3–5-page paper that addresses the following questions:

Technological Advancements, Juvenile Delinquencies and Juvenile Crimes

Section 1: Introduction.

Looking at the environment today and how every activity is conducted from our homes and businesses, one cannot fail to notice that technology has actually taken over almost every bit of our lives. Technology simply is any the use of scientific knowledge that has been developed over time through tests and applications for practical purposes whether in industrial production or in our everyday lives. Technology can be seen all around us from the phone you are using to the personal computer in your backpack or even simply, the year piece you carry around everywhere for music or phone calls. Despite the fact that technology has actually made work easier both at our homes and industries practically, there are some aspects of the same technology that are viewed to also impact how we live our lives. The society today is viewed as one very different from that of the early 1990s simply because of the technology.

Over the years, technology has moved from one for practical use to entertainment and communications. The rise of social media, and either online or offline gaming platforms or virtual worlds have revolutionized the world today. Multi-billion businesses are being conducted in the basement of an apartment building unlike the past when one needed to own tracks of land to accomplish the same. Social media are simply the technologies which are computer-mediated in order to facilitate the vast creation and also sharing of information, interests in terms of career, ideas, and education. It has also made it possible to pass expressions through communities and networks that are virtual.

However, as technology takes over the physical world, it does so also to the mentality of the people. This can be expressed through issues such as juvenile delinquency or juvenile offending. This is the act of people who are not above the ages of 18 or those who cannot be considered as adults under the law participating in behaviors that are illegal. Juveniles are simply those who are under the age that is statutory of the majority (Larry J. 2011). These acts if done at an age above that considered to be statutory will be considered as crimes but in this case, they are referred to as delinquent acts. In the United States of America, the statutory adult age in all the states is 18 with an exception of New York, North Carolina, New Hampshire and Texas where the age has been set at 17 years. While most of the crimes below this age are treated according to the juvenile laws set by the independent states, it is possible to still charge them as adults depending on the severity of the offense they would have committed (Woolard, Scott, 2009)

This is where the difference between crimes and delinquent acts come up. Delinquent acts will be dealt with by juvenile courts while criminal behaviors will be dealt with by the criminal justice system. Even though the statistics of the federal government of the United States show that there has been a reduction in the crimes since 1993, there is still a fact that the acts being perpetrated are highly linked to technological advancements. This brings us to the problem statement of this research which is; do the advancements in technology have any effects on juvenile delinquencies and crimes in the United States?

Problem Statement.

As stated above, the problem in this research is to find out whether the advancements in technology have had any effects on the rates of juvenile delinquencies and crimes in the United States of America. Juvenile crimes that recently hit the media houses today have been quite intense and brutal. Shootings in schools by very young teenagers for one reason or another have been part of violent crimes in the past decade or two. All these happen when the world is experiencing very large advancements to the technology in all aspects of life. Of course there might be another issue that fueled such acts such as the issue of guns, which we leave for another day, however, just having a weapon does not make one want to use it on someone else, there has to be some form of push or mental thought developed which allowed the person permit himself or herself to do such things. In some situations, these are people who live very comfortable lives with no history of violence exposure at any point in life. It is like a behavior cropped up suddenly, a thought that cannot be justified in any way since the human mind acts according to how it has been trained to act.

Hence, this left us with one thought in mind, is the technology in some way affecting the society in such a way that the juvenile crimes have been affected too. Technology has allowed for things to be learned and done in secrecy or observed in secrecy and sometimes, these secrets come out in a dramatic way. Associations between juvenile crimes and technologic exposures of the offenders have always raised eyebrows but most of the times, this issue has been overlooked and charges laid out on the basis of the crime itself.

Purpose of the Study.

The purpose of this research is to investigate the following; existent links between technology aspects such as the virtual world created in games and social media communications and nature of juvenile crimes, what section of the juvenile population is mostly affected if at all the first investigation comes up to be true, in what ways can this trend be stopped or at least slowed down so that it does not have another devastating impact like it possibly has had in the past.

Though this research, it is possible to establish very important issues that for long have been looked over by both the criminal and the juvenile courts. Of course, offenses have to be punished in accordance with the law of the land, but, it would also be as important to also consider the root of the problem so that it can be stopped from spreading to others.

Section 2: Literature Review

In this section, the researcher will be exploring some relevant research studies that have previously been done in regards to the problem statement that was developed and try to find a link between them.

This is a topic that might seem new especially in the juvenile justice but there have been many associated studies that can be used to shed light on the topic statement. In regards to this, there has been vast research done on effects of the internet on teenagers of today, a group which very largely constitutes the juvenile population. There is research on effects of technology to the society, whether or not exposure to violent computer games in virtual realities cause inclinations to performing such acts to the real world. All these and more will be included in this section of the research proposal.

First, looking at a research study conducted by Dr. Stefan Schulz, a professor at the Namibian University of Science and Technology, on the causes of crime and delinquencies in Namibia, a lot was established that could help in this particular research. Despite the fact that Namibia is an African nation, technology has also stretched its tentacles to that section of the planet. According to Schulz, a compilation of the data on the age-crime distribution of the country showed a steep increase in the arrests that were made on juveniles majorly in their teenage stage. Statistics indicated that from the year 2008, arrests of juveniles for different crimes and delinquencies had increased from 1019 in the year 2008 to 2006 in the year 2012. This was an increase of more than 100%. The statistical data also indicated that the most affected population was the boy child whose numbers stated above are very high when compared to the female arrests which stood at 131 in the year 2008 and 106 in the year 2012. It is even possible to note that the trend was opposite to the girls as their crime rates show to have decreased. The largest chunk of the crimes was assault GBH, housebreaking, and theft (Schulz S. 2012)

This behavior steeply increased between the ages of 13 to 27. From this, an argument can be made that most of the population at this age has been trapped in what is termed as the maturity gap. This means that they all trapped in time warp between their biological age and the social age. The advances in technology create this gap in a large way as people get to know about things at a very young age. Immaturity and large amounts of knowledge or information might cause some imbalances which tend to cause these crimes. This can be explained by the observation of the girls who are considered to mature faster not being vastly affected by this. However, there is also the fact that boys have been more inclined to technology with a majority of the teens using technology such as internet and mobile phones are boys. This makes them more exposed to the effects that technology might have on young minds and in the process causing them participate in such crimes (Demarco, V. J. 2001)

In another study, this time in regards to juvenile crimes and computer games. It was published recently in the Journal of Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice that there actually exists a notable association between computer games which are violent and aggressive behavior in juveniles. In this research, there was an analysis of behaviors of some 200 people considered to be occasional gamers of violent video games of both the male and the female gender in the juvenile justice system of Pennsylvania. This was the first research of this kind and it had a purpose of measuring whether there were any relations between exposures to violent video games and delinquencies and violence. According to Matt DeLisi, a researcher at Iowa State University, the research was quite compelling since it was able to withstand all the other effects which we know also matter (Pollard R. 2016)

It was established from the research that such games had detrimental effects on the people playing them especially to those with dormant psychopathological conditions that were preexistent. Adolescents, in this case, will also be highly affected due to various changes both physically and behavioral taking place in them. Games give platforms which allow for these people to escape into themselves for very long periods of time. They try abnormal things which to some, become normal and in the process causes them to try imitate them in the real world. This is another piece of evidence which shows just how technology affects juvenile crimes.

There, however, are some contrasting studies in regards to the effects of technology to juvenile crimes and delinquencies. One is the argument developed by Mark Judge, a researcher and writer for Acculturated stating that the social media might have killed some delinquent acts. In his arguments, he compares his high school years and now and concludes that the children and teenagers of today are more afraid of doing some things because it might end up in social media and in the process lead them to bear the consequences. To support these arguments, he showed some statistics that are contained in a 2015 article on Juvenile Justice Information Exchange which showed that there had been a steep decrease the juvenile crimes in the past 30 years. There were similar findings in the National Center for Juvenile Justice periodic national report on victims and offenders (Judge M. 2016)

Basically, this argument hold on the fact that there has been an increase in surveillance due to technology and in the process keeping some unwanted social behaviors in check. This, however, can be challenged by the fact that there has been an increase in technological innovations which led to encryptions. Some things might be learned online without anyone getting to know about them. The same teenagers of this age have vast knowledge about the technology itself to the point that as physical juvenile crimes are decreasing, cyber-crimes with the same age gap perpetrators are coming up.

When we put focus on cyber issues, a research was done by Joseph Sarpong of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas on Juveniles, the Internet, and Cybercrime. Here, he states that with the introduction of the internet through technological advancements, there has been a rising concern in regards to easy accessibility, very small supervision and affordability which created a sense of freedom for juveniles to do what they want. This has created and fueled indecent behaviors like sexting, hacking and cyber-bullying and even terror group recruitments of the young people ion the societies of today (Demarco, V. J. 2001). The fact that legislation regarding this new cyber technology has not been defined in the United States and in other parts of the world has made it a time bomb ready to go off at any moment. But in this case, the juveniles are not always the offenders but become victims too. Effects that show on the outside might actually be caused by what they went through, but again, most of the justice systems will only consider the end result other than looking into causes (Brown, D. J. et al 2009)

The biggest problem of technology to juveniles is information, large amounts of available information that might not be suitable for the immature minds. According to records, it has been estimated that in the year 1993, there was only about 1% information carried in the two-way communication systems of the world. But this has been increasing over time since in 2000, the amount of information had risen to almost 57% and in 2010, it stood at 98%. This is like all information about the world, the societies and other little things could be found online at that time. Hence, even though these technological developments in a way created simpler, faster and cheaper ways of information transfer, it also created opportunities to commit crimes (Yar, Majid, 2005). According to the Internet Crime Complaint Center in the United States, over 300,000 complaints were received in 2010 alone about victimization and other cyber-crimes and most of these involved people below the adult age with themselves or with adults (IC3, 2010)

Section 3: Methodology

In this methodology section of the research, there will be an explanation of the techniques which will be employed in the gathering of the information regarding the study and collecting data. There will also be an explanation of different statistical methods of data analysis and reasons for choosing one that will be used in this research.

Data gathering method

In any research, there has to be a clearly established way that the information or data intended to be collected will be gathered from the sources in order to be analyzed. Hence, in this research, there will be the use of the indirect data gathering method of questionnaires. This has become one of the most effective methods of gathering data or information of any kind from people over vast geographical locations and timelines. Technology has also enabled the use of questionnaires or immediate responses which can easily be retrieved. However, this will only be used when trying to find information from sources such as the juvenile correction institutions and department of juvenile justices.

Questionnaires are quite effective in collecting statistical data and again, with limited access granted to visiting such government institution, it will be a very easy method. There, however, will also be use of interviews, one on one with the juveniles taken into custody due to some crimes. These will mainly be used in the areas that access will be granted and through the interview, we will try to get insights from them on exposures to various kinds of technology. These methods will be complemented by extraction of information from non-random convenience sample of various juvenile courts. There is also numerous statistical information from government sources present which will be gathered through a technique which uses documents and records.

Statistical Data Analysis Methods.

Quantitative research usually puts into use data that is numerical. This means that for it to be presented well, statistical methods have to be used. With large amounts of information that flows in our society and even in research such as this, it is important that good data representation is done in order to allow to note important relationships between the variables being researched. Hence, with help from analysts, various tools have been developed which help in the analysis of statistical data. These methods include the following.

Mean.

This is also known as the arithmetic mean or average in a more common language. This is the sum of the statistical data that has been obtained from a certain sample divided by the added items number. This is a very useful method used in the analysis of statistical data in the following ways.

It helps in determination of a trend that is overall in regards to the data being used. It also allows for a good representation of vast amounts of data in a way that all of them are in one variable to enable easy comparison with others. This kind of analysis is also quite easy and quick to calculate. Disadvantages, however, include the fact that it is almost same as mode and median. Sometimes, when the data has a distribution that is skewed, man does not give the accuracy needed.

Regression models

This is a statistical analysis method that tries to show relationships that might exist between variables which are dependent and those that are explanatory. These variables are usually put on scatterplots in charts. They have a line of regression which indicates whether the relationships are either strong or weak.

The advantage of this is the act that it can clearly show relationships between variables making it useful in representing statistical data. It is continuous and hence suitable for showing or determining future trends. However, disadvantages of this method are that the model is not nuanced, this means that it does not show differences between different items represented as they all are put in one line that rises and falls representing different values.

Hypothesis testing

This can also be referred to as t testing. This kind of test is used in assessing whether it is true or not for your population or data set to be represented by a certain premise. In a statistical analysis, the results will only be considered to be statistically significant if at all it has been proven not to have occurred by chance, and through this test, it is possible to get rid of that problem. Hypothesis testing is also simple to do hence prevents time wastage in any research in business or economics.

The downsides to this analysis method are that during the tests, there are several common errors which one has to watch out for if not, they will have very significant defects on the results obtained. One is called the placebo effect which occurs when participants have an expectation of a certain result and end up perceiving it. Another effect is Hawthorne or observer which comes up when participants know they are being studied and hence distort results.

Chosen method.

From these mentioned methods, I prefer to use regression models. This method, in this case, shows continuous results which can show trends over time. In this case, the study needs such kind of method since the effects are continuous. There is also the fact that representations from this methods are appealing and easy to read. This will low for easy understanding of results from the research by anyone who might require the information in future.

References

Pollard R. 2016. Juvenile Justice Information Exchange: Report on Video Games and Juvenile Offenders.

 Morrision M, Krugman DM. 2001. A look at mass and computer-mediated technologies: Understanding the roles of television and computers in the home. Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media.