He, S., & Zou, H. (2006). A Review of the Relationship Between Family Factors and Adolescent Delinquency.
[2]. Bobbio, A., Arbach, K., & Illescas, S. R. (2020). Juvenile Delinquency Risk Factors: Individual, Social, Opportunity, or All of These Together? International Journal of Law, Crime and Justice, 62,
[3]. Rathinabalan, I., & Naaraayan, S. A. (2017). Effect of Family Factors on Juvenile Delinquency. International Journal of Contemporary Pediatrics, 4(6), 2079-2082.
[4]. Buikhuisen, W., & Bontekoe, E. H. (1988). Biological, Psychological and Social Factors Related to Juvenile Delinquency. In Explaining Criminal Behaviour, 121-140.
[5]. Boehnke, K., & Bergs-Winkels, D. (2002). Juvenile Delinquency under Conditions of Rapid Social Change. In Sociological Forum, 17, 57-79. Kluwer Academic Publishers-Plenum Publishers.
[6]. Thompson, W. E., & Bynum, J. E. (2016). Juvenile Delinquency: A Sociological Approach. Rowman & Littlefield.
[7]. Hoyt, S., & Scherer, D. G. (1998). Female Juvenile Delinquency: Misunderstood by the Juvenile Justice System, Neglected by Social Science. Law and Human Behavior, 22, 81-107.
[8]. Weeks, H. A. (1943). Predicting Juvenile Delinquency. American Sociological Review, 8(1), 40-46.
[9]. Dogar, I. A., Akhwanzada, W. A., Bajwa, A., Haider, N., & Asmat, A. (2010). Self-esteem and Psychosocial Factors Associated with Juvenile Delinquency. Annals of Punjab Medical College, 4(2), 172-176.
[10]. Bogen, D. (1944). Juvenile Delinquency and Economic Trend. American Sociological Review, 9(2), 178-184.
[11]. Jia, X. (2022). The Impact of Socioeconomic Status on Adolescent Risky Behavior: The Mediating Role of Self-Control. Xinjiang: Shihezi University.
[12]. Ward, S., & Williams, J. (2015). Does Juvenile Delinquency Reduce Educational Attainment? Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, 12(4), 716-756.
Cite this article
Zhang,Y. (2025). Social Factors Contributing to Juvenile Delinquency and Its Impact. Communications in Humanities Research,53,8-13.
Data availability
The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study will be available from the authors upon reasonable request.
Disclaimer/Publisher's Note
The statements, opinions and data contained in all publications are solely those of the individual author(s) and contributor(s) and not of EWA Publishing and/or the editor(s). EWA Publishing and/or the editor(s) disclaim responsibility for any injury to people or property resulting from any ideas, methods, instructions or products referred to in the content.
About volume
Volume title: Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Literature, Language, and Culture Development
© 2024 by the author(s). Licensee EWA Publishing, Oxford, UK. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and
conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license. Authors who
publish this series agree to the following terms:
1. Authors retain copyright and grant the series right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work's authorship and initial publication in this
series.
2. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the series's published
version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgment of its initial
publication in this series.
3. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and
during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See
Open access policy for details).
References
[1]. Jiang, S., He, S., & Zou, H. (2006). A Review of the Relationship Between Family Factors and Adolescent Delinquency.
[2]. Bobbio, A., Arbach, K., & Illescas, S. R. (2020). Juvenile Delinquency Risk Factors: Individual, Social, Opportunity, or All of These Together? International Journal of Law, Crime and Justice, 62,
[3]. Rathinabalan, I., & Naaraayan, S. A. (2017). Effect of Family Factors on Juvenile Delinquency. International Journal of Contemporary Pediatrics, 4(6), 2079-2082.
[4]. Buikhuisen, W., & Bontekoe, E. H. (1988). Biological, Psychological and Social Factors Related to Juvenile Delinquency. In Explaining Criminal Behaviour, 121-140.
[5]. Boehnke, K., & Bergs-Winkels, D. (2002). Juvenile Delinquency under Conditions of Rapid Social Change. In Sociological Forum, 17, 57-79. Kluwer Academic Publishers-Plenum Publishers.
[6]. Thompson, W. E., & Bynum, J. E. (2016). Juvenile Delinquency: A Sociological Approach. Rowman & Littlefield.
[7]. Hoyt, S., & Scherer, D. G. (1998). Female Juvenile Delinquency: Misunderstood by the Juvenile Justice System, Neglected by Social Science. Law and Human Behavior, 22, 81-107.
[8]. Weeks, H. A. (1943). Predicting Juvenile Delinquency. American Sociological Review, 8(1), 40-46.
[9]. Dogar, I. A., Akhwanzada, W. A., Bajwa, A., Haider, N., & Asmat, A. (2010). Self-esteem and Psychosocial Factors Associated with Juvenile Delinquency. Annals of Punjab Medical College, 4(2), 172-176.
[10]. Bogen, D. (1944). Juvenile Delinquency and Economic Trend. American Sociological Review, 9(2), 178-184.
[11]. Jia, X. (2022). The Impact of Socioeconomic Status on Adolescent Risky Behavior: The Mediating Role of Self-Control. Xinjiang: Shihezi University.
[12]. Ward, S., & Williams, J. (2015). Does Juvenile Delinquency Reduce Educational Attainment? Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, 12(4), 716-756.