Juvenile crime and punishment : a closer look at habitual offenders

Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote in his acclaimed novel Crime and Punishment, if he has a conscience he will suffer for his mistake. That will be punishment as well as the prison. 1 The plague of guilt on the mind of a criminal is a key element in this book and is quite applicable to the case study at hand which examines why some juveniles are habitual criminal offenders. What prompts a youth to commit crimes? How does a child deal with his conscience for the unlawful acts? Does he understand right from wrong, truth from falsehoods, and freedom from repercussions? And should there be more stringent punishments by the state for committing the offenses? Society has developed ideas on what is acceptable in handling problem children. The justice system has turned from the idea of punishing offending youths to rehabilitating them. However, given the many problems our country faces with crime rates for juvenile offenders, perhaps society should question if the methods currently employed are effective. This examination specifically reviews the crime rates in Florida and how the law is applied to youths. This thesis aims to discover aspects of what encourages children to commit violent acts and which governmental and societal methods employed are successful or ineffective in treating this behavior. The purpose of this thesis is to probe the boundaries of our society and provoke social imagination to find resolutions in how the state may bring down crime rates for this age group