'A leopard never changes its spots' - do all juvenile offenders go on to a life of crime? 2500 words This essay will examine whether all juvenile offenders go on to a life of crime. A juvenile offender in England & Wales is a child aged between 10 and 17, who has committed an indictable offence. The criminal age of responsibility is 10 in England and Wales is amongst the lowest in Europe. Juvenile offender’s arrests represent 10% of all arrests and 83% of juvenile offenders are male (Ministry of Justice, 2017). The cost of crimes committed by youths aged 10-17 is £390 million approximately and the estimated cost of youth incarceration is £587 million a year. The high proportion of youth offenders and the high economic cost demonstrate the impact of juvenile offending and it needs to be examined whether these juvenile offenders go onto criminality in adulthood. Desistance needs to happen to youth offenders to prevent them from a life of crime. Desistance is when a criminal can stop the behaviour that characterises their criminal activity, refraining from committing crimes and to maintain being in that state. Some of these challenges are drug abuse and addiction, unemployment, few academic opportunities, social pressure and return to environments with high crime rates (Richards and Jones, 2004). Recidivism refers to …show more content…
71% of children (10-17) released from custody in 2009 reoffended within a year (Ministry of Justice, 2011). The reconviction rate is very high for juvenile offenders, for adults the rate is much lower: 47% of adults are reconvicted within one year of being released (Ministry of Justice, 2011). This demonstrates that those who offend when they are young are more likely to commit multiple crimes and desistance is more unlikely. Therefore, locking up children may not be an appropriate and effective response, as they appear to conform to