Ways of Preventing Juvenile Crimes Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Ways of Preventing Juvenile Crimes - Essay Example Some of these programs have led to considerable decrease in crime rates while others have had no effect. This paper will deal with two juvenile crime prevention programs. Juvenile crimes Programs The Gang Reduction Program One of the programs that the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) enacted to aid in the prevention of juvenile crime is the Gang Reduction Program (Benekos & Merlo, 2006). The aim of this program is to deal with the gang activities that take place in a given region. This program entails different interventions on addressing individual, family, and society issues that lead to crime and gang activities. The program involves centralized, national, and local resources to aid in the deterrence, intervention, and containment of juvenile crimes (Greenwood, 2006). The objective of the Gang Reduction Program is to address the issues of juvenile criminals, the family, school, peers and the community. The reason for this is because these are the avenu es that either offer support to the occurrence or prevention of criminal activities (Greenwood, 2006). For instance peer groups have a very high influence on the character of an individual. In terms of family, one might come from a family where all the family members are criminals hence this makes it harder for him or her to quit the vice. The social status of the family might also be a contributing factor. As a result of poverty, the juveniles may opt to involve themselves in criminal activities in order to meet their daily needs (Siegel & Welsh, 2011). The role of the community in promotion of juvenile crimes is in the cases in which there is poor organization to an extent that the youths can easily access the drugs and firearms. In order to deal with the juvenile criminal issues, the Gang Reduction Program has set up prevention, intervention and control activities. Prevention actions mainly deal with the families, and the juveniles who are at risk of getting involved (Greenwood, 2006). For instance, in case of the youth who are ideal, the preventive measure is to ensure that they are involved in activities that will keep them busy, like attending school. Intervention activities entail management actions like outreach to sustain the youths who are involved in criminal activities with an aim of offering a better option to gang connections (Siegel & Welsh, 2011). The aim of these activities is to enable the youth change their conduct. Control activities entail police patrols, informing the society, offering support to the law execution intelligence distribution, setting up multi- organizational law enforcement and trying gang influencers, employing more instructors in affected schools to ensure all the youths are monitored while at school, and increasing regional watch teams that are associated with the Program. Thus by doing so, there will be prevention in juvenile crimes (Benekos & Merlo, 2006). The Juvenile Accountability Block Grant Program (JABGP) Another program which the OJJDP set up is the Juvenile Accountability Block Grant Program (JABGP). This Program provides financial support to the state administration for programs supporting the accountability of youth offenders in juvenile justice systems (Benekos & Merlo, 2006). The funds are mainly allocated in supporting the rationale of the Juvenile Accountability Block Grant Program. The areas that receive support from the JABGP are; juvenile drug and gun track; facilitating school protection, provision of education on regulated approval for criminals; education curriculum for prevention and control of offenses; execution of early recognition, management, and establishment and maintenance of