Juvenile Arson

3 Pages 746 Words

Youth Arson

There was a time when children were considered innocent, when kids could only do harmless things. This is not the case any more in this day and age. There are many different explanations and ideas concerning the reasons for why criminal behavior has developed by such young ages. Two theories to consider when discussing the acts of arson in youth are the Neutralization Theory and Social Control Theory.
First the Neutralization Theory was developed by David Matza, in which developed from the classical school. This theory was developed based on the idea of free will. The idea being all crime resulted from a choice that could potentially be made by anyone and that most crime could be explained through human nature. A youth that commits a crime such as arson does it on their own free will. They made the individual choice to commit this crime. Youths that are delinquent are able to commit crimes and come up with good reason why it was not their fault. They do use one of five neutralization techniques that Matza has developed. The youths free will allows this neutralization process to take place. This process includes two key elements. The first element being preparation. A teen will prepare themselves before committing their crime by using a variety of different methods. The younger children who commit arson are not going to be able to grasp this concept of preparation, but juveniles ages 13- 18 do. Juvenile offenders consider methods of preparation such as the likelihood of getting caught if there are police officers in the area, how others might have committed the same act without getting caught, and take into account the amount of punishment they may get. The juvenile also things about his past experiences committing the same crime and learns from his mistakes. The second element in this theory is desperation. Desperation plays a part in the juvenile choice to commit arson by offering them a free will to commit such an...