Basic characteristics of juvenile delinquency in the city of Prizren

Abstract

Criminal behavior of young people, or asocial, antisocioal, i.e. socially unacceptable behavior, represents disorder of the behavior that directly violates certain moral and legal norms qof society, and as such implies the commission of the criminal acts (against property, life, body, etc.), violations (of traffic, public order and peace, etc.) and immoral actions and procedures (aggressive behaviours, fleeing from school, running away from home, etc.). Experts of various scientific fields try to find the answer why some children and young people, exposed to risky behaviour, do not adopt risky behaviour alike others who are in the same or similar circumstances. Offensive behaviour of young people and adults is necessary to considered starting of different aspects of personal features of personality, cultural context, social – economic system, education, stigmatism and other factors. During the adolescence, young people often experiment with different behaviours, and perceptions of young people by others may aggravate their successful integration into society. The work will help us visualize the most important theoretical implications concerning the offending behaviour of young people, as part of the empirical research in the town of Prizren on the basic characteristics and the degree of representation of youth offending behaviour. This paper presents an analysis of reported crimes in the Police Station in Prizren, committed by young people in the period 2003.-2012., as well as observations of teachers in primary and secondary school, educators of the facilities for re-education of minors, on risky behaviour of children and young people, problematic areas and activites in the field of primary prevention and cooperation with parents. Also, in the research is used interrogation techniques structured interview and questionnaire, which was used in 591 respondents, pupils of primary and secondary schools, students of the University of Prizren and minors who are placed in a Center for social work. In this research is used stigmatization questionnaire, Offer and Coopersmith self-esteern questionnaire, social-demography questionnaire as well as constructed questionnaire fot the opinion of students on delinquent behaviour of youth in Prizren. The data were processed by SPSS. The research results point to a multitude of problems in the field of education that is necessary to research and undertake wider social action to address them. Also,criminal behaviour of young people is quite pronounced in the structure of reported crimes in Prizren, even respondents suggested some forms of criminal offenses that are not represented in the larger scale structure of reported and registered crimes. Therefore, it implies representation of dark figures of the minor delinquency. Society does not undertake all necessary measures in order to prevent offending behaviour of young people, regardless that parents, students, teachers and others are aware of the growing problem of youth delinquency.