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SOCIOECONOMIC DETERMINANTS OF JUVENILE DELINQUENCY IN KADUNA STATE.
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the Study
Juvenile delinquency, in its broadest definition as antisocial or criminal behaviour among minors, which is below the statutory age of criminal applying or under the jurisdiction of juvenile justice systems, is a paramount social and criminological issue in the rapidly urbanising developing societies (Farrington, 2011; Loeber & Farrington, 2012). The behavioural range through which it is observed (between truancy, substance abuse, and property crime to highly violent crimes) is common knowledge and is extensively recognised as a symptom of systemic social deprivation as well as predictive of future criminal careers in adult years unless the behaviour is addressed in a timely manner (Moffitt, 1993; Wikstrom and Loeber, 2000). The available empirical studies on juvenile delinquent behaviour have revealed strong correlation between socioeconomic deprivation, including poverty, unemployment, educational exclusion, familial instability and neighbourhood disorder, and high rates of juvenile delinquency (Agnew, 1992; Haynie and Osgood, 2005; Sampson and Laub, 1993).
The State of Kaduna, located in North-Western Nigeria, provides a very attractive and acute background on which juvenile delinquency and its socioeconomic determinants should be explored. It is characterized by a high level of socioeconomic inequality, a very young demographic where about 46 percent of the population is below the age of fifteen as per the 2021 National Population Commission estimates, rampant poverty, high unemployment rates among young people, a strained educational system that is stretched to its limit, frequent interethnic, interreligious conflicts, which have periodically destroyed communities and displaced people (Ehrhardt et al., 2019; Higazi, 2011). The recurrent Kaduna-Zaria communal crises, post-electoral violence in 2011 and the ongoing rural banditry have all contributed to the socially disorganised conditions, family breakdown and economic ruin in most communities and therefore fit the criminological theory of a high rate of juvenile delinquency (Okunade, 2018; Aremu, 2010).
The main laws that regulate Nigerian juvenile justice are the Child Rights Act 2003 (as modified in Kaduna state to become the Kaduna State Child Rights Law 2012), that sets the age of criminal responsibility as eighteen, stipulates the development of juvenile courts, and that prohibits detention of children in adult prisons. However, in practice, the introduction of these provisions is still weak and uneven among the states of Nigeria, and in Kaduna State, in particular, the system of juvenile justice, the special courts, rehabilitation centres, trained judges and welfare experts, is insufficient in comparison with the extent of juvenile crime (UNICEF Nigeria, 2015; Odinkalu, 2017). This disparity between the intent and reality of the legislation implies that most of the youth in conflict with the law in the state of Kaduna end up in adult criminal justice system that is not appropriate to rehabilitate or reintegrate them.
The literature on juvenile delinquency offers various theoretical explanations that explain the underlying causes of delinquent behaviour in juveniles, which is brought about by the socioeconomic conditions. Agnew (1992) of General Strain Theory argues that juvenile delinquency is a reaction to the strain created by the disjunction between goals and opportunities to accomplish them, the loss of positively valued stimuli, and exposures to negative stimuli, which is experienced in community economic margin, disproportionately by the young population. Juvenile delinquency is placed in the structural characteristics of neighbourhoods; poverty concentration, residential instability, ethnic heterogeneity by Social Disorganisation Theory (Shaw, 1942; Sampson et al., 1997) that undermines social cohesion and informal social controls. The Social Bond Theory (Hirschi, 1969) emphasizes the inability of the young persons to be attached to the traditional institutions such as family, school, peers and the community exposes them to the possibility of getting involved in delinquent activities. Individually or combined, these frameworks will provide a powerful set of analytical instruments to evaluate the socioeconomic factors of juvenile delinquency in Kaduna State.
To a general extent, empirical research done in various parts of sub-Saharan Africa has supported the predictive ability of socioeconomic factors. In South Africa, Prinsloo (2015) was able to show that both neighbourhood poverty and school disengagement are among the best predictors of juvenile offending. According to Omage (2014), the most common correlates of juvenile delinquency in Edo State, Nigeria were poverty, family breakdown and peer influence. Ogundipe et al. (2018) discovered that unemployment and failure to achieve education were key factors that increased the impact of juvenile property crime in Lagos State. However, studies that specifically look into socioeconomic factors of juvenile delinquency in the North-Western Nigerian setting, which is endowed with unique religious, ethnic, and conflict relations, are very few, which underscores a significant gap that the given study aims to address.
Based on this, the current study gives a methodical empirical analysis of the socioeconomic factors of youth offenses in Kaduna State. In questioning the functions of poverty, unemployment, family structure, educational exclusion, neighbourhood conditions and conflict exposure, the study generates the evidence that can be used in making more effective prevention and intervention strategies specific to the situation within North-Western Nigeria.
1.2 Statement of the Problem
The available information about the Kaduna State Ministry of Justice, the Nigerian Correctional Service, and the civil society organisations reflects the increasing tendency in the involvement of the juveniles to the property offences, drug-related crime, and violent offending in Kaduna State (Kaduna State Government, 2020; Higazi, 2011). However, the specific socioeconomic mechanisms by which structural disadvantage is converted into juvenile delinquency in this context, has not been empirically charted in a rigorous fashion. Without such knowledge, prevention and intervention programmes will tend to be hypothetically off track and practically ineffective. This gap is being addressed in the present study which provides the first tally of empirical study of the socioeconomic factors of juvenile delinquency in Kaduna State that will create an evidence base on which focused policy and programme responses can be based in response to contextual needs.
1.3 Research Questions
i. What is the prevalence and nature of juvenile delinquency in Kaduna State?
ii. To what extent do household poverty and parental unemployment predict juvenile delinquency in Kaduna State?
iii. How does educational exclusion (school dropout, non-enrolment) contribute to juvenile delinquency in the state?
iv. What role do family structure and parenting quality play as mediating variables in the relationship between socioeconomic deprivation and juvenile delinquency?
v. What evidence-based interventions are most likely to reduce juvenile delinquency in the Kaduna State socioeconomic context?
1.4 Objectives of the Study
i. To determine the prevalence, nature, and demographic profile of juvenile delinquency in Kaduna State.
ii. To examine the relationship between household poverty, parental unemployment, and juvenile delinquency.
iii. To assess the contribution of educational exclusion to juvenile delinquency in the state.
iv. To analyse family structure and parenting quality as mediating variables between socioeconomic deprivation and delinquency.
v. To recommend evidence-based, contextually appropriate prevention and intervention programmes.
1.5 Significance of the Study
In theory, the research adds the comparison testing of General Strain Theory, Social Disorganisation Theory, and the Social Bond Theory in a North-Western Nigerian context with distinct conflict relations and socioeconomic factors. It provides empirically the most detailed, locally based information on socioeconomic determinants of juvenile delinquency in the state of Kaduna, thus bridging a gap that is conspicuous in the geography of Nigerian criminology research. In practice, it provides the Kaduna State Ministry of Youth and Sports, the Ministry of Justice, the Kaduna State Social Welfare Department, the Child Rights Court, and the community-based organisations with an evidence base to inform the design and targeting of prevention programmes, educational interventions and juvenile justice reforms.
1.6 Scope of the Study
The study area is limited geographically to Kaduna State and to the juveniles, aged between ten and seventeen, who are determined to have committed delinquent behaviour either by having had a formal justice-system contact or by a community and school based identification. The temporal scope is 2015‑2024. The paper focuses on the socioeconomic determinants of delinquency (such as poverty, unemployment, family structure, educational exclusion, and neighbourhood conditions) without going further to neurological, psychological, or biological determinants of delinquency.
1.7 Definition of Key Terms
Juvenile Delinquency: Behaviour by a young person below the age of 18 years that violates the law or contravenes social norms to a degree that triggers formal or informal social control responses (Farrington, 2011).
Socioeconomic Determinants: Structural and material conditions including income, employment, education, housing, and neighbourhood environment that systematically shape the probability of juvenile delinquency (Sampson & Laub, 1993).
Social Disorganisation: The inability of community structures to realise the common values of residents and maintain effective social controls, producing elevated crime and delinquency rates (Shaw & McKay, 1942; Sampson et al., 1997).
General Strain: The subjective experience of negative affect produced by the gap between goals and achievement, the loss of positive stimuli, or exposure to negative stimuli, which motivates delinquency as a coping response (Agnew, 1992).
References
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