DIFU-Extranet
Security in the City
Silke Pies/Christian Schrapper
Juvenile Delinquency - Facts, Problems,and Challenges for Local Government
1. Figure, Dates, Facts
2. Juvenile Delinquency: Threat or Myth? - Theses on the Evaluation of Data and Facts
2.1 Deviant behaviour by young people is normal and temporary
2.2 Repeated juvenile crime clearly points to a need for help and support
2.3 Juvenile delinquency is "male"
2.4 Young People are more often victims than offenders
3. And what is to be done? Consequences for crime preventative youth and social policy in the community
3.1 Strengthening infrastructure and regular facilities and institutions
3.2 Understanding individual strains and crises as pointers
3.3 Special help for problem regions and groups
3.4 Ensuring appropriate and timely sanctions
3.5 Enlightened political culture and binding cooperation between the educational, youth welfare, and police/judicial systems
3.6 Children and young people are the future - neither a threat nor a minority
Abstract:
Despite the marked increase in the number of young people suspected of criminal activity in recent years, there is no reason to dramatise the situation. As far as juvenile delinquency is concerned, the "subjective sense of threat" felt by many members of the public and politicians often manifestly has little to do with any "objective threat." But there is no justification for trivializing the situation, either. When young people commit crimes, it is a serious indication of problems primarily to do with the offenders' personal circumstances and future prospects. However, "complicated problems require complex solutions." This principle should guide local government strategies in combating juvenile delinquency, for there are no simple explanations for the phenomenon in all its complexity, nor are there any simple solutions. Local "crime prevention" will be successful only if the infrastructure and regular facilities and institutions are strengthened, individual problems and crises are recognised as danger signals, special support for problem areas and groups is provided, reasonable and timely sanctions are imposed, an enlightened political culture and binding cooperation between educational, youth welfare, and police/judiciary systems are established.
The term juvenile delinquency normally refers to criminal offences committed by adolescents between the ages of 14 and 18 and young adults between the ages of 18 and 21. This close link between age and crime is not usual in other areas, for example with regard to "adult crime" or "old-age crime." Juvenile delinquency, in contrast, is subject to public discussion at regular intervals not least of all because youth is generally considered a "mirror of conditions in society" (cf., for example, Deutsche Shell 2002), and is kept under particularly intensive observation. There is nothing new in "? this issue, like fashion," [dominating] "the discussion for a certain while only to be supplanted by others. In the 1950s, 'rampaging youth,' 'hooliganism,' and 'vandalism' were thematized. In the 1970s attention was drawn to the 'worrying' and 'alarming' rise in juvenile delinquency. The drop that occurred in the mid-1980s in the absolute figures for juveniles investigated by the police and convicted then prompted questions about the consequences of declining crime and overcapacities in the penal law system. Since the early 1990s, however, the drastic rise in youth crime and the new dimensions it has assumed have once again sparked discussion." (Heinz 2002: 7) Single, spectacular offences committed by young people are often dramatised by the media, and this publicity triggers a whole flood of demands, expert opinions, conferences, political activities, campaigns, model programmes, and concepts (cf., for example, DJI 1999). "Inadmissible equations and oversimplifications are the result. Juvenile delinquency becomes typical criminality, delinquent behaviour by young people is perceived as violent crime. Children and adolescents are regarded as increasingly violent, criminal, and dangerous (rather than endangered). The subjective fear of crime, anyway far greater than the risk of falling victim to crime, grows until 'youth' per se engenders fear. The concept of an enemy takes shape in the form of 'little monsters' and 'brutalized' young people, who need to be 'combated,' i.e., locked up and excluded" (Sonnen 1998: 6).
It was only in 1990 with the First Act amending the Juvenile Court Act that a reform of criminal law relating to young offenders sought to take account of state-of-the-art findings in criminological research. The key elements of the reform were, firstly, a reduction in formal sanctions in favour of informal settlement (diversion); research had shown that informal solutions were not only faster and cheaper but were also more effective against recidivism. Secondly, even in the case of conviction, non-institutional measures like social training courses, victim-offender mediation, etc. largely replaced traditional sanctions like fines or detention. Here, too, there was evidence that the probability of recidivism was not increasing (cf. Ostendorf 2000: 85; Sonnen 1998: 6).
Not even a decade on, there are calls for this reform course to be abandoned, with revived demands for greater severity. For example, there are demands for the age of criminal capacity to be reduced from 14 to 12, for higher security placement, for young adult offenders to be subtracted from the criminal law relating to young offenders. "In the changed policy climate towards crime the Juvenile Court Act and the youth welfare course it set was attacked as 'cuddly criminal law with all sorts of social fuss'" (Sonnen, 1998: 6 f.). Not only does this ignore the origins of and conditions for juvenile delinquency and divert attention from societal and political responsibilities, it also overlooks scientific findings that have clearly demonstrated the low preventive effects and harmful side effects of remand custody, juvenile detention, and prison for juveniles (cf. Schrapper 1989; Sonnen 1998 and 2002).
What is needed, in our view, is not to take public fears about internal security as an excuse for a repressive revolution in youth and crime policy but to engage in an on-going, rational examination of this explosive subject.
1. Figure, Dates, Facts
As a rule, crime developments are gauged from the official crime statistics. However, these statistics reflect not the reality of crime but what has been registered, i.e., offences that have been reported. Reported crime is only fraction of the whole of crime committed, of which an unknown but considerable proportion remains unreported and unrecorded. Recent studies show that, especially in the case of criminal offences involving young people, probably no more than 10 per cent of all offenders are actually convicted (cf. Heinz 2002).
Changes in reported crime may thus show an increase in offences committed, but need not necessarily do so. Changes can just as plausibly be explained as the result of greater willingness to report offences, more vigorous prosecution, legislation, or judicial decisions, and changes in statistical procedures (cf. BMFSFJ 2001). Concluding that a change in "reported" crime indicates a corresponding change in "actual" crime is therefore highly questionable. For example, the willingness to report offences, a quantitatively highly significant factor, is very susceptible to social change, and reflects changes in social tolerance/intolerance far more than actual crime developments (cf. Heinz 2002).
Following a slight decline until the end of the 1980s, official crime statistics have shown a steady increase in adolescent offender figures since 1990, and since 1993 in the numbers of child and young adult offenders, too. In 1996 7.3 per cent of all adolescents and 8 per cent of all young adults were registered as alleged offenders, and in 0.9 per cent of cases they were suspected of violent crimes. In spite of these rising figures, there is no statistical support for the popular allegations of "worse and worse, younger and younger, more and more brutal" juvenile delinquents (Henning 1998; DJI 1999; BMFSFJ 2001).
Crime figures, that is to say the numbers of suspects and convictions in relation to 100,000 persons from the peer resident population, show clear differences as regards age and gender. Adolescents and young adults are worst affected in proportion to their share of the population - especially in East Germany - and the proportion of female suspects is much lower than that of male suspects (cf. BMFSFJ 2001).
Source: Konstanzer Inventar für Kriminalitätsentwicklung (cf. Heinz 2002).
Measured against their share of the population, young people have been overrepresented in crime statistics ever since such records have been kept, for youth crime is generally more visible, less professional, and easier to prove. This high involvement of young people is relativised by the fact that they are predominantly implicated in minor offences. Young people mostly come to the attention of the authorities through petty crime, offences against property, especially shoplifting. The range of offences committed broadens with age.
However, young people are also overrepresented among the suspected perpetrators of violent crime. Some two-thirds of such offences are dangerous bodily harm, which - despite the name - does not necessarily involve serious injury. For this class of offence includes not only the use of a weapon or other dangerous implement but also the joint commission of offences by groups, a situation typical of youth.
A comparison of alleged offender figures and conviction figures also shows that the share of non-convictions is much higher among adolescent and young adult suspects than among adult suspects. This probably has to do both with the less serious nature of the offences committed by young people and with the frequent discontinuation of criminal proceedings (cf. Heinz 2002).
When interpreting the statistics, it must above all be taken into account that there is a small group of young people who repeatedly come to the notice of the police and who together commit almost one third of all recorded criminal offences. Several studies on so-called multiple and habitual offenders agree that, on an annual average, between 3 per cent and 5 per cent of offenders commit over 30 per cent of known offences for their age group (Heinz 2002). However, little is so far known about this group. All that is certain is that it is not homogenous but includes young people from differing biographical and social backgrounds. But it is also clear that "almost all show differing combinations and weightings of perennially desolate family conditions, social exclusion, and deprivation, illness and addiction in the direct family environment, lack of social opportunities, massive problems at and rejection of school, membership of deviant peer groups, language problems, unresolved residence status, personal psycho-social problems, long careers of receiving help with numerous abandonments and breakouts, and the like." (BMFSFJ 2001: 236)
Young people of non-German origin are disproportionately represented in the crime statistics, although reliable figures are, on the whole, lacking in this field, too. Unreported crime studies suggest, however, that a much higher figure is to be assumed (BMFSFJ 2001). Young ethnic German immigrants from eastern Europe have so far not been recorded separately at all in the statistics, but regionally limited studies point to disproportionately high criminal involvement, especially in violent crime. But these figures also fail to record differences due to willingness to report and prosecution intensity separately.
Overall, figures for juvenile crime take no account of social and cultural factors, such as school careers, income, housing conditions, social integration, unemployment rates, etc. But for both German and non-German juveniles it can be said that markedly higher involvement in delinquency may correlate primarily with problems and deprivation that have played a decisive role in denying children participation in the social and cultural wealth of our society at an early stage. It is thus clear that nationality or cultural origin cannot explain why young people turn criminal; unresolved integration problems are repeatedly to blame.
2. Juvenile Delinquency: Threat or Myth? - Theses on the Evaluation of Data and Facts
There is therefore no reason to dramatise the situation. As far as juvenile delinquency is concerned, the "subjective sense of threat" felt by many members of the public and politicians often manifestly has little to do with any "objective threat." But there is also no reason to trivialize the situation. Criminal activity by young people is an indicator of serious problems, especially with regards to the personal circumstances and future prospects of those who commit the offences. Before the third section of this article turns to the prospects for local government action, we want to evaluate the data and facts we have mentioned in the light of four theses.
2.1 Deviant behaviour by young people is normal and temporary
If young people overstep limits and violate norms, this can be described as "normal"; abnormal is only getting caught and being prosecuted. It has always been a privilege of youth to test limits and boundaries in the sense of provocation. Breaching limits and how society reacts are key elements in the development of young people's identities, and not infrequently in their search for peer group recognition (BMFSFJ 2001).
The vast majority of young people stop committing criminal offences of their own accord without intervention by the police and judicial authorities. Taken in isolation, criminal conduct in youth, even in combination with social problems, is therefore not a useful indicator of a threatening negative development in the socialisation process. In research and practice, juvenile delinquency has become widely recognised as a largely trivial and transitory episode, which, being typical behaviour for a particular stage of development, is ubiquitous and normal in the statistical sense of the word and usually restricted to a limited, transitional period of a person's biography (Bundesministerium des Inneren 2001: 437)
It is important that the social environment and the competent institutions react appropriately, for under less supportive conditions limit-overstepping behaviour may well consolidate into patterns of criminal activity. In particular, regular educational facilities such as the kindergarten and school need to react both consistently and calmly to norm violations, while remaining vigilant in their observation of children and adolescents whose history of frequent and/or serious criminal offences points to serious problems in their development and backgrounds.
2.2 Repeated juvenile crime clearly points to a need for help and support
Nevertheless, there is a small group of young people, often referred to as habitual offenders or simple as "problem children," who repeatedly attract attention through the frequency and intensity of their criminal activities, and for whom the support and help services and measures available, e.g., those provided by the youth welfare services, prove inadequate. But these young people, too, were not criminal at birth. Phenomena like delinquency and violence in children and adolescents can be properly understood only if they are seen in the context of the person's personal circumstances and problems. The causes and background of delinquent behaviour are to be sought in changes in social structure, in family conditions, exclusion, and social deprivation. Furthermore, most "children and adolescents who display criminal behaviour ?" report "massive experience of abuse and violence within the family" (Städtetag NRW 1998: 2).
Material hardship and poverty, insecurity and endangered subsistence, as well as massively excessive demands and violence in the family and milieu remain the major factors that bring children and adolescents into "trouble." Difficult life situations give rise to profound damage and enduring harm through the cycle of external deprivation and crisis, low or weakened parental and family potential and resources coupled with support and help that is too little, too late, or misguided. Crises that have not been coped with and damage that has not been compensated are increasingly reinforced, generating more and more profound disappointment and resignation, resistance, and anger.
Young people who cause considerable trouble for teachers, police, and social educationalists are generally children and adolescents who have been confronted at a very early age with unreliability and insecurity, with neglect and violence, with failure and disappointment - and mostly in a highly threatening and frightening manner. They have not experienced or learned to trust that the adults who have the care of them "mean well." Such children have to acquire the ability to survive under the most difficult and threatening conditions, and to learn to obtain what they require to live - materially and emotionally. The biographical and social strains on these young people have usually become so intense that criminal activity has become a pattern for coping with life. Such "survival strategies" are felt by the people and institutions with whom these children and adolescents come into contact to be an almost insufferable burden. The key to a truly social educational approach is to grasp the positive sense of how a "difficult young person" sees things and what strategies he employs against the background of his learning and educational history, i.e., in the context of his acquisition and testing of promising explanatory and action patterns for his own survival. Without such understanding no positive point of departure for the educational support of a young person in "re-learning" alternative points of view and action strategies can be discovered and developed - the approach will remain deficiency oriented.
Youth welfare services and politicians must not allow themselves to be tempted into a "blanket suspicion" of children and adolescents on account of the small group of youthful suspects that capture public attention through the frequency and violence of their delinquent behaviour (BMFSFJ 2001). What is rather needed is an informed and political examination of the subject of youth crime. Criminal activity by young people is to be understood primarily as a problem of delayed or inadequate societal integration, and therefore requires solutions that show young people a practicable itinerary from the margins of society. The tools are usually education and support, but also limit-setting and norm clarification. However, both strategies require recognition and understanding of the development and endangerment potential of young people in a double sense (BMFSFJ 2001; Ader /Schrapper 2002).
2.3 Juvenile delinquency is "male"
Juvenile delinquency is definitely a male phenomenon. Suspect and conviction figures for girls and women are much lower than for male adolescents and men. Depending on age group their share lies between 20 and 28 per cent, and the more serious the crime the lower is the figure, only 10 per cent for custodial penalties.
Almost every young man commits at least one criminal offence in the course of his youth, mostly crimes against property. Serious or multiple offences are clearly the exception, and habitual offenders are only a small minority. But it must be said that only a small proportion of the offences committed by young men come to the attention of the police at all, most offences and offenders remaining unknown.
Local government crime prevention requires, above all, gender-specific concepts for boys and young men, which have yet to be available to anything like the extent needed (cf. Reismann/Stork 1998).
2.4 Young People are more often victims than offenders
The media repeatedly fan adults' fear of violent attack by youthful criminals. This fear is usually unfounded for the simple reason that offenders and victims largely belong to the same age group. Most incidents of bodily harm and serious crimes against property (robbery) are committed within peer groups.
If endangerment is asymmetrical, it is rather young people who are at risk from attack by adults. The highest victimization rates and the highest increases, especially in violent crime, are regularly to be found among young people, especially male adolescents and young adults. Taking family violence into account, as well, young people are far more frequently victims than perpetrators of violence (cf. Heinz 2002). Young people therefore deserve our attention, our care, and our protection less as offenders than as victims.
3. ... And what is to be done? Consequences for crime preventative youth and social policy in the community
"Complicated problems require complex solutions": in an age that loves guiding principles, this should be the motto for local government strategies against youth crime. There are no simple explanations for the phenomenon in all its complexity, nor are there any simple solutions. To provide orientation in the "difficult situation," we finally offer six recommendations for local government practice in "crime prevention."
3.1 Strengthening infrastructure and regular facilities and institutions
According to modern social and criminological research, crime that is not a transitory testing of limits and danger can usually be understood as a pointer to early and persistent neglect and strains, but also to a lack of access to education and development. Children from problem families and in critical life situations - when there isn't enough money to go round, when men beat women and children, when parents separate, or when children simply aren't important for adults - such children need attentive "public educators." Kindergartens and schools need to lead the way in assuming this function, for biographical studies show that "criminal careers" begin to emerge there at an early stage - not necessarily, but conspicuously (Schrapper 2003). The many state and municipal programmes for improving the spatial and social infrastructure, and the extensive debates and diverse youth welfare projects on "social space orientation" show the degree to which children and families today depend on "growing up in public responsibility" (BMFSFJ 2001; 11. Jugendbericht). All local crime prevention must therefore see its primary task in "maintaining or establishing favourable living conditions for young people and their families as well as a child and family-friendly environment" (paragraph 1 (3) No. 4 SGB VIII).
3.2 Understanding individual strains and crises as pointers
The institutions of public education, from the kindergarten and school to youth welfare services, are able not only to support and promote the positive development of children; they can also make a substantial contribution towards turning young people in difficult personal circumstances into "difficult cases." Recent studies have shown that children and families apparently always become "particularly difficult" cases when two factors occur together:
- material, mental and/or social hardship and isolation, which lead to the family system going completely "awry,"
- and an educational and aid system that is so caught up in case dynamics and so pre-occupied with its own problems (of cooperation and competence) that, focusing on the young person, it loses sight of an escalating situation (cf. Blandow 1998 and s.a.; Henkel/Schnapka/Schrapper 2002).
Social and educational experts, in particular, must therefore be in a position to recognise conflictual, aggressive, or withdrawal behaviour by young people at an early stage as indicative of serious problems. Unambiguous reactions and consistent sanctions are important (see thesis 4), but they can always be only one aspect of public action against the violation of norms. For children and adolescents there must be another side to it, an understanding eye on a young person who needs help and support in order to become an adult.
3.3 Special help for problem regions and groups
Everywhere there are groups of young people for whom the "classical" crime factors of a deprived socio-economic situation (poverty), family and biographical strains, and subcultural milieu fuse into an explosive mixture. Repeat and habitual offenders in the crime statistics are above all young people from the ugly residential neighbourhoods of the city, located on the wrong side of the tracks or between industrial estates, people from the traditional and new "deprived areas" (cf., for example, Reuther/Astenklüsch 2002).
Local crime prevention can only react comprehensively to these "threats" by improving the housing situation and residential environment in these neighbourhoods over the long term, and, in the short term, through targeted efforts in kindergarten, school, and youth work to enhance children's educational opportunities; through social and cultural integration projects - for social problems can often be exacerbated by the experience of migration and disintegration. The "Socially Integrative City" programme (German Institute of Urban Affairs 2002) shows a whole range of long and short term ways and opportunities for escaping from the vicious circle of poverty, social declassing, and crime. So there is no absence of ideas, proposals, and valuable experience. What tends to be lacking is a determined local political will to tackle the notorious links between youth crime and young people's poor living conditions and future prospects with the necessary purposefulness and persistence.
3.4 Ensuring appropriate and timely sanctions
Let there be no misunderstanding: we, too, consider it indispensable to react clearly and consistently to any norm violations by young people, especially when harm is caused to others. But this reaction must relate to the offences committed both substantively and in the time dimension in a manner recognizable by the young offender. One current judicial problem in handling juvenile offenders is the long time required by the public prosecution service and the courts to deal with cases. When several months or even years pass between the commission of an offence and police investigations and the date when the case comes up in court and, perhaps, a penalty is imposed, both the specific preventive effects of this reaction (resocialization, education) and its general preventive effects (deterrence) have long since come to nothing.
Youth welfare services, which are within the responsibility of local authorities, can make an important contribution to establishing beneficial links between offence and reaction that can be recognised by the youthful offender. Apart from such solutions as victim-offender mediation, social mediation, and the imposition of compensatory work or even detention, the institution of juvenile court assistance must take advantage of its independent mandate in court proceedings to ensure that cases are dealt with more speedily. However, adequate human and material resources have to be provided in the form of a special service or, better still, as an integrated function of the general social service. Länder governments must also take action to enable judicial authorities to perform their statutory tasks, from both an organisational and staffing point of view (for details see Ostendorf 2000).
Cooperative models like the "House of Juvenile Law" in Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt appear to be particularly successful. In seeking to solve the practical problems outlined above - the lack of any direct and recognizable relationship between offence and sanction - the police, the public prosecution service, and juvenile court assistance have been brought under one roof to facilitate coordinated action (cf. Feuerhelm/Kügler 2003).
3.5 Enlightened political culture and binding cooperation between the educational, youth welfare, and police/judicial systems
The key task of local government crime prevention is to both recognise and remedy the causes of individual and social deprivation and harm among young people and to react clearly and appropriately to criminal activity. Only in this way can it be conveyed to both adults and young people that serious problems are being accurately perceived and solutions earnestly sought. From both a local government policy and social educational point of view, it is always a difficult balancing act: on the one hand comprehending the individual and social wounds people have suffered as an essential cause of crime and taking appropriate action, and on the other hand ensuring the binding and reliable respect of the rules and the inviolability of all members of the community.
An integrated and integrative "security policy" is therefore needed to guide local government services for all members of the community. One key prerequisite for the success of such comprehensive strategies is an enlightened political culture in which the balance between understanding and determination is always earnestly sought and does not fall victim to the usually only short-term effects of a populist security campaign. Another vital condition is that the professional systems, especially education and youth welfare services, as well as police and judiciary find ways to cooperate in the community in relevant ways over and beyond their respective mandates and responsibilities. Numerous projects and studies report on how difficult such binding cooperation, so often demanded by soapbox orators, can be, although some attempts to establish it have proved successful:
- The "House of Juvenile Law" in Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt.
- Cooperation between youth welfare and the police in dealing with serial and habitual offenders under the age of criminal capacity in Cologne (cf. Reuther/Asten-Klüsch 2002).
- A longterm study by Tübingen sociologists on the life careers and life patterns of former prisoners showed that by the age of 30 the vast majority of young offenders had been successfully integrated and resocialized (Thomas/Stelly 2002).
- Since the beginning of 2003 in Hamburg, children and adolescents who have committed offences or have come to the attention of the police in connection with criminal offences are reported to the new "family intervention team" (FiT), which reacts speedily, without delay, and consistently (Behörde für Soziales und Familie, Hamburg 2003).
Not only must there be the political will and expertise for targeted cooperation but also people willing to assume personal responsibility, who accept the trouble of negotiation and understanding, and who, over and over again, are willing to confront themselves and their ideas with the question: Do we really improve life opportunities for young people through the work we do?
3.6 Children and young people are the future - neither a threat nor a minority
Successful local crime prevention is thus not an isolated area of local government security policy; it must be an integral part of a comprehensive local child and youth policy. This is our key thesis. And this local child and youth policy will become increasingly important in the years to come, for dramatic changes are looming. 20 years ago almost 40 per cent of the population in most regions of Germany were under the age of 20. Today the figure is just 20 per cent, and this share will in some areas drop to no more than 10 per cent over the coming 20 years. The demographic pyramid has been upended; children and adolescents are becoming a minority - or a "scarce commodity." This demographic trend, unlikely to be reversed in the next decades and which endangers the "reproduction" of society, can once again make childhood and youth an important subject of societal attention.
Child and youth policy is largely local government policy. Most important decisions affecting the efficiency and quality of child protection and youth welfare are made at the local level. But child and youth policy is rarely a local government policy field of first choice, often being left to political newcomers, socially committed women, and people actively engaged in youth movements. Not a few local councils see child and youth welfare services primarily as costly mandatory functions performed on behalf of higher levels of government that offer little scope for local initiative. For the most part problems are merely processed, at best discreetly managed.
And this is where the reversal must set in. The functions of local child and youth welfare services must come to be presented as vital factors in safeguarding local locational status and shaping the future of the community. We have pointed out what ideas and concepts can contribute to shaping the future of children and adolescents in a community, especially when young people become difficult and display deviant behaviour. Integrated local crime prevention is an important "construction site" for forward-looking child and youth policy, and it must manage to incorporate the old polarities between punishment and understanding, sanctions and support and render them productive instead of playing them off against each other.
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