A Study of Factors Affecting Juvenile Delinquency
Mazinani Nourollah1, Mazinani Fatemeh2, Jafari Farhad 3*1Economic law MA and Attorney at law- Tehran-Iran 2Public law MA – Tehran- Iran 3MPH. Specialist of Community Medicine, Department of Health and Social Medicine, School of Medicine Shahed University, Tehran, Iran. *Corresponding author E-mail: jafari@shahed.ac.ir
Abstract: Children and juvenile delinquency is considered as one of the problems and concerns of different countries. This phenomenon has a growing trend in our country as one of the youngest countries in the world. This study aims at investigating the factors affecting juvenile delinquency. This research is a cross - sectional study performed on 250 subjects including 200 male juvenile delinquents and 50 female juvenile delinquents aged 9 - 18 years and sentenced in juvenile institution and tribunals responsible with addressing the children’s offenses in Tehran. The data collection tool was an information form completed through interviews and studying the records of the subjects. SPSS software for data analysis and frequency distribution tables and chi-square test were used. In this study, 62% of young people aged 17-18 years were studied among which 80% is male and 20% female. Besides, 48% of them were educated at guidance school level and 50.8% of them did not live with their parents. The crimes committed in order of frequency were: Theft, evil-doing, drugs, mischief, mayhem and 40.8% of them were addicted. Moreover, gender and education level as well as occupation and education level of their mothers were significantly associated with delinquency (P<0.05). Additionally, no significant relationship was observed among the marital status, place of residence, family size, birth order, educational backwardness, performing religious duties, education level, fathers’ job, level of income and criminal background of their family members. A significant correlation was observed between the separation from family and addiction, with delinquency type, as well as addiction of families with the addiction of the juveniles (P<0.05). In this study, various demographic, social and familial factors, such as education, occupation, separation from family and drug addiction have turned out to be influential on the development of juvenile delinquency.
Keywords: Delinquency; Juveniles; Influential Factors Back to TOC