Undersocialized Delinquents

I found the juvenile delinquency section in Chapter 16 very interesting. I will be doing my practicum in the fall and choose to do it at a juvenile probation center. I found out that I will be working with the adolescent sex offenders. I was told that these delinquents can be as young as ten years old. The book states, “Under socialized delinquents typically begin criminal activity at an early age, well before the onset of adolescence (Feldman, 2007, P. 461). I was told that most of these juveniles become sex offenders because of the way they were raised. They tend to have been sexually abused themselves. For the majority, this classifies them as under socialized delinquents because they had harsh and uncaring parental supervision. These children are usually performing sex crimes on younger siblings or neighbors. I feel that if the parents had a bit more influence on the children, then maybe this could have been stopped. The only thing different about the sex offender juvenile delinquents is they usually have good characteristics otherwise. The book says that delinquents are usually aggressive, less intelligent then average, and usually partake in more then one crime (Feldman, 2007, p 461). The juveniles I will be observing usually perform well in school and have no history of other crimes such as drugs. It will be a very interesting experience for me!